On Thursday, February 17, the Ikizu reviewing team met for the first time! They worked on Luke 1-2, and 22-24, since those five chapters are the first ones we did and thus needed the most input and revision. It was almost embarrassing to look back at our early work and see what poor condition it was in, but it was also encouraging to realize how much we have learned since then!
My highlight of the day was talking with one reviewer who is an enthusiastic young church planter. Over lunch, he told me about how he likes preaching in Ikizu and having someone translate his message into Swahili for the sake of non-Ikizu in his audience. He said that although he knows Swahili well and is happy to preach in it, it just doesn't grab his listeners like the Ikizu does. He repeated several times that if the message is in Ikizu, people really listen and care a lot more about what he's saying, so he tries to use Ikizu as much as he can when teaching. The only problem is when he needs to read a passage or verse in his sermon - he then switches to Swahili and tries to translate it on his own as he goes so they will understand what it means. He's really excited that someday he'll be able to preach from the Ikizu New Testament! He laid out a whole plan he has for teaching pastors how to read and teach from the Ikizu Bible and how he's pretty excited for Luke to be printed and dedicated so that people can start using it.
The man in this picture is one of the reviewers. He had other commitments that day, but traveled to come be at the meeting and give his feed back on those chapters of Luke. I wasn't sure how well he could see, even with his super-thick glasses, since he was holding the paper about a foot away from his eyes, but he had quite a few worthwhile comments, so I guess he could see enough to read decently!
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