Finished Philippians!

Ben and the Jita translators Magesa and Neema

We finished the book of Philippians! Now the Jita people can read this beautiful and encouraging letter. When Paul tells the believers to "rejoice in the Lord always" and to "not be anxious about anything," it carries more significance because Paul himself was in prison for the sake of the gospel.

Here's Philippians 4:4 in Jita -

Mukonderwe siku joone kwa okubha emwe muri na obhumwi na Raatabhugenyi Yeesu, enaayika rindi ati mukonderwe!

Rejoice in the Lord always; again I will say, Rejoice.

We're thanking God for the grace and strength that he gives us everyday to continue translating his Word for the Jita people. Thank you for your prayers!!!

Advent 2016 - King Jesus is With Us

'Tis the season for Advent!!! We love this season of reflecting on the meaning of the incarnation and joyfully anticipating the return of Jesus. If you're looking for a good collection of Advent Scripture readings, here's what we use. We came up with this a few years ago and we've been tweaking it ever since. We trace the theme of Immanuel: God with us, through the entire Bible. It's amazing to see all of God's promises to be with his people.

You can view or download our Advent readings on google drive here:

ADVENT 2016-King Jesus is With Us

or we can always email you the pdf. Just let us know.

Enjoy!

We don't know what to do, but our eyes are on Yahweh

Every year on November 11 we pause our busy schedules for the Wycliffe World Day of Prayer. It's a day to gather together with other believers and focus our prayers on the work of Bible translation all over the world. This year Jeannette and I organized the event for the office here in Musoma.

We gathered with about 50 people including Tanzanian staff and missionaries from England, Germany, Australia, the Netherlands, and the U.S.

We prayed for specific needs in each of the departments in our office: Translation, Linguistics, Literacy, Scripture Use, Operations, Partnership, and Lake Victoria Learning Center.

Then we prayed for the work of Bible translation all around the world.

• We prayed for the translation work on a tiny island in the South Pacific called Niuafo'ou. The Niuafo'ou people are becoming excited about their language and they are preparing to print the Gospel of Luke.
• We prayed for Deaf people who use over 400 sign languages in the world. We prayed that God would make a way for Deaf people to have the Bible in their own language.
• We prayed for Bible translation projects in Muslim countries. In one country in central Asia, a young Christian woman named Hanna was being persecuted by her Muslim in-laws. They rejected her faith and called her "unclean" and cast her out of the family. Eventually her husband divorced her. After this persecution, Hanna came in contact with a translation team translating the Bible into her language. They asked her to read a draft of the book of Job and check it for naturalness. Hanna was deeply impacted by the Word of God. She felt like she could identify with Job in his sufferings and this gave her great comfort and hope. She is now waiting for the rest of the Bible to be translated into her language.

I shared an encouragement from the Word (in Swahili!!) to focus our prayer time. We looked at the story of King Jehoshaphat from 2 Chronicles 20. God's people were threatened with invasion and destruction by three foreign armies. The Bible says King Jehoshaphat "turned his face to seek the LORD" (20:3). In Jehoshaphat's prayer he said, "We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you" (20:12). Such a good reminder in times of fear and uncertainty and threats and trials. Our God is all-powerful and all-knowing and all-wise and always good and always with us. We can turn to him and trust him.

Our kids really enjoyed the prayer time as well. They said, "It was so good to pray with other people outside of our family," and "I liked reading Scriptures about God and then praising him for those things."

The Holy Spirit Brings the Treasure of the Gospel Home to our Hearts

Martin Luther as an Augustinian Monk by Lucas Cranach the Elder 1520

On this Happy Reformation Day, here's a little gospel-saturated truth about the Holy Spirit from Martin Luther in his Larger Catechism:

The Spirit of God alone is called Holy Ghost, that is, He who has sanctified and still sanctifies us. For as the Father is called Creator, the Son Redeemer, so the Holy Ghost, from His work, must be called Sanctifier, or One that makes holy.

For neither you nor I could ever know anything of Christ, or believe on Him, and obtain Him for our Lord, unless it were offered to us and granted to our hearts by the Holy Ghost through the preaching of the Gospel. The work is done and accomplished; for Christ has acquired and gained the treasure for us by His suffering, death, resurrection, etc. But if the work remained concealed so that no one knew of it, then it would be in vain and lost. That this treasure, therefore, might not lie buried, but be appropriated and enjoyed, God has caused the Word to go forth and be proclaimed, in which He gives the Holy Ghost to bring this treasure home and appropriate it to us. Therefore sanctifying is nothing else than bringing us to Christ to receive this good, to which we could not attain of ourselves.

And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. -- 

Ezekiel 36:26–27

But you were washed, you were sanctified, you were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ and by the Spirit of our God. -- 1 Corinthians 6:11

And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit. -- 2 Corinthians 3:18

Text from https://www.ccel.org/ccel/luther/largecatechism.iv_2.html
Image from http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/works-of-art/20.64.21

finished Revelation but it's not the end

We finished the book of Revelation in the Jita language! After meeting with a Consultant for two weeks and examining every single verse of the book, Revelation is now approved!

