Saturday, April 10, 2010

A Really Super Church Service!

The last Sunday of March, our Junior Church (we call it Super Church) had a special outreach service for friends of our kids. The children were to invite their friends to church and each visitor received a special gift. We had lots of fun learning about forbidden fruit (chocolate candies that the snake said gave you super powers) and Adam and Eve. We also learned that death came into the world because of Adam's disobedience. Then the teacher taught us about another person, Jesus, who obeyed God. Through His obedience, we can have Life.
We had three visitors and one of the workers brought along her boyfriend.

Easter Sunday the choral group I direct sang. They did an excellent job and all their hard work paid off. We sang 'O Sacred Head Now Wounded' acapela and 'Christ the Lord is Risen Today' with a bit of the 'Halleluiah Chorus' thrown in (all in Portuguese of course). We added some Scripture reading about Jesus' death and resurrection. The whole service was very moving.

I have been keeping busy lately (which is one reason I have not been bloging a lot). I am in the middle of translating 'Passion and Purity' by Elizabeth Elliot. This has been a good project not only because I think it will be of great use here but also because it is teaching me as I translate. Both spiritually and linguistically. It is stretching my language and I think I should have the translations for overwhelm tatooed on my forehead, maybe then I would remember them. The challenge is there is more than one word you can use for overwhelm in Portuguese and I have to discern which would best express the author's meaning and I look them up every time. Another challenge is when you speak another language it is a wholly different mentality. Much of a person's culture is wrapped up in their language. For example, the American dialect of the English language uses a lot of scientific or technical words that the Portuguese simply do not use. Trying to convey the meaning without translating directly is sometimes mind bending. It does keep your mind sharp and on it's toes, however. I like the challenge of finding just the right word to use for translation. I even find myself translating TV shows and other books in English as well as people who speak English around me. Oh well, I guess that is the price to pay for my work.

That is all I have for now, but I will try to keep you more up to date on what is going on over here.

2 comments:

Shabbeer Ahmed said...
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Anonymous said...

I really enjoyed Elisabeth Elliot. I even asked my boyfriend to read it; he is now my husband :)


P.S. I came by via some blogs but I can't remember which ones!