March 2019
Dear Prayer Supporters,
It’s
been way too long since I have written, but not for lack of something
to write about! On the contrary, these past several months have been so
eventful that I just couldn’t seem to find the time to write. But I
know you have been praying and asking for news, so here are the main
headlines!
Dagba Dedication
Thank
you for praying for the dedication of the Dagba New Testament. The New
Testaments sat in customs for four months before finally being
released. They arrived in Sarh only hours before the dedication
ceremony! The dedication was a blessed time of rejoicing together. Please pray that the Lord will use this New Testament to reach the hearts of the Dagba people.
Two Dagba men read the Dagba NT after the dedication.Finishing Content Checking
In
January and March, two Bible projects (Sara Madjingay and Sara Kaba
Deme) reached a major milestone in the history of their translations:
They finished the content checking stage and have moved into the quality checking stage.
Content checking is the stage where we go through the entire
translation and check it verse-by-verse. It can years to complete, and
is typically the longest part of the process. After the content
checking, we take the translation through a series of checks to ensure
the overall quality of the translation. While this stage doesn’t take
as long as content checking, there is a lot of detailed, technical work
to do, as we check spelling, punctuation, capitalization, vocabulary,
parallel passages, and other things. We also need to prepare any extra
material to be included in the printed Bibles, such as tables of
contents, book introductions, glossary, maps, and so on. Please pray for these teams as they work to complete all these tasks.
Missionary guests
In
January, two missionary guests came to teach the ninth and tenth of a
series of twelve courses for church leaders. These courses have been
excellent training for the attendees. One of the courses this time was
on expositional preaching. Preaching in Chad is all too often shallow,
disorganized, poorly prepared, mostly topical and allegorical in nature,
and only loosely based on the biblical text. The class was designed to
help preachers to provide more solid, biblically based content in their
sermons. It is already making a difference, as I observed just this
last Sunday. The preacher gave such an excellent exposition of
Ephesians 4:17-30 that I asked him afterwards if he had been in the
expositional preaching course. He smiled and said he had indeed
prepared his sermon based on what he learned in the course in January. Praise the Lord for these courses which are helping our African church leaders to minister more effectively!
Missing pastor’s wife
On
March 20, an elderly pastor’s wife, Madame Kigata, was lost while
traveling through a remote area on her way to a women’s conference.
Search parties and inquiries have been carried out, but so far have been
futile. Please pray that she will be found safely, and that God will comfort her family as they wait for news.
Thank you for your faithful prayers and support.
In Christ's Service,
Anna Beth Wivell
