Pray for church

Pray for A., a student at a seminary in Southeast Asia, who would like to do an internship with the local Bible translation team in 2014. Pray for wisdom for those who will be his trainers and mentors during the experience. And ask God to prepare his heart and mind for learning through this experience.

Pray for Oral Bible Storytellers in the Sepik Province. Pray for those in the Kwomtari, Kukwo (Urim), Pouye, Malinguat, Kombio and Urat languages as well as the Tok Pisin team in city of Wewak. Thank the Lord for the Bible stories that are being told in these language communities and bringing encouragement and blessing to the Body of Christ there.

After a new pastor included readings from Luke done in French and the Tunen language in a service, someone from the congregation stopped him: ‘The text read in Tunen was not right – there was a letter b that we never use.’ The problem is differences in dialects and needs the team’s sensitivity.

The Aghem team are seeing positive responses from churches as they share the Scriptures. There has been a U-turn at one church in the Aghem community. In the past, the church paid little attention to the translation; the pastor refused to help and information never reached the congregation. The new pastor was concerned about the translation, particularly how ‘baptism’ is translated. After grilling the project coordinator, he promised to join the consulting committee, saying, ‘This is not a project to be taken lightly, because it has an impact on the salvation of people.’

The Aghem team are seeing positive responses from churches as they share the Scriptures. Recently they have been focusing on translating portions specifically for Sunday readings. Pray that these readings would foster enthusiasm and excitement, and that they would reveal truth to people who, before now, have only heard it in a language that’s not their own.

Some churches in the Weh community are waning in enthusiasm. Please pray that God would give them eyes to see the transformation that translation could bring. The inter-church committee was set up to support the translation but for the past few months, it has not been meeting. The project leader, Aseh Derick, has had to visit people individually to get their input, which has slowed down the work.

The weekend starts now, as people from across the UK travel to the GO2013 mission festival. It’s a chance to explore how God could use them in different ways around the world. Ask God to give people a heart to see the nations come to him, and pray for all the missions represented there as they answer questions and inspire enquirers. gofestival.info

Thank the Lord for the good and profitable Oral Bible Storytelling (OBS) workshop held in Wewak for the seven language groups. This is the third in a series of four that are planned for these languages. Praise the Lord for training given to a number of the Sepik participants showiing competency to build skills and knowledge for further engagement of OBS for other language groups in the Sepik region. Praise the Lord for the wisdom, health and strength for the Bible Translation Association's OBS team.

Pray for Tevita and the staff of the Bible Translation Organisation of Tonga as they prepare to host a banquet in the last week of October 2013. They plan to invite the Prime Minister of Tonga as well as various politicians, business executives and church leaders for the purpose of raising awareness and gaining support for Bible translation as a ministry option for Tongans. Please pray for wisdom as they prepare and that God will prepare the hearts of those who will attend. 

Pray for the newly launched Papua New Guinea Bible Translation Partnership, which will hold meetings in Lae* from May 7-9. Pray that church and mission leaders will prayerfully commit to working together in partnership in order to reach all of Papua New Guinea's peoples with the Scriptures in their heart languages, providing a "Bible in every bilum"**. There are still 464 languages in this country in which there is no Scripture.

*Lae is the second-largest city in the country.

** A bilum is the string bag carried by almost everyone in the country, whether young or old.