The Apostle Peter Speaks on Liposucton

Rini with baby Adrian

One of the passages I taped with Lini this week was I Peter 3 where
Peter is talking about women -- that our beauty shouldn't come from
braiding the hair, wearing gold jewelry or fine clothes, but should
come from within. As we were going over that in the Palawano
language, I couldn't help but think of an email I had received from a
friend back in the U.S. just the day before. She is working as a
nurse in a plastic surgeon's office. She said in the mornings they
take care of old people -- removing skin cancers and the like. But
the afternoons are for cosmetic surgery and Botox for 'high
maintenance people' as she put it. I thought of all the money being
spent in the cities of the world tucking and shaping and zapping and
lifting and 'enhancing'. How would I Peter read if it was written
today, I wonder? I didn't even try to explain to Lini about what I
was thinking. How could a Palawano, who is just trying to get enough
food grown for her family to eat understand about people spending
thousands of dollars to make themselves look like they are starving?

Bill has zoomed ahead and is drafting Luke now, and my taping is
lagging behind, so Lini and Rini worked out a schedule. Lini will
come two days a week and Rini will come two days a week. So Rini came
back to work this week, with her six-week old baby boy tucked up
against her chest in a cloth sling over her shoulder. While we taped
I Peter, he slept and nursed. I wasn't sure how it would go, but it
went fine. I don't know how long he will stay this quiet. We only
work for two hours. Longer than that and Rini's ability to remember
the passages I'm reading and tell them back to me in her own words
seems to fade. She begins to need a lot more prompting, and then I
don't think the renderings have as natural a feel to them.

So now we are moving ahead. When I'm not doing taping, I'm still
working on the Palawano language to improve my vocabulary and
fluency. We are also collecting Palawano traditional oral stories,
getting them recorded and transcribed and translated into English to
preserve them.