We wish for each of you a very blessed Christmas as together we reflect on the wonderful Truth that God did indeed send His beloved Son to this earth, to be born as a babe in Bethlehem, to demonstrate by His life God’s message of love and grace and in God’s perfect time to go to the Cross to pay the penalty for the sin that separated us from Him. We are eternally grateful for the message of Peace and Hope that came to us that night in Bethlehem so long ago. We also encourage you as you look forward with confidence and hope to 2016! From our vantage point as sojourners on this earth, there certainly doesn’t look like much to rejoice about and in truth, our world and our country are in a real mess but how reassuring to know our confidence is in the ONE WHO KNOWS THE BEGINNING FROM THE END! Praise God for His presence and peace that only He gives!
This has been an interesting year for us – probably the first full year spent in the US in a long time! A proposed trip to the Philippines for late summer 2015 was postponed because our translation team in the Philippines was extra busy with a load of translation responsibilities, both in further training and consultant checking other Philippine language translation projects. So the work that needed to be done on the Kalanguya translation was delayed in getting it ready for Bob’s final check. But Bob has been doing preliminary checking on some of the Old Testament books while here in the US which will save us a lot of time once we can sit down with our translation teams. We’re thankful for the year’s rest from travel and the opportunity to visit a few of our supporting churches this past October! And we PROMISE – we will get to the rest of our faithful supporters in the various churches this coming Fall!
SO……OUR NEXT TRIP TO THE PHILIPPINES IS ON THE BOOKS! We will be leaving the USA on Jan. 26th and Lord willing, returning on May 19th. We ask for your prayers as we make the long trip halfway around the world…..again, hopefully recover quickly from the 12 hour time gap on our body clocks, commonly called “jet lag”, greet our missionary friends and our Kalanguya brothers and sisters in Christ in the Philippines and then quickly dig into the translation consultant checks of the four Old Testament books yet to be completed before we can say that the whole Bible has been translated and consultant checked in the Kalanguya language! One of those books though happens to be the 150 chapters of Psalms! We are thinking that because of its length and difficult poetic style, we may not be able to complete that book on this trip. Just trying to be being realistic here!
We are grateful for the Kalanguya and Ibaloi Tribal Translation Teams who continue their work on the Kalanguya and Ibaloi Old Testament translations. Pray for them in these coming weeks as they prepare their translations for checking and as we sit down together to prayerfully and thoughtfully check the translations for accuracy, clarity, naturalness and acceptibility. Ask the Lord to give us wisdom, insight and humility as we do this work to see the Bible translations completed and in use in the tribal churches!
THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT, YOUR PRAYERS, YOUR PART IN OUR MINISTRY! THANK YOU for the extra Christmas gifts and greetings, the birthday and anniversary cards! As the world around us continues to deteriorate and we see signs that the Lord’s Coming may not be that far away, let us all continue to be faithful to follow God’s Word, looking forward to that Second Coming even as we celebrate His First Coming as a Babe in a manger.