Undusting my very, very....VERY dusty Portuguese

Google translate does an infinitely better job ob translating English into Portuguese than into Thai. Don't even bother with Thai! I am currently not so much translating as working out how to tell Jesus' parables in Portuguese because I am on a team of Discipling Nations operatives heading up to the OM centre in Menongue, Angola, next week.

sample PowerPoint slide 

It's quite an emotional process, because I originally learned Portuguese as an 18-year-old soldier during a two-year stint with the SADF in the Caprivi Strip of Namibia - time that was profoundly formative for me as a man in many ways. The language, which I learned entirely orally, without any written component at all, carries with it the memories of each bitter lesson and tragic experience, and refreshes the pain of living with regrets.

I always say that I am not a Christian because I think that I am a good man - this is one of the sets of memories that gives context to that.

But God can turn something useful out of the most unpromising piece of scrap wood (a shout out to my friend Mitcham and his lathe!). I am now on a team heading to a rural pastors' dry-season in-service upskilling program. Our main task is to teach mission and to teach others to teach mission, using the Kairos course material. But we have been invited to contribute other snippets of input - a sermon here and there, a trip to visit a church-plant amongst the Kamisekele San clan, and a seminar  on mission in passing with ministers in Windhoek.

And boy! is that Portuguese deeply buried in the dustiest and darkest part of my mental attic. I won't be able to make do without a translator, sadly. But it is interesting to be given the opportunity to dust off this language. I love languages because I love telling the story of Jesus - and there's no telling where a told story will end up taking its hearer!