Welcome to week seven in my series of video updates during the coronavirus epidemic. You might notice I've got a new sound stage here. I'm back in my office here in Orlando. Many of our staff are still working from home, but we have had relaxed restrictions in terms of our local activities here in Orlando, so some of us have begun coming back to the office again. And it's nice to get back into that kind of routine.
A couple things on my mind this week that I wanted to share with you. I know a lot of us have been spending more time...
Video Transcript:
Welcome to week seven in my series of video updates during the coronavirus epidemic. You might notice I've got a new sound stage here. I'm back in my office here in Orlando. Many of our staff are still working from home, but we have had relaxed restrictions in terms of our local activities here in Orlando, so some of us have begun coming back to the office again. And it's nice to get back into that kind of routine.
A couple things on my mind this week that I wanted to share with you. I know a lot of us have been spending more time, perhaps more time than we should be, on social media during these days, but what one of the things that has been just interesting to watch in my social media feeds has been the increasing number of ministries that are making requests in appeals for funding in order to distribute Bibles to the various groups of people. And it just seems like Bible translation and Bible distribution has become an increasingly prominent subject during these recent weeks.
And obviously with our focus and ministry on the Bible translation, we realize that there's still a lot of languages out there in the world that don't even have the option for Bible distribution. They are still waiting in line for Bible translation. And so it struck me this week—I was looking in our database and realized that this week we've got three translation workshops that are still on the calendar! Many of our workshops have had to be rescheduled and deferred until later periods of time, but this week we've actually got three that are starting, as best information that I have at this point, one is in South Sudan, another is in Tanzania, so those are both in Africa, and the third one is in the Philippines. And these are going to be serving eight different languages—a little over 200,000 people that are speaking these languages—six of them are New Testaments and two of them are Old Testaments.
So I just wanted to highlight the fact that Bible translation is still going on—in fact it's still beginning in some places—and just invite you to join us in prayer to support these groups that are meeting. We don't know the very detailed specifics about their circumstances today. Lots of things could be changing over a period of time. But be in prayer for those people that are thirsty for God's Word, that are ready to make those investments of their time and talents and resources in terms of helping Bible translation move forward in their languages. Be in prayer for our facilitators. These three locations actually have local facilitators that are within reach of these language groups, so they don't have to have international travel in order to get there. So just be in prayer for all of the unknowns that are a part of these translation decisions and processes. Just pray that the Holy Spirit will make progress in these arenas so that people can know Jesus Christ and know God more personally during these days. Thank you for standing with us in prayer. Thank you for being part of the team that’s sharing and ensuring that no one is beyond the reach of God's Word during our lifetimes.
Thanks a lot!
