Family News

God gave our family a wonderful evening to celebrate last week – Dad and Mom’s 50^th wedding anniversary!!  We five siblings, including Paul and our sister-in-law Rhesa, were all together at one place for the very first time ever! Many of our beloved family on Dad’s side and Dad and Mom’s life-long friends around the Brisbane area were there to help us surprise Dad and Mom with this special celebration and to bring together a wonderful meal to share. Our hearts are overflowing with joy at God’s grace to us. Please pray for Dad as his cancer has spread to his lungs and to the area around his liver and intestine. He started back on his chemo last week and straight away started experiencing severe cramping in his feet and his calf muscles at night time and fluctuations in his blood pressure. Please pray for Dad and for all of us as a family as we take things one day at a time in this journey with Dad’s cancer and as we keep trusting our Lord for whatever plans He has.

Jubab is getting into a good routine and balance with his Gr 11 studies and other activities. He is also having a bible study at school every Monday and he is growing heaps in our Lord Jesus and the thing that is characterizing Jubab since he returned from his Teen Missions trip to Hungary is his joy in the Lord and the freedom he is experiencing in his walk.  This is an extract from an update Jubab wrote when he came home last month:  “Pray for me in these areas: Learning to be within God’s will, not turning to the right or the left, but even in the smallest thing walking with Him. I’m giving my all for Jesus, I’m going in with arms high and heart abandoned.”    

This is our prayer too!  Praise God!! 

First Fruits and Behind the Scenes

 First fruits!!  Praise God!!

There is exciting news from one of the newest outreaches called B…….and K……..!!! News from there is filtering in slowly and with not much detail as this work has been dangerous and no one has been able to go to these places yet apart from the two bible teachers who were committed to the ministry who also have relatives in those areas which somewhat protects them. 

We are blessed though to see some of their faces because a few of these first fruits from B…..and K…..visited Lapoc on the weekend of January 21^st.  There are about 10 new believers in the Lord Jesus in these places and 3 of these are young men who have already started training to be Bible teachers!  One married couple are so fervent that they are travelling each week with the Bible teachers to some of the neighbouring little hamlets to help gather people to listen to the Word.

This month, Rodnie (who is heading the ministry there) has been invited by village leaders to speak publicly in front of the whole community of B……which is a real spiritual breakthrough. Please pray for him that he will speak with great confidence in the Lord and with power.

Church leaders from Lapoc recently wrote to us saying that this is one place God is showing them where His spirit is at work opening up many new doors. This really excites us but we are also sad that for now these doors remain quite closed apart from to a few because of the unrest and danger in these areas.

Behind the scenes of God’s stage:

Some of the things God is doing are very obvious and seen by many but there are a lot of things happening behind the stage that few see. And one of the things we don’t often see or take notice of is who cleans the seat we sit on when we meet to worship the Lord or who sweeps the dirt off the floor that our shoes bring in. This is a quote from one of our dear widowed sisters who sweeps the church building in Tumpagon: “atiyù sa trabahu ku ba tagkatuusan ku ha sakop a hu lawa hi Cristo….” She said, “I just have a small job to do but I continually see that I am part of Christ’s body….”  How beautiful! I want my heart to have this attitude continually as well: to recognize that I am serving within the body of Christ – for His glory!

 

This is a new church building just going up this week in a village called Ligiron which is about 3 km away from Cauyunan where we first lived and first proclaimed the Gospel. Quite a few times we visited Ligiron, treated their sick and tried to make inroads for the Gospel but there was very little response. Now, over 2 decades later, there is a growing young church in Ligiron and the believers are helping one another to make this new building for them to meet in! The roof was bought with money they made from the corn mill. The cost of the nails was divided up amongst all the churches. The church in Pinatagan provided the posts, the church in Cauyunan provided all the wood for the framework, and all the elders and church leaders from all the churches are working together on the building alongside the believers from Ligiron. 

And as always, there are the ones back-stage, providing food for the workers, cooking for them, serving tirelessly – rejoicing that they are part of the body of Christ! The ‘plates’ in this picture make us homesick for Cauyunan. These are our favourite sort of picnic plate – a banana leaf!  

March Progress Report On The Tala-Andig Translation Of The NT

What a joy it has been for Debbie and I to be involved in translation for this past 20+ years and even more so as we have been able to be “totally immersed” this year. If the Lord allows, we are on track to complete the “whole” New Testament by the end of 2017. Just over 2½ years from now. What a tremendous joy it will be for each of us to see the Word of God in our Tala-Andig brother and sisters’ hands.

First of all thanks for praying for us this past month. The work load has been mammoth but our dear Saviour has sustained and encouraged us and we are doing just fine. Jubab is also doing just fine at school. It encourages us greatly to see him doing so well.

Our goal at the beginning of February was to translate 1 Thessalonians 5:12 – 1 Timothy 3 (inclusive) during the month of Feb. The Lord enabled us to exceed these goals and we finished up to the end of 1 Timothy 4.

For March we are praying to translate from 1 Timothy 5 – 2 Timothy 4 (inclusive)  --- please pray with us. This may be a bit optimistic as we also have to plan for our trip to the Philippines which we are doing in early April but …. let’s pray that the Lord will give us the wherewithal to get these chapters done.

Progress Report on the Tala-Andig Translation

A HUGE PRAISE POINT:

COL 4 – 1 THESS 5:11 IS COMPLETED!!

Our goal is to complete 30 verses per week, which includes about 10 hours of study, working many hours on skype each week with our translation team, doing a thorough content check to make sure that no information is missing….and many other things. It is heavy-going and we are spending about 8-10 hours in the office each day, but it is very rewarding!

Our translation team in Lapoc are feeling the push too and are working long hours. In the picture above you can see Nanah’s smiling face on one of our skype calls earlier this week. She puts extensive time in with us on skype helping us to translate and she also takes each chapter when we have finished working on it and she checks it with other people in Lapoc to make sure it is readable and easily comprehended. Some days she starts at 7 am and this is a big commitment on her part as she has 4 children to care for and she is also involved in teaching scripture in the schools on a Thursday and in Women’s Ministry as well. It helps her a lot that her husband Danny is supportive and she has a wonderful mother and sister who willingly help her with babysitting when this is needed.

Ryan and Sarah – although new on the translation team – have been spending hours with Nanah, watching how she checks the translation with others and listening to us as well while we translate on skype. Ryan says that he is beginning to feel very interested and excited in the translation! Although he has done 6 years of training in university and in seminary preparing to be a Bible translator, it is only just now starting to feel ‘real’ to him and the Lord is awakening a new passion in his heart for doing translation work. Sarah is so supportive of him and is also putting time into learning translation principles so she can help her husband all she can.

 TRANSLATION PRAYER POINTS

 ·       * Pray for our satellite internet signal in Lapoc to always be strong as sometimes the signal is weak and this can prevent us from accessing the help we need.  

·       * Pray that we will finish 1 Thess 5:12 – 1 Tim 3 by the end of Feb.

·       * Pray for Nanah that she will constantly find all the strength and joy she needs in the Lord.

·       * Pray for Ryan and Sarah as they go through the adjustments of being newlyweds, expecting their first baby and a huge new learning curve as they fit into the translation team.

·       * Pray for us as we are getting less sleep than we would like but it is worth it.  Pray that we will continue to meet our goals of 30 verses completed each week and pray for many hours each day of uninterrupted time so we can work efficiently.

We feel very privileged to have been entrusted with this precious work by our Lord and we are very excited as we see the Tala-Andig scriptures becoming a reality!!!!!!!!!!!!!!