HUGGINS: The other difficulty to overcome was something I mentioned earlier when I
mentioned that intern that asked me for a Romans [book in the New Testament]. He had finished
seminary training. He was there to tran...to...he was assigned on the island where I am for a
whole year as an intern to work in the church with the Kagayanan pastor teaching and preaching.
And the pastor brought him to the house one day, introduced him, "Ernesto is here to be an intern
for a year, and here he is." [laughs] He just kind of left. He left this guy there and walked away.
And then Ernesto, this intern, who is not Kagayanan, he wanted to know who I was and why I
was there, and so explained to him what I am doing and I showed him some of the Scripture
portions we have in Kagayanan and showed him the dictionary, and he was just looking puzzled.
He said...he said, "You are an American and you speak English." He said, "Why are you here
translating the Bible into this little language here?" He said, "Why don't you translate it into
English?"
Well, I though about that. I said, "Well, first of all, if they understood English, I
wouldn't have anything to translate. I would just give them one of the English versions of the
Bible. Then I could go home. And then I said, "Secondly," and I showed him in Acts chapter
two about the day of Pentecost and how God did that miracle and [pauses]...and God wanted to
reach those people with that good news of Jesus Christ and He wanted it to be in their own
language, so that it wouldn't be a shadow of a doubt that they understood what they were hearing.
God could have done it the other way around, but He didn't. So, that's why we're translating,
'cause God said it's okay, you know, but to give people the Scriptures, His word, in their own
language. And when this young...when I finished, this young man, he says to me, "You mean to
tell me they don't understand English here?" I said, "No." He said, "Well, I just finished
seminary and my training was all in English and I came here ready to teach and preach in
English. Well, if they don't understand English, what am I going to do?" So I said, "You just
use your own language, Ilongo." They understand...they don't understand that fully, but they
understand that a lot better than English. And he said, "You mean to tell me I can use my own
language in the church?" He was so excited. I said, "Yes." And he said, "Oh, I'm so glad." He
said, "You know, my English is not all that good, anyway." I thought his English was pretty
good, but he felt it would be a struggle to teach and preach in English, and I said, "Well, the
average person in the church hasn't finished sixth grade, and you want to teach and preach in
English, and you're having a hard time with English. They're going to have a harder time." But
anyway, that young man...we have a phrase book in four languages and so he said, "Well, it's
going to take me a long time to learn Kagayanan, you know." And I said, "Use the trade
language," but I gave him the phrase book which is in his language, English, Kagayanan and the
national language, to help him get started and make it...saying some simple phrases and before
coming home for furlough this time I did get to hear Ernesto preach his first sermon in
Kagayanan, and he's learning the language. But now that told me of another problem, because I
said, "This is just one little isolated place in the Philippines and [laughs]...and I just happened to
run into Ernesto, and I'm thinking "Here we are translating and...and it's not our job to...to teach
people to use the Scriptures. That's the churches' job. And we don't do church planting. We
don't do Bible studies traditionally. And we're going to leave someday and we're going to leave
the Scriptures here and it's people like Ernesto who will come out of the seminaries and be
assigned to places like where I am, and they have to be the ones to learn the language and run
with the Scriptures. Well, they're not going to do it, most of the time, you know, because that
would be beneath them in some instances and....
And again, they feel like they're doing a service
by preaching in this language, 'cause they...the same way they view reading in terms if you want
to learn the language you just pick up that book and start saying those words over and over. They
feel the same thing about preaching. If you stand before someone and preach in a foreign
language, eventually they will learn how to speak that language, and that does not happen.
And...and I thought, "Oh man, we're here working for nothing, because people like Ernesto will
come out of the seminaries and they will use English." So I just said a prayer and I said, "God, it
looks like we've got to reach the seminary students with...and giving them a burden to using the
Scriptures and learning the language." Well, you know, I got an answer to that prayer. About
three weeks later, I got a letter from my boss, my supervisor, saying he had just met a director of
an OMF [Overseas Missionary Fellowship] school in the southern Philippines. It's a...it's a
seminary for full-time pastors who have their undergraduate degrees. And he wanted it to be a
requirement to know something about Bible translation so that they will have a burden to learn
the language and use vernacular Scriptures. And my boss was telling me that this director asked
him if one of his Wycliffe people could come to the seminary to teach a Bible translations...just a
short two-week module course, and it would be required for an M.A. [laughs] And my boss was
asking me if I would like that. [laughs] And I know that if I had not had what...dealt with
Ernesto and what happened there, if I hadn't been a part of that and he asked me to go teach in the
seminary, I know I would have said no. I would say, "I'm too busy. I don't want to take two
weeks out to go down there and do this and put my work...what I'm doing on hold, and I'm not
even interested [laughs] in that kind of work at all." So...but after this had happened, I said...I
answered my boss, "You bet. I'd like to go to the seminary and teach Bible translation principles
there, and I wish I had time to tell you all that's...has happened. Out of the eleven people that
have finished that course, nine of them have finished...nine of them are permanently assigned to
places where Wycliffe either has a translation project going on or where the Scripture is
completed.
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