We are praising God for a new partner. She is not from the US or from New Zealand or from Australia or from Canada or from Europe, but she is from right here in our village.
Her name is Manilyn. She is in her early twenties and is the older sister of the girl who recently died not long after childbirth. What a blessing Manilyn has been to us! So far she has made covers for hundreds of Bible lesson books. She cuts up colored manila folders (different color for lessons for each book of the NT) and tapes the covers with very wide cellophane tape to protect them. Then she cuts the printed or xeroxed 8.5×13 sheets for each book in half using a heavy duty paper cutter. She then puts the pages of a book between its covers and drills 1/8″ holes 1/2″ apart along the binding side using a drill press. Then she sews the books (sometimes has another girl helping her with this) using nylon twine. She has completed all 400 books that we have printed or had xeroxed so far. That is about 1/5 of the total of what we plan to do.
She also learned to type using an English typing tutorial. She is an excellent typist and sometimes we have that kind of work for her. She also prints on an inkjet printer sets of colored drawings we have for our teaching program. Then she works with a crew laminating them – she is the working foreman. She has printed 15 copies of each set of drawings so far – about 2000 drawings. However, laminating them has come to a stand still as our laminator has died.
Manilyn is very efficient and does very good work. If she runs out of something to do then while waiting for Carol to show her the next job she’ll sweep the floor or burn papers or cut up scrap paper for note paper all without being asked to do it.
She went to a nearby village school for 3 grades, but because reading is taught by writing Tagalog and English words on a blackboard she didn’t learn to read. But, later she learned to read through our literacy program which teaches to read Manubu. She has become one of our best proofreaders.
We, of course, pay her for her labor, but she is not just working to make money but works as unto the Lord.
She is a quiet girl with a sunny personality – a joy and a blessing from the Lord. Please THANK the Lord for her and PRAY for her. She married a young man against the advice of church leadership. They weren’t sure that he is a believer or if he just listened to the evangelistic phases of the teaching to “get the girl.” They wanted to observe him for awhile. She has a daughter and son, but her husband is seldom around. He is usually gone for many months at a time and she doesn’t know where he is or what he is doing. He comes back for maybe a few days and then he’s gone again.
Please also PRAY for the farms of the Manubu’ here in our area. Men spent weeks preparing mountainside land for planting corn and rice. However, they say that most of their corn recently planted has not even germinated because it was eaten by termites in the soil. They say that for many of their rice fields the seed has dried out and died because of a long drought we are experiencing.
Please PRAY for Carol as she spends hours and hours listening to and editing recordings of our Manubu New Testament being done by Manubu’ believers.
And PRAY for Gene and Pulding as they work on Exodus chapters covering the making of the Tabernacle and all that goes into it and relates to it. It is quite a challenge to find the right words to express some very complicated things which are foreign to the Manubu’ culture. And more often than not commentaries don’t agree on what things mean.
And PRAISE the Lord with us that with the help of our NTM supply buyer in Manila we have just today after months without success been able to purchase test strips for Gene’s blood coagulation meter directly from the Roche company in Manila. Thanks for praying.