A Bowl of Soup and a Step of Faith

Story to encourage and strengthen – Wycliffe World Day of Prayer 2021

Lupe Lui is a Tongan who serves with Papua New Guinea Bible Translation Association

In October 2020 we were preparing to go to Popondetta in Oro Province to open a new office of Papua New Guinea Bible Translation Association (BTA). I was given the opportunity to go with the team and brought K300 (300 Kina) as pocket money for personal use. BTA gave me some cash to buy decorations and candy to make candy leis for the opening. At the checkout I realized that the cost of the items was much more than the cash in hand from BTA. A thought came to mind that this was an opportunity to be a blessing to the languages in Oro, and so I took some of my personal cash to pay off the balance.

That evening, my Tongan sister living in Papua New Guinea (PNG) asked if I could help bake some cakes for her ministry with widows. She said she would bring the ingredients. Then I thought, ’This is another opportunity to serve these PNG widows.’ I told her not to worry, that I would buy the ingredients. The next evening I stayed up all night to bake 12 chocolate cakes and felt very privileged to bake for these widows. I checked my cash and had K68 left from the original K300.

On Wednesday evening I planned to visit one of our managers who had been sick and had not eaten for days. He vomited everything he ate and became very weak. He is an older person and many of us look to him as ’Papa’. I told his wife to tell him I was coming to visit him and would buy something for him to eat. His wife, Elizabeth, discouraged me saying, “Lupe, he won't eat it, don’t waste money, just come and see him.” I told her that in my Tongan culture, I cannot visit someone and come empty handed. I must bring something to give as a gift. I asked her to come with me to the Korean restaurant. I ordered fish soup with seaweed and green leafy vegetables.

Again, Aunty Elizabeth told me that he would not eat it. I assured her that Papa would eat this soup. I went to pay for the soup and the amount was K68. So I took out my last K68 and paid for it. Aunty Elizabeth said this was a very expensive soup. I told her Papa is worth more than K68, and if he doesn’t eat it, she can have it.

On our way back home, Aunty Elizabeth was chatting with another staff member in the vehicle. I took that opportunity to lay hands on the bowl of soup and prayed in Tongan so that no one would understand what I was praying.

I prayed: “Father, you know that Papa Steven is really sick and not eating. I am asking you a favour. Please make him eat. I know it is not time for him to die. He still has a lot to do. Please heal him. Father, I spent my last K68 and I want it to be used, please hear my prayer. I, a Tongan missionary, am asking on behalf of a Papua New Guinean missionary. Amen.”

Back at the BTA centre, I left the food with Aunty Elizabeth to give to ‘Papa’. I told my flatmate that I would have to raise some funds to take with me to Oro Province. She was unhappy with me because I used up the money set aside for the trip. I just laughed and began thinking about ideas for raising funds. But then I thought, I will go empty handed because God will provide. My thoughts were interrupted with a text message from Papa Steven. He sent the message to say thank you and that the food was very yummy. I did not believe what I was hearing because sometimes people say good things to not hurt my feelings. I wanted to hear directly from Aunty Elizabeth.

The next morning as I was preparing to go to work, a text message came from a Papua New Guinean friend saying, “I don’t know why God put you in my heart but he did and I just transferred K300 into your account. Please check your account.” I was shocked, but happy to hear this message.

I sought out Aunty Elizabeth in the office. I wanted to hear from her personally that what Papa Steven said was true. She was so excited—jumping up and down, hugging me and saying ‘thank you!’ She told me that Papa ate everything. My heart was filled with gratitude that God heard my prayers. From that night, Papa Steven started eating and began to gain strength. He recovered and went back to work.

Our God answers prayer and provides for our needs when we put our faith in him. Lupe stepped out in faith and generosity. As a result, her faith was strengthened and others’ faith as well! 

