ON MISSIONARIES: A PERSONAL VIEW (7)

I pause to comment that Wycliffe and SIL have been (and, to some extent, still are) different from traditional missionary agencies in one particular manner (among many). They have encouraged their members to do advanced degrees, often at secular universities, like I had done at Cornell. There were scores of PhDs in our ranks, at one time well over two hundred. Scholarly work is the basis for excellent translations, not so much by studying theology, but by promoting linguistic and cultural analysis. It was the right direction for me. Dr Eugene Nida (at one time a leading scholar of the American Bible Society) remarked that, in his examination of many translations, the biggest mistakes were a lack of knowledge of the language and culture, rather than with Greek exegesis.

We decided to study in the western area of Kewa because we had already done work in East Kewa, and another team had taken over. It was a big step of faith on our part, although I had briefly visited the area, some 45 miles distant from our first stay. But missionaries are supposed to demonstrate faith, and we were trying!

From the dialect study I had done on Kewa (which turned into chapter 8 of my PhD dissertation), I knew that West Kewa was very different from East Kewa and that both would need translations. I had gathered information and knew something about West Kewa.

We were invited to settle in a West Kewa hamlet called Usa (no, we did not name it), with about 400 residents of several sub-clans.

The hamlet was 8 miles from the Lutheran mission station at Wabi, where Norm and Bernie Imbrock and their four children lived. Norm was a student of Kewa (and other languages) and had invited us to work in his area. It was providential because the two largest missions in the Kewa area were Lutheran and Roman Catholic. We developed strong friendships with each. I had been saved in a fundamental church that, it seemed to me, almost abhorred liturgy and Catholics (not necessarily in that order) and here we were, close friends with both.

We had lived in the hamlet of Muli in East Kewa over a period of 5 years in two very small houses. I decided that we would build a larger house in Usa and solicited the help of an SIL builder. When Joice saw the house she said, “This is a big house,” comparing it to her previous ones in Muli. We had a kitchen-living room, three bedrooms, two small studies, a shower and a small overhead loft for Kirk and Karol to enjoy. Most of the roof was still grass, but I installed enough corrugated iron on part of the roof so that we could get run-off from the rain into a small tank and have drinking water. The walls were of a woven kind of cane, like bamboo but smaller, and I had purchased some pit-sawn flooring for the kitchen and living room area. We had a front and back door and some “windows,” made of a plastic screen mesh.

The house was built on hardwood “stumps,” which were about two feet off the ground and grounded firmly, although the house moved during earthquakes.

One thing that Joice did not like at all was having to light the pressure lantern when I was away. It required some dexterity and faith, because the fuel was kerosene and the “generator” had to be preheated with alcohol. The lamp had a small pump that forced pressure to feed the kerosene up the generator to the mantel. Ours was a Petromax HK300 pressured lantern with 500 candlepower. It was noisy, so we hung it high.

Later, I purchased a small generator so that we could have night classes and charge our two-way radio battery and our computers. We were still missionaries, but it almost seemed like we were living in luxury. (However, our toilet was still an “outhouse.”)

We were excited and blessed to have that small generator and night lights. We now also had a “road” from the Kagua River (three miles away) to the Lutheran Mission Station. As part of my research, the university (ANU) gave me money to purchase a small 90cc Honda trailbike.

We lived in the village of Usa during the whole of 1968. I was able to finish my research and begin writing my dissertation. At the same time, I began some Bible translation in the West Kewa language. We finished the Gospel of Mark and mimeographed it for trail reading with Kewa men who came regularly to help me.

We spent some of the next year back in Canberra. While there, I submitted my dissertation, called “A Grammar and Dialect Study of Kewa, New Guinea,” which was typed by Joice. Its 316 pages included a 72 page previously published chapter on the dialects of Kewa. My oral defense was scheduled for early 1969 at the University of Papua New Guinea, where two examiners (Dr Pawley and Dr Bulmer from the University of Aukland, NZ) were visiting. My third examiner (Dr McKaughan) was from the University of Hawaii.

I had been preparing for the exam for almost three years!

During the examination, Joice told me that she wheeled Karol around parts of Port Moresby, praying for me continuously. I passed and we were invited to a celebration that night with several other academic staff.

We were a witness to the grace of God and his leading in our lives. However, there were a lot of unexpected roads ahead of us.

Karl Franklin