December 2008

BIBLE SOCIETY CHRISTMAS

Bible Society family Christmas was held at the Lutheran Church, Yangon on December 16, 2008. Representatives from different denominations attended. The gathering was meaningfully organized by having a worship service, launching of Children Bible and Life of Christ Audio Volume 2, 3, and 4. The meeting was closed by lunch fellowship.


	Dedication

Meeting with Lahu Groups for Old Testament Edition at Maesai

Meeting with Lahu group for the edition project of Lahu Old Testament was held on December 13-14, 2008 at SIL center in Maesai.

Participants:

Rev Enoch Pun Thai
Rev Shane Pan Thai

Sala Joshua Thai
Rev C Tun Aung Myanmar

Rev Jacob Perng Myanmar
Sala Robert Pun Myanmar

Sala Tun Tun Aung Myanmar

Mrs Jong Luck (CAP: Thailand Bible Society) and Mrs Wilai of Thailand represented the Bible Society of Thailand and Rev Khoi Lam Thang (Translation Officer)_ represented Bible Society of Myanmar.

Narrative Report:

I flew to Tachileik on December 13, 2008 (Saturday) and spent a night at Dr Yabishi’s place. The next day in Tachilek, preached at Lahu Baptist Church. After service, we, with the representative from Myanmar Committee crossed the border and arrived at SIL center in Maesai at 5:00 pm. Most of the participants from Thailand group also arrived the same day. The next day, started from 9:30 am the two committees discussed the whole situation and the possibility of the project success. After necessary discussion and the action plan for the project was discussed.

The first evening devotion was led by Rev Jacob Perng (77 years old) and the morning devotion of the next moring was led be Mrs Jung Rak. The evening devotion was led by me and the last morning Devotion was led by Rev Enoch Pun, the main translator of Lahu Old Testament.

Current situation

Completion of editing work

As it was initially arranged, Lahu from Thailand and Lahu from Myanmar have different editing committees. They made their own plans to correct the whole OT books.

(a) Thai Editing Committee has corrected the whole OT books on the hard copy only. They brought those books to the meeting. They marked the corrections and editions with different colors.

(b) Myanmar Editing Committee: They have corrected the whole OT books and the corrected hard copy was sent to Kyaingtong LBC office for correction in Paratext. The Key Boarder Sala Tun Tun Aung worked hard tirelessly for keying in the correction in Paratext 6.1. and everything is in the computer.

The Paratext version of the Lahu Bible is different from the printed Lahu Bible, because the translator (Rev Enoch Pun) made some changes on the text and that latest text was distributed to the readers for correction.

Meeting, Discussion and decisions

Meeting started after breakfast on December 15, 2008. Every participant enthusiastically discussed and shared their experiences and the possible future steps. By the end of the day we could come up with the following decisions:

(a) We could single out all the the steps to take. They are as follows.

1. To have a very thorough spelling check

2. To have a very thorough Word check

3. To have check chapter – verse

4. To confirm usfm and punctuations

5. To make sure all the footnotes are in the right format

6. To make cross reference check

7. To include New Testament present project

8. To delete all the quotation markers.

9. To compare with the printed Lahu Bible once again.

10. To decide the abbreviation of all Bible books

11. To base Lahu English Thai Dictionary for any spelling correction.