Nuestro Locura

My chosen title for this blog entry translates as, "Our Madness," which really is a good title for the last several weeks.

During the last week of June, a group of 6 arrived from Holland to represent Woord & Daad - CDA's largest donor, for a week long conference with their partner organizations from Latin/South America. In addition to CDA, there were also two organizations from Nicaragua and a group from Guatemala who also came to participate in the Partner's Conference. Thankfully, the Dutch spoke English (since I don't speak a word of Dutch), but they didn't speak Spanish. Of the partner organizations who attended there were two or three of the 20 something Spanish-speaking participants who spoke English, but for the most part, the Dutch donors could not directly communicate with any of the Spanish participants. As you can imagine, at an annual strategic planning and evaluation conference, this created quite a problem.

The solution was simultaneous translation. For those of you unfamiliar with this, I'll share a bit about how it works. Everyone (those few who were bilingual aside) wears a headset, and whoever is talking uses a microphone. In the back of the room, is a little wooden cabin with windows and just enough space inside for two chairs and a tiny tiny desk sort of thing - we called it the box. Two people sit in this tiny box wearing special headsets with boom microphones and hope that their companion brushed their teeth that morning. One is responsible for translating English to Spanish, and the other for translating Spanish to English.

In normal translation, one person says a sentence or complete idea and then waits for the translator to repeat what he or she has said. in simultaneous translation, the speaker just talks normally, and the translator, sitting in the box, tries to frantically communicate the same thoughts at nearly the same time to all those listening with the headphones. And the two people in the box switch back and forth depending on who is talking. You can imagine that group discussions and question/answer sessions are particularly "exciting."

Well, my role was to be one of the Spanish to English translators - there were two of us and we switched days. On the first day, after six straight hours in the box, interrupted only by coffee breaks and lunch, I thought I was going to die. Me and the other translator - Pastor Luis who was doing English to Spanish, both looked like victims of a police beating, slouched in our chairs, barely able to think let alone talk. After that first day we tried to limit the numbers of hours to about 4 a day. We later found out that at the UN they swap out every 30 minutes to prevent exhaustion. Oh well. Now we know. Oh, and tucked into that week were also our 3rd Anniversary and my 27th birthday.

So that was the first week. The second week of madness was a little easier in that the conference was over, and thankfully so was the simultaneous translation, although normal translation continued at a brisk pace. I escorted the Dutch team to all of the CDA's projects as they conducted their annual inspection and review of our projects translating both into and out of Spanish - but at least in this kind of translation I could stop to clarify if I didn't understand a word, or ask someone to repeat an idea that was unclear. After touring Bogota for two long days, early Wednesday morning of last week we flew to Cartagena on the coast for a marathon 18 hour day of visiting all the projects there, before flying back to Bogota that night in a dazed state of exhaustion once again.

Thankfully, Thursday and Friday of last week were "free" days in that I didn't have to come into the office, which gave me time to write my talk that I needed to give on Saturday. About two months ago, I agreed to be a guest speaker at a Christian youth conference that was held this last Saturday at a local church. The theme was on Dating and so with the use of a translator (I didn't have time to prepare my talk in Spanish) I spoke to an audience of 300 something on a Biblical perspective on dating and some of my own personal experiences, weaving the story of Jessie's and my relationship in and out of the talk, including some of the things we did right and some that we didn't. Obviously, I was pretty nervous, and still exhausted and stressed, but God was faithful, and the talk went well. I just learned that the conference organizers have been getting a lot of good feedback, so I was pleased that despite my weakness, my fears, and my sense of ill-preparedness, God was able to impact lives.

Well, if you made managed to read this far, I'm impressed. I hope this gives you a little insight into our life here in Colombia. Thankfully, it is not always this crazy. Thank you for keeping us in your prayers - we need them.

Oh, and Jessie is dealing with a growing number of girls who have Chicken Pox at the Girl's Home. I'll write more later.

Jim