Jun 2009 Newsletter (pg 1)

Alan’s Team Releases New Fonts!

On April 28, my team finally released a new version of our fonts! The Charis and Doulos fonts provide special letters needed for Bible translation. (See the samples in “Revelation” above.) They support all the alphabets used in the Americas, Europe, Russia, the Pacific, and much of Africa — including many letters that have alternate appearances in different locations. These fonts also support the International Phonetic Alphabet used by Bible translators all over the globe.

Among other things, we modified about 35 letters, added about 40 new letters, and added small capitals for Scripture publishing. We also added a way to flag certain letters that need to be updated. In all, this release has over 1,000 more letterforms than the last one. There were more technical obstacles than usual, and we thank the Lord for enabling us to overcome them.

“You and your entire NRSI team are really appreciated by the Americas Area. … We use in the neighborhood of 650 glyphs and combination of glyphs [letterforms] to represent the many orthographies [alphabets]. It is pretty amazing that we now can do all of this with one font. Praise the Lord.”

“Thank you to all who work so hard on these fonts. They are beautiful and a real service to the world.”

I also released a new version of the TypeTuner program to support these fonts. People in two parts of the world may expect the same letter to look differently. TypeTuner makes it relatively easy to display these different letterforms in programs such as Microsoft Word.

Challenges & Obstacles

Since October, there have been several “interruptions.” My department had to relocate our offices to another building for seven months as our building was renovated. In November, I went to North Carolina for a Wycliffe computer conference. In February, Lynée and I took an unexpected trip to Nashville after her father had emergency surgery. In April, I had two episodes of severe pain in my right shoulder and consequently had my heart checked out thoroughly. (My heart is okay, and the shoulder pain was apparently from a pinched nerve.) Thankfully the Lord brought us through everything and all is well now!

We are grieved by the economic situation in our country and know many people are struggling. We are thankful that our financial support has been adequate. Our committed giving is $350/month low, but occasional gifts over the last 12 months have made up this shortfall. We say a special “Thank You!” to our prayer and financial partners. Please let us know how we can pray for you.

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Jun 2009 Newsletter (pg 2)

Xinulajgsipij Totonac Start Translation

We met Gerry (Ger) and Julie Andersen in 2001. They have worked with the Xinulajgsipij (shi-nu-lahh-SEE-peehh*) Totonac people since 2003. First they had to learn the language, then they had to find people who were willing to be trained in doing translation. Finding willing people took almost as long as the language learning. In the last three months, this translation team has grown to four people.

The Xinulajgsipij Totonac in south central Mexico make a living by growing cash crops on the steep sides of mountains: beans, coffee, and greens for floral arrangements. They also sell sheep and cows. Many men go to big cities to find work, often in construction, when they need more money than the crops provide. There is no established evangelical church, but there are possibly 15 people that show evidence of true faith in Jesus Christ.

We thought you would enjoy hearing how things are going in a language project. This is a recent e-mail from Gerry and Julie:

Mostly we tend to ask for prayer when things are going poorly in some way or another, but today we are asking prayer because things are going “too” well.

For the last weeks, almost every evening Ger and 3 guys (and recently a woman) meet to translate for 4-5 hours. So we are asking you to pray that it would continue, especially for God’s protection of hearts and bodies as they labor at the end of full days.

That is the short of it. Want to hear some juicy details?

• 70% of Luke is drafted and it’s a huge book.
• Juan refuses to close up shop early even if they reach a stopping point but says, “It’s not late yet.”
• Gerry has a chart on the wall where he marks off the drafted verses and Juan gets a kick out of this.
• Roberto has been home from work in the city, and was a great addition for two weeks.
• Toby remains super faithful and “a hard book to read.”
• The other night Julie saw Juan running on the path, tearing his straw hat off and throwing it in the weeds and heading up the hill to get ready to translate. No men are seen running here!! What a sight to see him so eager to get to the work and not lose any time. Remember our prayers for Juan in February when he was feeling discouraged and inadequate?

The men translate from about 5ish until 10pm. Ger studies into the afternoon and then tries to get some time away from the desk to rest his mind before leaving for the office. Pray as well for his stamina. Despite a few hassles, Ger’s been relatively free to prepare each day for the evening. We have thankful hearts for this as well.

* The “hh” represents a sound we don’t have in English—one of the many challenges they face.

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