Year End Celebration

(Okay, it is WAY past "Year End" but this is something I have been wanting to post.)

In October, we were able to celebrate the completion & dedication of 70+ translations of God’s Word along with many other folks here at JAARS! With your help, we were able to be thankful we had played a role in these translations, and so did you! It was incredible to see how much work had been completed in the fiscal year of 2008… but it was work that had been in progress for decades! Translating God’s Word is not a simple task nor a quick one. One of the hindrances to translation work is the lack of reliable and safe transportation. Our role in missions is to provide this safe & reliable transportation for Bible translators so that they can focus on their job of translating! We need a team of financial and prayer partners to help us in this role of Bible translation. Will you please pray about joining our team?

The celebration at JAARS was followed by a casual lunch. The kids and I joined Dano for this time. It was wonderful to see our children enjoying looking at the Bibles or portions of the Bible on display that had been completed. They were amazed to look at the different languages in print. So many of them have such unique alphabets. It is exciting to think that our children (and maybe even us) should get to see a translation work started in each language group still needing one in their lifetime! That is basically the goal of Wycliffe Vision 2025. They are hoping by 2025, that a translation project will have begun in each group still needing one. How many still need a work begun? More than 2200 languages! With our help and yours, that can be done! Without God’s people working together, many will continue to face eternity without ever having God’s Word in their language.

You may wonder why that is so important. Imagine wanting to learn something, needing to learn something, and the only way you could was by studying it in a language you don’t speak, or in a language you barely understand. Dano & I both took Spanish in high school (and no offense to those teachers), if you gave us a Spanish Bible it would be useless. We could pronounce a lot of words in it. We would even know the meaning of many of the words. However, if we wanted to truly understand the message of the book, we would miss it completely.

Now imagine God’s Word is finally in your language, but you have yet mastered reading your language. After all, your language had never been written down until the missionaries came to your village, and when they came, you were already old and busy about life. Well, modern technology is helping those cultures who have always passed stories along using their oral traditions. The MegaVoice (pictured below) is a small, handheld device, basically an mp3 player (similar to an ipod). It is solar powered, so no batteries are needed. On this device, the vernacular media services here at JAARS with help from the local village people can prepare God’s Word into a verbal format so that the people can listen to God’s Word in their heart language! This truly eliminates barriers between God’s Word and the unreached! Our partners are investing in technology like this by investing in us! Thank you! Thank you for praying about the role God would have you play in our ministry.

Blessings,

Melinda & gang =0)