Give praise for God’s amazing work in Taiwan!  “Nothing happens this fast in Taiwan” was the comment of a long-time expat present at Saturday’s main exploratory meeting. Six of the eight groups known to have Deaf ministries in Taiwan were there, and even though there was a lot of “history” between the various groups, God’s Spirit brought unity around their common need for a Taiwanese Sign Language (TSL) Bible. Not only did they decide on the date for the next meeting (September 27), they also formed a working committee to proceed with the project until they meet again. During the final prayer, the interpreter (from TSL into Mandarin) was so moved by God’s work there she could hardly speak through her tears—shared by many others in the room as well.

Pray for the leaders in Taiwan as they meet to proceed with the translation project.

Meanwhile, back in Japan . . . we finished recording Genesis 36-42! Since Pastor Minamida, the translator and signer, has still not fully recovered from his neck, shoulder, and arm condition, we are only allowing him to sign 2 hours a day. At two days a week, it took a full month just to get the recording done. But looking at it, it is clearly his best work yet. Pray for Mr. Ogata as he edits and prepares the DVD, for Ms. Kuwahara and Mark as they do the final checks on versification and computer graphics, and for Pastor Minamida as we begin tomorrow translating the last portion of Genesis—chapters 43-50.

We’re also excited that Pastor Hori, a Deaf man who knows Greek and Hebrew, has agreed to help with original language checks. Though he lives too far to commute, he can get the translation work via the internet, check it, and send the results via internet. Pray that the training will go well, and we’ll be able to work out a good system for “distance checking.”

PS Pastor Minamida is happy to be able to get is hair cut now that the recording is done.

More Details on Taiwan:

There were LOTS of meetings. Visits with the Taiwan Bible Society and some of their major donors proved productive. Mark was even a guest lecturer for all of 20 minutes at a freshman Deaf Culture class at Tainan University. He also spent hours with various Deaf groups and individuals.  Though TSL began from Japanese Sign Language (JSL) during the Japanese occupation of Taiwan, it has diverged significantly in the past 60 years, so Mark had to strain to follow what was going on, and missed a lot. Fortunately, his first contact was with Pastor Wu, who knew a fair amount of Japanese Sign Language (JSL), and the bits and pieces of TSL learned from Pastor Wu helped during the intensive meetings on Saturday and Sunday. Pastor Wu interpreted for Mark on Saturday when he presented the JSL translation work, but the rest of the day, he was pretty much on his own. Interestingly, when the signing was “Deaf”, he could get by, barely, but if it followed Mandarin sentence patterns or included fingerspelling, he was totally lost. He came home exhausted, but very, very happy.