Pray for literacy

Enjoy articles about amazing people all over the globe who are contributing to Bible translation. For example, Big Plans tells of a taxi driver in the Solomon Islands who is preparing himself to be a Bible translator. Let the Scripts and Computers be Friends explores non-Roman scripts and complicated scripts, and people who help organizations use non-Roman scripts in linguistic research, literacy, translation, promotion and publishing.

A project in a sensitive location in Africa held two workshops in April to do a final check of translated Scripture stories and to discuss orthography decisions. Both workshops now need follow-up. Pray for the right time and place to record the audio Scripture story set. A meeting is planned in July to get consensus among community leaders for the proposed orthography; pray that the right people will come and for constructive discussions.

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.

One people group in South Asia is still waiting for development. They live in a horseshoe-shaped valley with abundant natural resources. Their traditional healers know much about the medicinal herbs available locally. But most of them live without formal education. Pray for a committed couple to live among them and initiate a language development project leading to translation of the Word. Ask God for wisdom about other areas of need for community development.

From August to October, around 25 students from ten countries are planning to take training in EthnoArts at Payap University in Chiang Mai, Thailand. These students will learn how to research and analyze their own or host culture's art forms, and then apply this knowledge to their work in language development, multilingual education, literacy or in the local church. Many of these students have requested scholarships. Please pray that God would provide.

The Chadian Arabic New Testament* was recently dedicated in N’Djamena, Chad’s capital. 20,000 copies in Arabic script are now available for sale, but the container with 20,000 copies printed in Roman script has still not arrived in Chad. Having the New Testament available in both scripts will mean more people can read it in a language they understand. Pray that God will use this translation mightily to reveal Christ.

* This New Testament is a joint project of WEC International, Bible Societies and SIL International, Wycliffe's key partner.

Praise God for a recent global conference on archiving held in Manila. It focused on the digital archiving of valuable language and culture materials so that they can be accessible to people in the future. Pray for the SIL Philippines archiving team. They are digitizing and making available resources for community consultations being held by the Philippine Department of Education. Pray for these consultations as participants make decisions about writing/spelling the minority languages. One good result will be that more children can be taught in their first language in the early grades of school.

Karen Hopping and Caroline have completed their first trip to a village community in Marau to begin the process of teaching and training in Bible-based adult literacy classes. They began assessment and awareness on this first trip and then future trips (during the month of May) will include teaching, training, monitoring and advanced classes. Pray for both Caroline and Karen as well as the community, that they will be changed by God's Word as they learn to read. Pray also for Karen and the translators from Owa, Kwaio and Baegu languages, as they work together to produce the Bible-based literacy curriculum in their languages for future teaching and training.

Pray for translation activities in three language projects Mango, Niellim and Tunia. Mango has some portions of Scripture. So far, there is not any scripture translated into Niellim and Tunia. Pray also for the assessment of literacy classes that is taking place at this time (mid-April to mid-May) in the Ngambai project. Thank you and God bless you!

Praise God for a mother-tongue based Multilingual Language Education workshop taking place now. It is in partnership with an NGO that aims for literacy development. Participants are mostly educators representing three language communities in Southern Philippines. This is to aid development of literacy materials for each community that could be published and used in schools. Thanks for your prayers. The dates are April 23-26. But please continue to pray for ongoing development and results from the training.