Action re the Book of Acts

Do you remember Dean Jones, the star of Disney films like The Love Bug? After he became a Christian, he helped found The Visual Bible, a company which made Scripture films like The Book of Acts. You can see AND hear the original here.

You can also see and hear it in nine different languages here, including Mandarin Chinese, French, Latin American Spanish, Russian, and two versions of Arabic. The Jesus Film Project now owns the rights to dub this video into different languages.

Before Cru (the Jesus Film people) had the rights, Keith also dubbed it into Sinti Romani. It is possible that others also dubbed it into other languages which are floating out there somewhere on the Internet. If you find one, let us know. 

Since the film follows the Scripture text, some people have used the video in Bible studies. They watch a portion instead of or in addition to reading the text. If you experiment with this or know someone who has, let us know about that, too.

Prayerfully, 
Mary & Keith

Roma at Work

 I love baskets. So I my ears really perked up when our friend Zoltan told me about this Roma basket-maker in Romania. The man is a Christian. During the growing season he, like many other Roma, does  agricultural work. Some people go to Germany to pick soft fruits (strawberries, raspberries, etc.). Others go to Spain to pick garlic, among other things. 

I do not know what this man does then. But during the other months, he makes baskets. One of Zoltan's Roma friends helps sell the baskets. Zoltan had bought a big, sturdy one for harvesting grapes.

In America, baskets for such farm work were often made from split hardwood like white oak. Here in Europe, the weaving material of choice is more likely to be willow. Polled willows were grown specifically for this sort of purpose. These trees, often ancient, are still seen along fence rows today. 

Keith and I will be at the same Roma Networks Meeting as Zoltan in April. Perhaps Zoltan can buy and bring one of these baskets for me. Which would you choose:  an oval one with a handle or a big one for yardwork? 

Whatever you are doing, let your hearts be in your work, as a thing done for the Lord and not for men. Colossians 3:23, Weymouth New Testament

Choosing a Standard

On a weekend visit to a province north of where we live, we stopped in a drugstore to pick up a few things we'd forgotten. We understood the local teenage-clerk behind the counter perfectly well--when she spoke to us. We didn't understand anything she said when she turned to chat with a friend in the store. What was the difference? She spoke standard Dutch to us and the local dialect with her friend. But who decided, way back when, which of the many local Dutch dialects would become the standard? Why the people in the nation's capital, over there on the west coast. (Even our image of typical Dutch costumes comes from the west--photo from 1993 OC Tulip Time.)

Typically those in power in a nation choose the standard. But what if your language isn't centered in one particular nation-state? What if, for instance, you are Romany? After all, it can be really handy to have a standard from speaking to spelling. I don't try to write down things the way my mother pronounced them (upper Midwest accent) and Keith doesn't try to write things down the way his mother pronounced them (TEXAN). No, we have a standard. It's imperfect (right?), but it's standard.*

The International Romani Union realized this. In 1990, they approved an international Romani alphabet to help unite Romani** around the world. 

The Romani Bible Translation Committee also decided to go for a translation into Standard Romani. You can read more about it or read more in that Standard on their website.

You can hear AND read that language in the recently completed Gospel of John. 

And you can pray for the translators, voices, technicians who are making this Standard Romani version of the Gospel available. (Feel free to pray in any version of any language you choose!)

*Our daughter spent a couple of months in second grade at a school in North Carolina. On a spelling test, she wrote down exactly what she heard her teacher say:  "fav." The word was "5". 

**Romani can refer to the language or to the group of people.