Translating: what a workout!

Cindy and I got a real workout with translation today. We have been translating at the CEUM Pastors’ Conference in Gbado-Lite. Today Cindy translated Gary Gadini’s last message on Jonah and mission from English to Lingala.

Cindy translating for Gary Gadini

Gary had a great message, but there were some hard concepts to translate and she did well. Even got a bit more animated as you can see in the photo. Her session lasted about an hour.

Pete translating

Following that I translated Reuben Ezemadu’s message on tribal conflicts within the church. Again it was English to Lingala. Reuben looked at the origins of tribes and different languages going back to Genesis 11. He ended up using several different scriptures. It was a workout because he is also an evangelist and once he got going he was not going to slow down! I had a couple people comment that they had never seen me so animated, even saying that “Peter was becoming an African today.” Guess I was a bit out of character. 🙂

Reuben & Pete working together to make a point

It was actually fun to follow his actions and movements. FYI: Reuben is from Nigeria, the head of the Nigerian Evangelical Missions Association (NEMA) and the coordinator for the Movement of African National Initiatives (MANI).

Add to the above, in the afternoon I translated another session with Reuben. This time he talked about the dangers of intellectualism and higher education in the church. This was into French for the pastors who were university & seminary graduates. It was tough at times because of the concepts he used and because I hadn’t spoken that much French for quite a while. I’m grateful for God’s grace through this all.