In 2002, I received an email from a man living in Mexico City asking if I would be interested in having my weekly children's sermons translated into Spanish. I was thrilled by his offer. The plan was that I would send sermons to him by email and he would translate them and send them back. I sent him two sermons to get us started and he translated them and sent them back to me. I then began sending him my weekly sermons, but I never received another translation back from him.
Since I had set up a Spanish page on the web site, I didn't want to let it die, so I began using an online language translator called Babelfish. That worked pretty well, or at least I thought it did, until I wrote a sermon entitled "Kids Pay Taxes Too." The online translator rendered the word "kids" as "cabritos." If you know Spanish, you know that a cabrito is a young goat!
"I don't know who is translating your sermons," a woman wrote, "but it is obvious that they don't know Spanish! You need help."
"Are you volunteering to help me?" I responded.
"Yes, I will help you" she answered.
"The rest," as they say, "is history." Zulma M. Corchado de Gavalda has been translating our lessons into Spanish every week since October 2002. Several years ago Zulma suggested that we start a sermon of the week mailing list in Spanish like we offer in English. There are now over 13,000 subscribers receiving our weekly Spanish sermons by email each week.
Happy 10th Anniversary, Zulma. Words can never adequately express my gratitude to you for the service you provide to the Sermons4Kids ministry, but I have no doubt that one day you will hear our Lord say, "Well done, Zulma, thou good and faithful servant."
Oh, by the way, would you please translate this post into Spanish for me? I would like to send it to our Spanish mailing list.
