Pray for translation

Learning that Lasts is a highly interactive workshop for people who want to improve their ability to help adults learn. Most participants at the June workshop are from Papua New Guinea. Pray that they will grasp the information given and that the staff will be able to help them become a success as they teach Papua New Guineans for roles in Bible translation.

In June, the Sepik Partnership Engagement Strategy team will travel to meet with the Wom language group in the northeast Sepik Province to equip them with skills necessary to begin translation work. The Wom group has 4000+ speakers, but has no Scripture in their heart language yet.

Paratext and related tools are a collection of software programs for Windows and Linux developed by the United Bible Societies which allow translators to input, edit, check, and publish a translation of the Scriptures, based on the original texts. Pray for the participants at the Paratext Community of Practice meetings as they share ideas on how to use this translation software effectively. Also, pray for James Post to develop high-quality training materials for the Paratext 2 workshop planned for July.

George McDonald is traveling from the United States to consultant-check* Esther for the Binumarien language group. He then will check portions of Genesis and Exodus for the Kapin team. Pray for other language teams that need a consultant to check their translated books.

*Consultant check: A consultant thoroughly goes over the translation with the team, checking for accuracy, clarity and naturalness, and looking for omissions, extraneous thoughts or possible misconceptions.

Bible translation requires long-term commitment and needs constant prayer support from start to finish. Translators have noticed, however, that special difficulties seem to surface when translations near completion*. Some problems are due to human frailty and sinfulness. Some may be simply mechanical or electrical glitches. Some problems may be spiritual or have a spiritual component. All of these difficulties can be more successfully overcome as Christians around the world support Bible translation through consistent prayer. Thank you for your hard work of prayer.

*Projects near completion can be found here.
**These ideas came from Wycliffe USA Prayer Ministries  www.wycliffe.org

Praise God for the progress that has been made on the manual for preparing for a Participatory Methods for Engaging Communities (PMEC) workshop. Pray that over the next few days, through the end of May, the editor would get key parts added to it so she can use it in North Dakota when they teach the PMEC workshop as a nine-week course starting June 4. This workshop trains people to facilitate discussions which promote local ownership of literacy and translation projects by getting community involvement in the early stages.

Pray for 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. Ask God to prepare his heart and mind for learning through this experience.

Thank God for the ethnography class given to some Asian Bible translators in May. Ask God to give them wisdom in how to use this new understanding to improve their skills in translation through analyzing the local culture.

Imagine that your pastor asks you to lead a prayer meeting featuring the topic "Bible translation". How can you get some requests that need prayer now? Go to www.wycliffe.net. On the horizontal menu, click on "explore". From the drop-down menu, click on "Topics". Then click on "translation". Here you will find links that explain what Bible translation is, in Chinese, English, French, Portuguese and Spanish. In the column on the right, click on "Pray for translation, visit the library". Click on the word "show", and the full text of the prayer items will open up for you to print and use.

The life of Deva, Bible translator for the Koya tribe in Andhra Pradesh, is amazing. Five years prior to the completion of the Koya New Testament, in 1999, Deva had a paralytic stroke. He completed the Koya New Testament working out of a wheelchair. Recently, he was still in his wheelchair, but with severe restrictions in his movements. He is almost totally paralyzed, neck downward, but his mind is as active as ever. Deva continues working on the Old Testament translation with the help of a young assistant. Deva's response is, "God is faithful, I have not done enough for Him."