Steve and Gerdine Stanley and Philip and Natalie Hansen who serve in Papua New Guinea are pleased with the way the first Kovol literacy class is progressing. They are 3/4 of the way through and it will finish this month. They haven’t run into any serious issues with the material that they produced, but the last part of the programme contains Kovol language that they are not so sure about. The team are interested to see how that goes. So far the students have chosen to write following the conventions the team have picked.
Pray as they move into this stage that the students would have the awareness to put their fingers on anything that doesn’t work and feel the confidence to speak up and suggest corrections.
The team want to get to the place where the students see their missionaries’ limitations and correctly regard themselves as the experts regarding their own language.
This will require confidence on the Kovol community’s part and openness and humility on the team, so please pray!
With literacy finishing soon a priority has been to prepare the post literacy programme ready for printing. The post literacy programme
provides structured reading and writing practise with levels graded from one to seven. The programme will be optional, but the team hope to see all the students take it up and continue to improve their literacy skills.
Following the post literacy course graduates will get access to a library of Kovol language books. As a team they still need to figure out what that looks like in practise. They have 18 or so titles ready to print and they can also provide some Tok Pisin materials. Pray for the students to be motivated and diligent