Prayer has a habit of getting around the world

Remember this? And this one about prayers written by children  in Bible Sunday at my church

Well it was picked up by colleagues at Wycliffe Bible Translators USA and posted on their Facebook page on 10 December.

For more ways that you – and your children – can pray, see here.

Read Full Post »

Prayer power partnership

Every fourth Monday I sit down to write some prayer news. This week I wrote about the Gwoza Hills cluster project in Nigeria.

My prayer notes appear in the Presbyterian Church in Ireland’s Board of Mission Overseas’ weekly Prayerline. It’s one of the perks of Wycliffe Bible Translators having been recognised by PCI as a strategic partner in mission. Prayerline appears on the BMO website each Wednesday and is e-mailed to 1,629 addresses each week.

Here is what appeared this week. Happy Christmas to all my Prayerline readers!

John Hamilton (Wycliffe N. Ireland Coordinator) invites you to lift up your eyes and prayers to the Gwoza Hills in Nigeria, the home of 7 language groups, representing over 213,000 people.  Churches have taken their first steps to getting the translated Scripture in their languages. Pray that communities and churches will become more fully involved in the translation project.

Christianity came to the Gwoza Hills about 50 years ago. Today, though many people call themselves ‘Christian’, African traditional religion remains very influential. Praise the Lord for this new beginning: that as Scripture becomes available, the region will never be the same again.

Gwoza Hills people are eager to have Scripture in their own heart languages because they have seen Bible translation affecting neighbouring communities. The project aims to translate Luke’s Gospel and The JESUS Film in just four years. Thank God for the testimony of the other language groups, and pray that these language communities too will become a light on a hill. (Matt 5:14)

Prayer for Christmas Day

τέξεται δὲ υἱὸν καὶ καλέσειςτὸ ὄνομα αὐτοῦ Ἰησοῦν, αὐτὸς γὰρ σώσει τὸν λαὸν αὐτοῦ ἀπὸ τῶν ἁμαρτιῶν αὐτῶν.

Praise God that these words didn’t stay in Greek and that we can read and celebrate the truth of Matthew 1:21today. Pray for those who aren’t able to read this truth in their languages.

Read more about the Gwoza Hills project at
http://wycliffe.org.uk/live/forchurches/firstgospelprayer-gwoza.html

Wycliffe Bible Translators is just one of PCI’s strategic partners known as Specialist Service Agencies (SSAs): the others are the Bible Society in N. Ireland, the National Bible Society of Ireland, FEBA and SAT7.

Read Full Post »

Training Bible translators in Cameroon

Two weeks ago I blogged about a child’s prayer for Bible translator training.

A few days ago, I got an e-mail update from Dan and Melody Grove, friends who work with Wycliffe Bible Translators in the Ndop Plain in NW Cameroon. Some of you may remember my Retro Blogs about my visit to this project posted in July to September 2009.

The Wycliffe Ndop team is working alongside local Christians to promote literacy and Bible translation in the 10 languages of the Ndop Cluster. This week further progress is being made…

This week marks the last course in the translation principles course for the next set of four languages that are preparing for translation. The languages involved are Bafanji, Bamessing, Bamali and Bamunkumbit.

Please pray that the course will go well. Pray for the participants are they learn new information that they will be able to understand clearly and apply the information to their translating.  Pray that each group will be unified. Pray that God will guide and protect these people who are trained to do Bible translation for their own language group.  We often see Satan using sickness, family issues, problems with the churches,  even accidents to get in the way of the work of bringing God’s word to these people.

Dan Grove with Bambalang translators Novaten & Pius

Pray for safety for those teaching – Greg, Dan, Cam, Christine, Lance, Novethan and Pius.  At the end of the week, they will have a small time of celebration and participants are allowed to invite a few people from their language group to attend. Pray that this will spur on those people to stand behind this work, to promote it in their churches, and to especially become people who use God’s word in the language that they understand.

Pray that as each team goes back to their village, that they will begin well the work of translation.  If you would be interested in adding one of these groups to your prayer list, please let us know.

There are laptops for each group  on which to keep the necessary translation resources. Their inner church committee has been given the mandate of establishing a translation office in their village, one that is secure. When these are ready, the teams will receive their laptop.

Some of their learning this week will involve learning how to run these programs and use them in their work.

These four language teams are now on their way towards the first Bible portions in their language – just like the Bamunka and Bambalang who already have the Gospel of Luke printed and are progressing with the New Testament.

Pastor Edward (Bamunka translator) looks on as the Fon’s representative accepts the Book of Luke

Read Full Post »

A child’s prayer anticipates a prayer request

This is one of the prayers written by children that I blogged about yesterday in Bible Sunday at my church

On Tuesday in the office we received an e-mail prayer request from Wycliffe colleagues working overseas:

Please could you pray for a discourse workshop R is leading this week for Ash and Am translators… Pray for good health for everyone, for 2 senior translators teaching with R to be a help to the new translators, and that the Ash and Am translators themselves will grow in skills and understanding needed for their task.

