(Video Transcript):
Hi, everyone. Wanted to introduce to you a new video clip idea I've had, and I'm hoping in the new year and even as we prepare for Christmas to start recording some short five to 10 minute little clips, maybe longer at times, but hopefully no longer than 10 minutes. Wanting to just share with you some of the things I'm teaching in the classes and the pastor training sessions I do, and maybe some of the research and writing projects I've got going on just so you can get a flavor of some of the day-to-day, week to week content development I'm producing.
And then on alternative clips, I'm going to be sharing with you maybe some prayer updates, maybe when I'm out and about down at the Hill Tribe Mission Center or at church or in a different village or maybe down in the city or something. I'll try to snap a few minute update so you can know how to pray for us and different things that we have going on.
One of the motivations of these videos is I want to just speak in a way that's casual, like as if you're in one of my classes or maybe you're here for a meal and we're just talking, pretty unscripted. I have a few things I'm going to want to share with you, but it's not, I don't have any notes in front of me. I just have my Bible and maybe I'll have a book or something out over here. I want to read to you a passage from, and then just make commentary on it. But basically I just want to give back to you, those of you who partner with us in prayer and support, churches, individuals, just want to give back to you some of the things that the Lord is doing in my teaching and in my life, and just help you feel part of some of the things that we're developing in the ministry.
One thing I wanted by way of segueing into discussing some content, one thing I wanted to share with you was that I had just been to a Bible translation conference here in Thailand. It was the biannual, and it's the first time they've held it internationally. Previously in previous years, they've held it in Texas, but they decided to hold it in an international location, so it was here in Thailand. And I went to it and was able to interact with lots of thinkers and developers of Bible translation practices and technology and philosophy and theory. And it was, it was a good conference. I learned about some different projects going on that I didn't know were existing.
I learned about some different tools for oral based people. Oral based means they don't read well. It doesn't mean they're illiterate. They might just be illiterate. And so they don't dominantly learn by reading. And so they have these oral bibles, which is just basically voice recordings that are pretty hardy. People can put 'em in their like, their front pocket or put 'em around their neck like on a lanyard, or they can put 'em in their purse or their side bag and listen to the Bible when they're out in the fields working. In my context here in the village, in the mountains, people are out in the fields most days working till evening, and they don't have enough juice in their phones to run all day. Even if they did, their phones may not even have their heart language recorded, so they don't have an audio bible or anything like that. But these, these audio bibles are pretty hardy. They can charge really quickly. The battery runs really well and they're very simple. I was just going to show you one of 'em. I got a couple different versions, couple different companies, but this is just one I'm going to play for you. On this you have a Thai, a Thai audio Bible, and also a Black Lahu audio Bible. I don't have the dialect that is in our village. The dialect in our village is still unrecorded and unwritten. It's very small dialect, but they do use the Black Lahu written Bible in their churches. Whether they understand it completely, I don't think so.
One of the reasons they like to go to church and typically church is pretty packed. Like yesterday at church—today's I'm recording this on a Monday—yesterday at church, I sit up front every Sunday because I do the closing benediction at the end of the church. And it was full. There wasn't a seat left. And I know one of the reasons for that is because they want to hear somebody explain the word and they have a rhythm and a pattern of going to church every Sunday. They don't have a Bible for themselves to read that they can read, that they do understand. So this, this is the Black Lahu, now granted it's not their dialect, but they know it well enough to kind of get the gist. And then likely they would come to church and hope that maybe some of the passages they're reading in the service, maybe some of the things they're listening to that can be explained. So this is an example. Okay, that's. This is Black Lahu. Okay, so you can maybe you could hear a little bit of the difference between the two languages, very different languages. I mean, I could, because I operate in those two different languages, but the genius of this is it's just very simple. You just skip ahead to different books and different chapters, and or different languages, and it's just, it's not waterproof, but it's there's very little space on this for water to get into.
So I will, I will say if any of you are interested in sponsoring a certain amount of purchases of these, I can, I can get these ordered. And if you wanted to give to buying like five or 10 or, you know, enough for a family or something, I do have some families that would like something like this. Just email me. I can send you the details on how much they are because there's different, there's different sizes and different capacities. So there are different prices, but they're different prices, but they're pretty inexpensive comparatively speaking. I mean, we're not talking about buying a cell phone.
