First of all, a very Wonderful and Happy (albeit belated!) Easter to you all! It is never too late to celebrate the Resurrection, right? We trust you had a wonderful weekend with friends and family rejoicing in our Resurrected Lord! This was a very special Easter for our family. As the children are getting older, we are finding our fellowship with them growing as well. Good Friday found our family enjoying a sweet and meaningful time of communion together, complete with matzah bread! Saturday we had a wonderful time with our mission team over a delicious brunch followed by a time of worship and praise. Sunday was a TREAT as we sat back and watched one of our Dinangat brothers teach about how the death of the Lord freed us from serving sin, and now because of His Life we are joined with Him, ‘in order that we may bear fruit for God.’ (Rom. 7:4) That night we got together with the church again after dark and sang songs for 2 hours by flashlight, bouncing back and forth between English songs that our team played and sang (with the Dinangat players following along on their guitars) and then Dinangat songs that we all sang, and tried to play, as well. Needless to say, our cup is full!
Translation Update: We are so thankful for such a refreshing weekend, and when Monday hit, we were back at it again! Please continue to pray for the Dinangat translation. We now have 2 of us working on it full time, another working almost full time doing checks, 2 women also doing checks, and about 10 Dinangat helpers that keep our language straight, 🙂 and yet at this point we have around 35% of the New Testament in various stages of completion. This can be discouraging sometimes, yet we are thankful to have so many involved in making sure that this is an accurate, meaning-based translation that effectively communicates cross culturally. No easy task! It is painstakingly tedious, but we would have it no other way to make sure we are producing a translation that is FAITHFUL. Yet we greatly feel the pressure of the people here who are desperate for His Word, who read the translated portions over and over and over again, eagerly waiting each new completed verse. Please pray for each of us involved!
Outreach Update: With one quick slash from the large bush machete, the branch that was once being fed by the life giving sap from the tree was now separated, with no hope of being restored. Although it still looked alive – the leaves still lush and green, the branch still pliable — in truth the branch was dead, because of its separation from the tree. To illustrate the separation that happened when Adam and Eve sinned by eating the fruit, the Dinangat Bible teachers cut a branch off a nearby tree and hung it in the teaching area. When the people of the village B see this branch they are reminded that they too are cut off from a holy and righteous God because of their sin. This visual illustration was done a month ago, but even now as the branch still hangs, different ones are coming to the Bible teachers and telling them that they know they are in big trouble because of their separation from God. The leaves are dying and falling off, the once flexible branch is now becoming stiff and rigid. The death of that branch is a very tangible reminder of how they stand in relation to God – separated. An older man from village B, Mundengke, came to one of the Bible teachers named Jaspa and said, “I am just like that branch. Because of my sin I have been ‘cut off’ from God. You, Jaspa, say that there is a promised deliverer. Can you ask him to somehow join me back to God?” Excited, Jaspa told him that this is what the teaching is all about and that as we continue to teach, he will learn about the Kidaak Aamna (the saving man) and learn how to be saved and joined back to God. Please keep the dear ones of village B in your hearts and prayers, that through these stories and later, the teaching of the Savior, they will be drawn to our loving God and believe! Pray, too, that this time of evangelism for the Bible teachers of the first two villages will strengthen their dependency on the Lord.