Newsletter
October-December 2010
 Sergey
is one of our most experienced exegetical advisors. He has
been involved in Bible translation into Altai, Tuvin, Buryat
and Shor. For the past two years he has been living in Kamchatka
and working on 'Stories about Jesus' in the Koryak language,
spoken by about 9,000 people. After his return from the
Far East he shared some of his experiences:
“Life on Kamchatka is very hard”, he said.
“The climate is extremely severe, food and clothes are very
expensive and there are hardly any roads, only paths. There
is very little work. The villages are becoming deserted,
people are gathering in Palana, the district town. Men,
women and children are drinking heavily. People are destroying
themselves with vodka. In their mind alcohol is their medicine,
their food, their vitamins, their all.
“The spiritual situation is also very heavy.
Christians who have come to bring the Good news to the Koryaks
often tried to impose their own culture on them, and then
they do not want to listen. You have to live with them and
show that you love them, prove that you are a Christian,
then they will believe you and listen to you. I went fishing
with them, I was digging in the garden with them, invited
them to my house, and little by little they began to trust
me.
“I am convinced that the life and culture
of the Koryaks can be restored only through their language”,
Sergey continued. “Photos, costumes, music and folklore
collected in museums are dead things. The language is alive,
through the language the Koryaks can express their conception
of the world in their own unique way, which is different
from ours, because even if they have partly forgotten their
language, they still remain Koryaks who do not think in
the same way as we do.
“When I talked to educated Koryaks who
are dealing professionally with their language I appealed
to them: 'Take care of your Koryak words, it is your language,
your future. You can preserve your culture only through
your language, as nowadays nobody wants to live in a chum
(tent), nobody wants to wear national clothes of reindeer
fur, nobody wants to eat national food (raw fish with berries
and herbs).'
“We can bring spiritual life to the Koryaks
through the Word. Even if many Koryaks have lost the knowledge
of their language, it is still the key to their reception
of the message. At a conference I began my speech with a
greeting in Koryak, and the Koryaks, who practically didn't
know their language, received me as their own – and I only
said two words in their language.
“Some Christian Koryaks participated in
a dog sledge race from Petropavlovsk to the far north of
the peninsula. I gave them all the copies we had of Luke's
Gospel, which they distributed in all the villages they
visited on the way.”
Luke's Gospel with audio-cassettes was
published in 2005 and Stories about Jesus will be printed
next year. We would like to translate other Scripture portions
into Koryak, and Sergey is willing to go back to Kamchatka.
Please support this project with your prayers and gifts!
Thank
you for supporting Bible translation in Russia and the CIS
also
in 2010!
for
donations from USA
Tax
deductible gifts for IBT Russia/CIS can be made payable
to:
God's Word for the Nations
On behalf of IBT-Russia/CIS
PO
Box 1259
Rolla,
MO 65402
U.S.A.
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