Essentially it is a training workshop for new mother tongue Bible translators. As we prayed for this workshop, I suddenly thought: one of the children has already prayed about this on Sunday morning!

Dear God, thank you for the Bible please help people to get trained to translate the Bible into other languages. Please help people to learn about you. Amen

What’s that saying? Out of the mouths of babes…

For more ways that you – and your children – can pray, see here.

Read Full Post »

Bible Sunday at my church

Saintfield Road Presbyterian Church, Belfast

Last Sunday at my church, we focussed on the Bible. Not that we don’t usually, but Bible Sunday gave us the opportunity not just to remember that we value the Bible in our language, but also to remind us to take Bible reading and study seriously – and also that so many people in the world don’t have the privilege that we too often take for granted.

This what the weekly announcement sheet said:

Bible Sunday. This morning we focus on the Bible, with John Doherty of the Bible Society, John Hamilton of Wycliffe Bible Translators and Ruth Lowry, a member of Wycliffe currently working with school and youth groups but expecting to return to Senegal in the near future.

It was good to lead this service with my friend John Doherty. Too often we are asked if our two agencies are in competition. Of course not, we reply – and Sunday showed us in action together, emphasising how our two agencies complement each other. John and I often work together, but this blog is not about the Two Johns – it’s about children praying for Bible translation.

Dear God, thank u for Bible Sunday. Amen

Ruth Lowry went out with the children to Sunday School – or as we call it The Ark – and told the children about how so many people didn’t have the Bible like we have. Towards the end of the service, The Ark floated back into church and the children prayed prayers they had composed with their teachers. Here are some more of the children’s prayers…

Dear God. Thank you for the Bible we have. We want thank you for the Bible. Amen

Dear God, thank you for the Bible please help people to get trained to translate the Bible into other languages. Please help people to learn about you. Amen

Dear God, Thank you that we are so lucky to have the whole Bible in our language. Amen

Dear God. Thank you for giving us the Bible. Some people in different countries haven’t even heard of you. Amen

Dear God. Thank you that we have the privilege to read the whole Bible that other people do not have. Help Wycliffe and other organisations to get the Bibles to the countries that don’t have any at all and help them comprehend it. Amen

Some of the littler ones kept it simple…

Thank you God for Jesus and the Ark

Thank you God for Jonah and the Whale.

Thank you God for Jesus and Christmas.

One older child had obviously been listening very thoroughly…

Dear God, thank you for us having the Bible. But we think about the people who don’t even have the Bible (2,026 languages) and the ones that have only 1 gospel (1,015) and the ones that only have 1 testament (1,276). It is wonderful that we have all of the Bible, but please can you give the whole Bible to everyone. Amen

For lots of ways that you – as well as children – can pray, see here.

Read Full Post »

Mission starts with God

On Saturday 10 November 2012, Wycliffe Bible Translators UK held a prayer event called Pray 10/11/12 at three venues around the UK. After an opening praise session, people at all three venues watched a video entitled Mission Starts with God in which our UK Director Eddie Arthur focussed our thoughts for the day by leading us through The Lord’s Prayer. You can click on the link in the previous sentence to watch the video – it’s worth it!

Eddie has used The Lord’s Prayer before in his e-book Praying for Missionaries. As it says on the Amazon Kindle page:

It is always difficult to know how to pray for people involved in Christian mission work. This short booklet uses the outline of the Lord’s Prayer as a template for effective, cutting edge, missionary prayer.

I guess the difference with the video is that Eddie tells stories from around the Wycliffe Bible translation world and we see photographs of many of the people involved.

And so I encourage you to watch the video and download Praying for Missionaries on to your Kindle – it costs the princely sum of £0.77 – and use both to pray for us and the ongoing work of Bible translation.

 

 

Read Full Post »

Pray 10/11/12 – Belfast

Yesterday Albert Bridge Congregational Church in Belfast was one of three UK venues for Wycliffe Bible Translators UK’s Pray 10/11/12.

We had over thirty people praying during the day – not massive numbers – but this is a new venture and we prayed around the world and back again!

Here are a few images from Belfast… in a few days I look forward to hearing how the day went in Coventry and St Albans.

Opening worship

Poster wall with prayer Post-It notes

Praying for countries around the world

Praying around the world

One of the literature tables

Read Full Post »

The Impact of an Irishman’s Prayer

Did you read my recent blog about the Irishman from Belfast who prayed for 62 years for a people group in Brazil?

Canela village from the air

 

He spent sixty-two years of his life talking to God about the Canela people of Brazil – twenty two of those praying for a Canadian couple  who helped translate the Bible into the Canela language?

Today I have discovered who the man from Belfast was!