But I, I will say just to transition a little bit, one thing I've been thinking about in terms of Bible translation, since that's kind of the world I've been in for the last while just with the conference and working on some different translation projects, is one thing that I've stumbled over is some of these language groups, whether it's Thai or Lahu or Chinese or Burmese or something where they've had a translation for a while. Why is it that so many language groups are hesitant to adopt a more contemporary or maybe a even a clearer translation if there's a 2.0 version of a translation of their language? Why? Why do they always prefer the original translation? Maybe the more old, old style, kind of like the King James Version. Why do they prefer that when certainly they don't understand it as well as the more contemporary one? I've wondered this for many, many years because in China, that's the same way. It is in other countries I've been in. They always liked the original. And so then I have to ask myself, well, is it just a western thing to always want something more innovative, something new, more cutting edge? What is it about our mindset as English speakers, native English speakers, that we just we're always fascinated with the latest version, the latest translation? And why do we genuinely think that newer is better? Well sometimes, if you're talking to like a textual credit, sometimes they think, well, we've discovered more manuscripts or we've, we have clearer manuscripts to kind of figure out some of the unclear areas in previous older manuscripts that we've used. That's all true and that's all right. There's nothing wrong with that. That's actually great. Praise the Lord. We keep discovering better and clearer manuscripts and we have better technology to access some of those.
That's not the point, because people don't think in terms of manuscript collections and where we're getting some of the translations from. People in these cultures, they're thinking in terms of tradition and sacredness and a set apartness of the text. And so I've, I've actually learned, I guess I've concluded over the last year or two that one of the appeals to Christian growth in some of these language groups is that they have a big word, a codification. They have codified a certain sacred Christian sound, a certain sacred Christian text that when they go to church, it's kind of like I say in my classes, they speak the language of Zion. It's a special language. It's not a common, civilian language. It's something that they need to be taught. It's something that they need to have inculcated over time. It's not so diverse from their common street language that nobody could understand it. They do know it is, you know, Thai or Lahu or Chinese or, or you know, Burmese or some other, some other language I've worked with before. But there's something to it that's special and it's not unlike people who go to mosque and they hear classic Arabic spoken, that very few people even speak anymore. If you want to learn how to read the Quran in its original Arabic, you have to. You have to study classic Arabic in, in Cairo or Syria in some of the places where they still teach it in their institutions, or here in Thailand, when people go to the Buddhist temple, they hear kind of a sacred Buddhist script and they like it. Though they may not always completely understand it because it's not the kind of spoken language, they would, they would usually use. There's an attraction to it because it sounds otherworldly. Well, that same mindset has has influenced the way they do church. And Christian discipleship is there is a sacredness and an other worldliness to kind of the old ways, the old style of speaking, the language of Zion. And so I've I've actually come to appreciate it. I've come to appreciate how they take their Bible so seriously and there's a I there's a gravitas, kind of a seriousness, a sober mindedness to when they read their Bibles or they try to understand their Bibles that it's serious, like they. They don't read it casually. They don't throw their Bible on the ground. And actually they, they don't even mark it up really, because they just, they treat it with such specialness and it's like their one Bible. They don't have multiple Bibles. They don't have different leather Bibles with different leather covers. They just have one Bible and they treat it very respectfully.
And I think the, I think the reverence and the gravitas that they treat their Bible with is actually, it's healthy. I wouldn't, I wouldn't say that they error in terms of Bibliology, where they worship the Bible. I don't think they do that. I think they just, their reverence for the written word is rightly ordered. They, they treat it like it's something really special and it is. And so because of my, my time with the villagers and the Hill tribes people and seeing how they, they really do respect the Bible in a way that's, you know, a corrective even to me or to just other native English speakers. I've just spent some time in the book of the Psalms, especially Psalm 119, over the last couple months with the boys. Our family, we've been working through Psalm 119 very slowly just meditating on and memorizing parts of Psalm 119 that talk about the specialness, the sacredness of the word of God and how it influences all of life.
So as I, as I shoot these videos, this one's a little bit longer than I was originally planning for some of the other ones, but just as an intro video, just want to give you a taste of some of the things I'll be talking about. And maybe on future videos, I'll be talking to you through some of the stuff that our family is working through in Psalm 119. And like I said, these are going to be fairly casual. This is just going to be one shot. I'm not going to reshoot these. I'll just do it one time and if I mess up, it's just going to, I'm just going to roll with it just like it's here in person at the dinner table, in the classroom, something kind of casual, but just just sharing from my life, from the word, maybe maybe a project I'm working on to give you a snapshot into what's going on and what I'm doing and what our family is doing. And so look for these every few weeks. I'm hoping, like I said, in 2026 to start rolling these out biweekly. Maybe if I'm traveling, I'm not going to be able to do it, but just just be checking your email inbox occasionally for short little video snippets. And let me know if you like 'em. If maybe, maybe some of you have questions about something I'm teaching on and you want me to flesh it out on a future video, I'd be happy to do that. But just doing this for the sake of connectivity, relationship, and just ongoing fellowship over the word of God. And thank you so much for your prayers and support and I look forward to speaking with you again in future videos. God bless you and have a, have a great Thanksgiving. God bless.