I’m excited to say that we've made it to the first week of May. Some of the rain and storm clouds of the month of March appear to be breaking up—little bits of sunshine are starting to poke through, a little bit of optimism, and the coming weeks look a little bit better than the weeks that we just got through.
Here in Orlando we just had big announcements in terms of reopening a lot of the businesses and offices like ours that have been closed for several weeks, and so we're looking forward to shifting back toward normal. Maybe not all the way to where we were before, but we're fortunate that the impact here in Orlando has actually been fairly low and so were able to start moving back in the directions that we were working previously. So I'm pretty excited about that.
One of the big complications that we’re still weighing and evaluating worldwide in terms of our ministry all over the world is the restrictions on air travel.
Video Transcript:
I’m excited to say that we've made it to the first week of May. Some of the rain and storm clouds of the month of March appear to be breaking up—little bits of sunshine are starting to poke through, a little bit of optimism, and the coming weeks look a little bit better than the weeks that we just got through.
Here in Orlando we just had big announcements in terms of reopening a lot of the businesses and offices like ours that have been closed for several weeks, and so we're looking forward to shifting back toward normal. Maybe not all the way to where we were before, but we're fortunate that the impact here in Orlando has actually been fairly low and so were able to start moving back in the directions that we were working previously. So I'm pretty excited about that.
One of the big complications that we’re still weighing and evaluating worldwide in terms of our ministry all over the world is the restrictions on air travel. I looked at a travel site yesterday and saw a map that showed seven countries in the world that have no travel restrictions at all, and so in theory if you're moving between those seven countries as you might have very little difficulty. But the United States is not one of those countries and we have some travel restrictions still both domestically and internationally. And so we're trying to calibrate all that in terms of its implications for our work and how we continue going forward.
Most of the countries in the world have pretty severe restrictions, also they’re subject to change without notice. Many countries that are still requiring 14-day quarantines if you come from a country that has any COVID-19 cases. So this this makes for a difficult landscape for international ministries like ours.
During our planning meeting this week one of the things that we were talking about is the fact that we’ve got International staff located in 20 countries worldwide, which is great. That means that, depending on how the domestic travel limitations weigh out in each location, those local teams in those locations may be able to continue doing work, cultivating work that's in progress, starting new translations, those kinds of things. So we're continuing to work in that direction.
We also, as I've said before, that we've got translation partners in 108 countries. So even if international travel is limited for a while, as we expect it will be, as long as we can communicate and connect and collaborate with these other partners in these 108 other countries, we are praying and working to see Bible translation continue to advance throughout these days.
One of the things that has been a topic of discussion these recent weeks has been that question of “what's an essential service”, “what's an essential business or activity.” While you and I are among those who believe that having God's word in your language is an essential activity, obviously there's a lot of people in the world who would disagree who would say, “No, you don't need to do that, it's not worth the risk, it's not worth the investment of time or energy.” But we know the power of God's Word in own lives. We've seen the power of God's Word in others’ lives. And our partners around the world, really more than 1,600 languages already, have said, “This is a priority in our lives as well and we want to keep it moving forward.”
So pray for us, for God's wisdom during these days as we navigate these changing travel restrictions and those kind of things. Pray for those translators that are continuing to work in their own countries, continuing to gauge what's possible, what's feasible, and what's not possible, and just pray for God's wisdom in all of those decisions. Our desire continues to be to see God's Word in every language in the world. We appreciate your partnership in that and thank you for your support in prayer and in stewardship during these days. And just stay in touch, and we'll see how God continues to work despite these challenges that we're currently facing.