Amazingly I have known his son Paul for over 30 years; I taught two of his grandsons Mark and David in Belfast before I joined Wycliffe Bible Translators. This afternoon Paul gave me a copy of his father’s autobiography.

WATCH THIS SPACE

11 August 1990 Canela people at the distribution festival of the partial Bible into their language.

Meanwhile why not read the original article that got me interested in the story at wycliffe.net – and then get in touch with the Wycliffe office in your country, ask for the name of a language still without God’s Word and get praying! There are still over 2,000 of them!

Read Full Post »

The Irishman’s Prayer

Did you hear the one about the Irishman saying his prayers?

No! Not that one!!!

The one about the Irishman from Belfast who spent sixty-two years of his life talking to God about the Canela people from Brazil and the Canadian couple who helped the Canela people translate the Bible into their language.

When Jack and Jo Popjes arrived to work with Wycliffe Bible Translators in Brazil, they were puzzled at the difficulties colleagues in other projects were experiencing. Jack writes…

Within hours of my first arrival in the main Canela village, I was given a Canela name. Within a month of our family settling in the village, two families stepped up—one to adopt me as their son, and the other to adopt Jo as their daughter. We became Canelas: citizens of the village, joined with others in a complicated kinship system. I was even taken into one of the men’s groups and guided through my responsibilities in the village festivals.

Canela village from the air

When it came to learning the language, it was like drinking from a fire hose. Teenagers crowded around us shouting out the Canela names for things faster than we could write them down. Once we began teaching people to read, there were so many potential students that, for the first year, we limited classes to parents of families only. Some boys who didn’t make it into the reading classes stole the learn-to-read books and taught themselves…  At one time we had seventeen men and women on the team serving as review readers, translation checkers, and typists.

As we listened to the problems enumerated by our colleagues who worked in other language groups, we realized we were very fortunate. And for years we had no idea why this was the case.

That is until they got a letter from Belfast, N. Ireland…

As the Irishman went on to tell us more about himself, we realized he had started praying for the Canela of Brazil when our parents were still teenagers! A full ten years before Jo and I were born!

He prayed faithfully for the Canela for forty years, until we finally got there—as thirty year-old linguist-translators. Then he prayed for another twenty-two years, until God’s Word was translated into Canela and the Church was established. Finally, after sixty-two years of praying, the Lord took him Home, no doubt to an exceedingly great reward.

God seems to have bound Himself to act on earth mostly as His people ask Him to. He voluntarily limits Himself to work in this world mainly in response to the prayers of His children. He prepared the Canela for our coming as an answer to that Irishman’s prayers.

Jo and I spent twenty-two years of our lives talking to the Canela about God. The Irishman from Belfast spent sixty-two years of his life talking to God about the Canela.

Read the whole article at wycliffe.net – and then get in touch with the Wycliffe office in your country, ask for the name of a language still without God’s Word and get praying! There are still over 2,000 of them!

Read Full Post »

Let’s pray out loud in our own languages…

Didier making his speech as director of SIL in Ivory Coast, at the Kouya dedication 21 March 2012

I don’t believe it! This Wednesday 27 May means it is exactly 10 weeks ago we were in Ivory Coast for the 21 March dedication of the Kouya New Testament. A lot has happened since then: I’ve had a successful cataract operation and Eddie and Sue Arthur have been at the Wycliffe Global Gathering in Chiang Mai in Thailand…

It was the last day of Wycliffe’s International gathering. For seven days, five hundred leaders of Bible translation organisations from over sixty five countries had met together to pray, to discuss and to seek God’s will for the future. As the conference closed, the chair called for a time of prayer and suggested that people should stand up and pray in their mother tongue. One by one, people stood up in the huge conference hall to pray. There were prayers in English, in Spanish and then a young West African stood up to pray…

Dide -Lagɔɔ. -Jejitapε, -mι na ‘paa fuo, -mι na ‘paa yuo…

I buried my face in my hands and sobbed my heart out.

The young man was Didier and he was praying in Kouya.

It was a very emotional moment for both Eddie and Sue! Please read the rest of the blog in which Eddie tells where and when they first met Didier and what Didier is doing now. There’s also a great picture of Eddie and Sue.

Eddie’s reflections on the Wycliffe Global gathering brought a tear to my eye too – and took my mind racing back to the week spent with Didier and meeting many other Kouya friends in Dema, Bouhitafla and Gouabafla.

But it’s also a taste of the future that God has promised us…Eddie again.

This tiny, little known language from the Ivorian rain forest was being used to worship the Lord alongside all of the famous languages of the world. I’ve often told the story of the old Kouya man who rejoiced when he saw Kouya written down, saying that now Kouya took its place alongside English, French and German because those languages had paper, and now Kouya had paper, too. As Didier prayed, we saw that principle lived out in practice. A little bit of Revelation 7 taking place before our eyes.

You can read my other blogs on the Kouya New Testament dedication in the March / April archives

Read Full Post »