Translator Training Course 1 Next week is the second round of Translators’ Training Course 1 (TTC1) for the new translators in the Solos Language Program. In the last round we had 13 new Solos translators attend. Unfortunately, the Petats language team was not able to come, and a number of candidates from Inland Solos also did not attend. There were also some logistics and community difficulties, so we had to limit our planned two weeks of training to just one week. There are

The Solos translation program has done some amazing work, but the past few years have been marked by more issues than progress. There have been encouraging signs: a huge interest in starting a new team in Gagan village in the more populous part of the language area, new people wanting to join the Coastal team in Tung village, and a growing awareness of the need to promote language use and development as a key component of cultural preservation. Larry just returned from a tri

At your local elementary school, how many books are in each classroom? In around 21 Solos schools in Papua New Guinea, there are no textbook readers at all. The children only have what their teachers write by hand on notebooks or on a blackboard to help them learn to read. In fact, in missionary Larry Doyle’s language study/survey in 2021 (pictured above), he found a pretty low and even declining literacy rate among the Solos people. This is a challenge that needs to be addre

Larry’s January trip out to Buka to reconnect with the Solos Bible translation teams was brief, but fruitful. He was able to get a good bit of work done, a little bit of training in, and have meaningful conversations with the people who are or will be involved in translation. He was also able to connect to an official in the Department of Education to start some long-term planning for local teacher training in coming years. The older two boys, Lawrance II and Amaziah, were ab

We always hear that prayers can be answered as, “Yes,” “No,” or “Not right now.” We have come to know that last answer very intimately over the past year. But praise the Lord, we have a different answer now! We have visas to enter Papua New Guinea and tickets to depart on November 10, arriving in Port Moresby on the 12th via Manila, Philippines. We were able to get our passports sent back to the PNG embassy, the visas processed, and on their way back to us within about 22 hou

At the beginning of August we had hoped to be sending out a “leaving for Papua New Guinea” newsletter. When we got news that the final approval for our visas had come through, despite issues and delays in Port Moresby, we anticipated that we would have our passports back with visas in them within a week or two. So we bought tickets for August 30, and made all the travel arrangements for getting back to our home in PNG. Now it looks like all that might have to be adjusted. Tec

Seven months ago we started on what has been a very common path for us throughout the years: renewing a couple of passports. This normally takes one to two months, then we are free to pursue other paperwork and travel. Little did we know that our October 6 applications for two of our boys’ passports would become a much longer saga. At the end of November, the two passports came back in the normal time, but with pictures switched. We called the 1-800 number within minutes, and

Recently another translation team in PNG published the Gospel of Luke and wanted to do 20 different picture booklets from Luke in time to sell them at the dedication of the first Gospel in their language. The advisor did the work of getting the text together, then a friend of ours in Australia put in the ISBN numbers and permissions. Then she was able to electronically send the files to Ukarumpa, where a couple of guys put them on a thumb drive so the large files could be flo

Why do you need to own a car? Why do our kids go to school for 12 years? You probably haven’t thought deeply about these questions. They’re just part of the background of the way our society and culture work, although both of those are fairly recent innovations. Why does “the gray ugly big monster” sound weird and “the big ugly gray monster” sound better in your head? It’s your built-in understanding of the rules of the English language. The Solos people, culture, and languag

New things are both thrilling and nerve-wracking. We like our routines—they are comfortable. But most of the time we have to break out of them in order to make specific progress. Having just arrived back in the USA, we are experiencing a lot of new things. Amaziah in the mission airplane for the first leg of our trip Transition is nothing new for us, but this time it’s a little bit different. We’re not on a regular furlough, where our job would be to connect with people and