All the Word’s News and Prayer Requests for September 2017
Our Ministry in the Philippines
Our work in the Philippines is progressing well. Tod Allman and Ephraim Rey have completed the Tagalog phone apps for Ruth, Esther, and Daniel 1-6, and they’re now available on our new web site at www.alltheword.org (still under construction). They’ll build the phone apps for Genesis after the checking process has been completed. For each book there’s an illustrated version and a text version. These apps will also be available in Google Play Store soon. The video for our Tagalog translation of Ruth has been completed, and the missionary who is making those videos will distribute them to churches throughout Manila and the rest of the country.
Early this month Ephraim started a prison ministry in the Manila area, and he’ll be using our translations of Genesis and Luke to lead Bible studies. The jails and prisons are filled beyond their capacities with men who have been arrested for drug related crimes. It’s difficult to imagine a field riper for harvest than the prisons in the Philippines. So Ephraim will visit several prisons weekly, and will eventually start leading Bible studies with our translations in simple, contemporary Tagalog. Please pray that God will bring many of these men into a saving relationship with Jesus Christ.
A Prison in Manila
Preparations for Vanuatu
Steve Beale is preparing materials for the workshop he’ll be hosting on Tanna Island in Vanuatu next summer. This workshop is being coordinated with Greg Carlson, who is the Director for SIL Vanuatu. They’re hoping that speakers from all five languages will participate: North Tanna (approximately 5,000 speakers), White Sands (approximately 7,500 speakers), Lenakel (approximately 11,500 speakers), Kwamera (approximately 3,500 speakers), and Southwest Tanna (approximately 4,500 speakers). Several speakers of Lenakel translated the sentences in our Grammar Introduction questionnaire, so Steve is using their data and two published grammars to begin building a computational lexicon and grammar for Lenakel. Please pray for the participants, and for the pre-workshop tasks that will be ongoing for the next 9 months. We would also appreciate your prayers that God will supply the finances for the workshop. We estimate that we’ll need to raise about $20,000 for airfare and for food, lodging and materials for the workshop participants. The goal of this workshop will be to complete the lexicons and grammars for these languages, which will then enable us to produce first draft translations of all of our analyzed texts. Eventually, God-willing, we will complete the analysis for most of the Bible, a series of Bible stories, and other Christian literature and community health documents.
Richard Denton presented the Ministry of All the Word at the ASA Conference
On the weekend of July 28-31, 2017, Richard Denton attended the annual meeting of the American Scientific Affiliation (ASA), an organization of Christian scientists eager to examine issues of faith and science. Richard was able to talk to about 15 to 20 people about the ministry of All the Word. On July 29th, Richard presented a poster entitled, “Eradicating Bible Poverty around the Globe.” The poster talked about our goal to bring the entire Bible to all people, especially those that do not yet have any part of it. In addition to describing our translation system, the poster mentioned our new use of smart phone apps which allow free mass distribution.
