Praise God, the printing of the Simbari Bible is now complete! We have received copies of the finished Bibles and inspected them. They are very high quality and they turned out even better than we thought they would. The main shipment for Papua New Guinea will depart the Netherlands in about a week and should arrive in PNG sometime in August. Now that we know the shipping details, we can begin planning the Bible dedication and our travel to PNG. Here is a little video clip of the Simbari Bibles at the end of production.
Passports: In preparation for our upcoming travel to PNG our passports needed renewed. They were set to expire soon and travel is not allowed with 6 months or less left on the passport. So, we applied for the renewals a couple months ago and just received the new passports. Thankfully, it went quicker than expected and once we get visas we’ll be ready for take-off!
Ruth Exegetical Draft Complete: This printing of the Simbari Bible includes the whole New Testament and an additional 3000 verses of Old Testament portions that we use for teaching through the Creation to Christ curriculum. There are other OT portions that we plan to translate for the Simbari Church. David has already drafted the remaining portions of Genesis and yesterday he completed the exegetical draft of the book of Ruth. With the first part of the process done, during our next trip to PNG we will be able to do further work on these drafts with Simbari translation helpers. David will now start working on some more church training materials in preparation for our upcoming time in PNG.
Thank you for your partnership in bringing the words and hope of Jesus to the Simbari people,
David and Shari