Wishing you a joyous Christmas today!!

"This is how God showed His love among us: He sent His one and only Son into the world that we might live through Him." 1 John 4:9

We send you our warmest wishes for God's blessings and for a very blessed Christmas and New Year! May you have a joyous celebration of our Lord's birth!

Our family is currently in New Zealand enjoying a wonderfully relaxing break as we celebrate Deb's 50th birthday, the huge year God has given us on the translation work and also the end of a big year for Jubab in school. 

We are VERY proud of Jubab as he won the Rueben F. Scarf award at school which is a big honour, and he also came first in two subjects: English Extension 1 and English Advanced! Tears came to our eyes as we watched our son receiving his award. God has blessed us greatly!

Later on this month we will be getting together at Dad and Mom's together with Deb's brother and sister and their families. It will be the first time that we will all be together with all our children - ever! So we are looking forward VERY much to this special time with Dad and Mom.

 Here's a funny little Christmas 'selfie' of ourselves taken a couple of days ago under a beautiful NZ tree. J 

Paul and Deb are just learning how to do 'selfies' so we're not very good at it (Jubab asked me why I was holding the phone down so low) but this comes with our smiles, our love and Christmas blessings!   

XOXOXOXOXOXO

Newly translated books of the New Testament being taught in Lapoc each week!

Every Sunday afternoon, one of our co-translators, Ryan (standing in the yellow smiley shirt), teaches the newly translated scriptures that we've been working on to a group of elders and bible teachers.  They have some wonderful discussions and love studying these newly translated scriptures that they've never had before in their own language. Sometimes they study all afternoon and into the night. They can sometimes have other church leaders arrive from places up to 2 or 3 hours away to join them.

There is great benefit from these studies that Ryan is leading.  One is that Ryan can pass on the knowledge and understanding of the scriptures that he is gaining from the translation work while it is fresh on his mind and these church leaders will in turn be able to more aptly teach and apply the scriptures. Another benefit is that while the translation is still in process, they can have imput and suggest a word that is a more fitting translation or point out anything they don't think is translated clearly. The feedback we are getting is encouraging, they are saying that the Tala-Andig translation is easy to understand and readable, they are loving studying it and finding that it is speaking to their hearts much more than the Cebuano Bibles they have been reading in the regional language which they also know as they are bi-lingual. Last Sunday, Max came across a quote from the book of Isaiah in the passage they were studying from 2 Corinthians 6:2, for He says, “At the acceptable time I listened to you, And on the day of salvation I helped you.” Behold, now is “the acceptable time,” behold, now is “the day of salvation”— and Max shared with the others how he really felt a great thrill go through him when he read this verse in his own mother tongue for the first time!

So on a Sunday afternoon, if the Lord lays this on your heart, please pray for Ryan as he leads this study. Pray for his preparation times, and pray for clarity of thought and understanding as he presents these precious truths he's been entrusted with to his fellow-leaders.  We have reached our goal for the year of finishing up to Hebrews 7! We praise God for the progress!!! What a wonderful year of translation it has been!!!!!  This month of December we plan on taking a break, working on some other things that need to be done, having family time and a bit of rest and relaxation and then we will start back with translation on Jan 4, 2016. Our goal is to have 85% of the New Testament translated by the end of 2016.  Lots of prayer needed.