Please be PRAYING for Piduy and Mutsu. They will be leaving this weekend to drive the Bible teacher motorcycle nearly 200 miles to where Mahan and Arcisa are living and planning to evangelize. Because of road conditions and the motorcycle being only 4 speed, it will probably take them up to 16 hours to make the trip. The bike is well worn having been used it’s whole life on the rough, mud-hole road we live on. So, PRAY for safety as they travel, that the bike won’t break down, and for endurance for Piduy as he drives.
In our last update we reported that the Lord had provided Mahan with a job as a security guard. Since then he has been given a new job by the same company helping to load ore from a barge to a ship. It is a two hour walk to work each day and 2 hours again to return home as there is no public transportation. Because of the hours walking and working and the lack of public transportation he hasn’t been able to do much as far as checking out the language in the villages where there is potential to start teaching God’s Word. That is why the Bible teacher motorcycle is being taken to him. We praise the Lord that it has become available for him.
Because of in-laws living in a couple of the potential villages for teaching Mahan does know that there are many differences in vocabulary and possibly grammar between the Manubu’ here in Mahan’s home area and the Manubu’ language in those potential villages to teach in. But, again, because of working everyday and lack of transportation he hasn’t been able to spend time in those villages to study the language. So he has asked for help. Piduy and Mutsu plan to spend about 10 days in those villages to begin to find out the extent of the language differences and to start a list of those differences. Before Mahan can start teaching the evangelistic phase of the teaching program it will need to be revised to fit the language of that area. Perhaps it won’t be too big of a job because when Bible teachers did an initial survey of the area they were able to communicate with the people and felt that the language difference wasn’t too great. The fly in the ointment is that it is now known that sometimes there are words that are the same, but with opposite meanings!
So, please PRAY that Piduy and Mutsu will be able to make good progress in this first step in language comparison, and that it will work out that Mahan will soon be able to begin teaching God’s Word to the unsaved in that area. Praise the Lord that Piduy and Mutsu are willing to make the long trip to take the bike to Mahan and help with language comparison.
Please also PRAY for rain to flood the rivers. Mahan, and others here also, have logs ready to be floated down the river to log buyers. In Mahan’s case, and some others too, these logs will go towards paying debts to the log buyers that were incurred when many logs just floated away and were lost during the typhoon a few months ago. We haven’t had enough rain in weeks to flood the rivers and there is no rain in sight. Before Mahan relocated, he and Pulding got permission from Mahan’s log buyer for Pulding to represent him in getting the logs to the buyer. We praise the Lord that Pulding has been willing to take care of Mahan’s logs even though it has turned out to be quite a burden for him as so many weeks have gone by without the river flooding.