 

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05/2025 Global

Special Report - May 2025

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05/2025 Global

‘We’ve come very far, very fast’

A tech observer outlines what AI will mean soon for workplaces and ministry

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Global

Tech pioneer: Christians ‘have to show up’ for AI

Silicon Valley pioneer Pat Gelsinger was CEO of Intel Corporation until December 2024. Quickly realising his career in technology was not finished, he joined the faith/tech platform Gloo in early 2025 as the executive chair and head of technology. He is also a general partner at the venture capital firm Playground Global. Gelsinger was instrumental in the development of cloud computing, Wi-Fi, USB and many other everyday technologies. He estimates his work has touched 60 to 70 percent of humanity. Here are highlights of his keynote talk at the 2025 Missional AI Summit. You can watch his entire talk here. Pat Gelsinger (left) is interviewed onstage by Steele Billings. Both are with Gloo. Watch the full interview here. Is technology good or bad? Technology is neither good nor bad. It’s neutral. It can be used for good. It can be used for bad. … If you think back to the Roman roads, why did Christ come when he came? I’ll argue the Pax Romana and the Roman roads. … The greatest technology of the day was the Roman road system. It was used so the Word could go out. Historical example I will argue Martin Luther was the most significant figure of the last thousand years. And what did he do? He used the greatest piece of technology available at the day, the Gutenberg printing press. He created Bibles. … He broke, essentially, the monopoly on the Bible translations …. He ushered in education. He created the systems that led to the Renaissance. That’s a little punk monk who only wanted to get an audience with the pope because he thought he had a few theological errors. I’ll argue (Luther was) the most significant figure of the last thousand years, using technology to improve the lives of every human that he touched at the time. How today compares to the dawn of the internet AI is more important. AI will be more significant. AI will be more dramatic. … This is now incredibly useful, and we’re going to see AI become just like the internet, where every single interaction will be infused with AI capabilities.  In the 75-year-or-so history of computing, we humans have been adapting to the computer. … With AI, computers adapt to us. We talk to them. They hear us. They see us for the first time. And now they are becoming a user interface that fits with humanity. And for this and so many other reasons that every technology has been building on the prior technology, AI will unquestionably be the biggest of these waves, more impactful even than the internet was. On the need for AI development to be open-source It is so critical because we’re embedding knowledge, embedding values, embedding understanding into those underlying models, large language models and every aspect that happens. It must be open, and this is part of what I think is critical about us being together here today. We need to be creating trusted, open, useful AI that we can build humanity on.  On the need for Christians to help build AI systems We have to show up as the faith community to be influencing those outcomes, because remember what happened in the social media. We didn’t show up, and look at what we got. So are we going to miss this opportunity for something that’s far more important than social networking with AI? Where it truly in the models embeds every aspect of human history and values into it? We have to show up, team. What we do with large language models is far more important because truly we are choosing how we embody knowledge of all time into those underlying models. They need to be open. They need to be trusted. What Christians must bring to the process If we’re going to show up to influence AI broadly, we have to show up with good engineering, good data, good understanding, good frameworks. How do you measure things like ‘Is that leading to better character? Is that leading to better relationships? Is that creating better vocational outcomes? Is that a valid view of a spiritual perspective?’ We need good underlying data associated with each one of these. And for that we’re actively involved. We’re driving to create that underlying data set. Because we need to show up with good data if we’re going to influence how AI is created. How should this work? For the AI systems we need to create good benchmarks. If I ask about God, does it give me a good answer or not? If I ask about relationships with my children, does it give me good answers? We need to create the corpus of data to give good answers to those questions. And, armed with that good data, we need to show up to influence the total landscape of AI. We want to benchmark OpenAI. We’re going to benchmark Gemini. We’re going to benchmark Claude. We’re going to benchmark Copilot.  This is what we’re going to do at Gloo, but we want to be part of a broader community in that discussion so that we’re influential in creating flourishing AI. Technology is a force for good. AI that truly embeds the values that we care about, that we want to honour, that we want to be representing into the future and benchmarking across all of them.   Oh his role with Gloo We are going to change the landscape of the faith community and its role in shaping this most critical technology, AI, for faith and flourishing. That’s what we’re going to do at Gloo and we need all of your help and partnership to do so because if we don’t hang together, we’re not going to influence the outcome, right? ‘Here am I, Lord’ I don’t think I’m done. … You and I both need to come to the same position like Isaiah did. Here am I, Lord. Send me. Send me. Send us. That we can be shaping technology as a force for good. That we could grab this moment in time. This is the greatest time to live in human history. We’re going to solve diseases. We’re going to improve lives. We’re going to educate every person in poverty. We are going to solve climate issues. We are going to be using these technologies to improve the lives of every human on the planet. We are going to shape technology as a force for good. Here am I, Lord. Send me. ••• Story: Jim Killam, Wycliffe Global Alliance Translated with ChatGPT. How was the translation accuracy? Let us know at info@wycliffe.net. Alliance organisations are welcome to download and use images from this series.  

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