We're so excited that now the Jita people can know Jesus as
Jesus Christ (1:1)
the Son of God (2:18)
the Lion of the tribe of Judah (5:5)
the Root of David (5:5)
the Lamb who was slain (5:12)
Faithful and True (19:11)
the Word of God (19:13)
King of kings and Lord of lords (19:16)
the Alpha and the Omega (22:13).

One of the challenges was the word "seal" like the scroll that was sealed with seven seals (5:1) and the 144,000 servants of God who were sealed on their foreheads (7:4). The Jita have one word for seal which is a mark used to show ownership of a cow or a mark that fishermen would use to identify their catch of fish. So that word works fine to communicate the idea of heaving a seal on the forehead, but it would definitely not work in the context of opening the seals on the scroll. Therefore, the team found another way to talk about the seals on the scroll.

Another challenge was the word "Abyss" in chapter 9. Is it the place of the dead? Is it Sheol? Is it Hades? Is it Hell? Finally we decided to simply translate "the unending pit."

And we still don't know how to translate "sulfur" in 9:17. The team plans to go out to Jita villages and do some community checking next week so hopefully they can discover a good way to communicate the meaning.

Thank you for all your prayers!! Here's a little sample of the Jita translation for you. Enjoy!

Nibheembira Omwana wa Inaama orwimbo oruyaaya runu rwayikaga ati,
"Awe wiiyire okugega echitabho echo
na okusuruumura jimboyero jaacho eja obhurimbo.
Okubha awe :waatemerwe-ko omutwe
na ku‑maanyinga gaawo, nuugurira Nyamuwanga
abhaanu bha jing'anda joone, jinyaayika joone,
jinyaami joone na abha amaanga goone."

Revelation 5:9

Then they sang a new song to the Lamb saying,

"You are worthy to take that book

and the open the seals.

For you were slaughtered

and by your blood, you purchased for God

people of all tribes, all languages,

all family groups and all nations."

Now on to the next book...

the sun and moon are fighting

We experienced a solar eclipse!

I captured this photo accidentally. I pointed my camera straight at the sun (yes, Mom, I know you told me NEVER to look directly at an eclipse) and of course I saw nothing. But then when I turned the camera at a slight angle I caught this flare. Check out the white crescent inside the flare. I guess that's what the eclipse looked like.

Jeannette was outside hanging laundry and she saw all these strange crescent shapes on the ground. I guess it's like when you do the old pin-hole-in-the-paper-to-see-the-eclipse experiment. But the trees above worked like the hole in the paper. Cool!!!

We had a blast with our Tanzanian colleagues. They wanted me to take this photo of them pretending like they were staring at the eclipse. Tanzanians say that the sun and moon are fighting. I wonder who won...

Earthquake!

Jeannette texted me saying, "Totally just felt like the earth was shaking. I think I'm going crazy!" I gave a cute reply because I had no idea what had happened, "The earth quakes under the intense volcano of my love for you."

After a couple minutes we started seeing reports that we had indeed experienced an earthquake! About 145 miles away, across Lake Victoria, there was a 5.7 magnitude earthquake. Sadly, 13 people have died and hundreds were wounded. Many houses here are poorly built out of mud bricks. One of our Tanzanian friends here in Musoma is thankful that he was not home at the time because the wall of his bedroom cracked and he was afraid it would fall down. Pray for the people of Uganda and Tanzania who were affected by this tragedy. Pray that people would hope in God.

Psalm 18
      The LORD is my rock and my fortress and my deliverer, 
      my God, my rock, in whom I take refuge

Resources:
http://earthquake.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/us10006nkx#executive
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-37330418

Six kilos of pig leg

I (Ben) woke up early on Saturday morning and went to the local slaughterhouse (some guy's backyard). Men with knives were already working on the second pig that morning. All that was left of the first pig were two legs. I said, "I'll take one of those." They weighed it and it came to 6 kilos (13 lbs.). It still had the skin on it and the bones in it.

Then I went to work. I tried three different knives until I found one that could cut the skin away from the meat. I won't gross you out with the rest of the details but after a few hours we had both the crockpot and the oven full of meat.

Finally it was time to enjoy the fruit of our hard work. Jeannette made this amazing pork pie. Question: If a shepherd's pie has lamb and a cottage pie has beef, what do you call it if it has pork? We don't know but it was delicious!

Then Jeannette made pulled pork with thyme and paprika and other magical ingredients. Yum!!! And of course, we savored a little pork BBQ also. So was it worth the effort? YES!!!

A centipede, a snake and a mongoose

Luke found this scary guy in our backyard hiding under some rocks. Yes, he's highly venomous!

Then as Ben was hanging a picture in our hallway he felt something brush past his heel...

He brushed Ben's heel so Ben crushed his head. It's poetic.

And you might be wondering, where was this guy when we really needed him?

Mr. Rikki-Tikki-Tavi here showed up the morning after the snake incident. Sure, some fierce cobra-killer he is.

Welcome to wild Tanzania!

Beware of falling fish!

Watch out! If you visit us in Tanzania you might get hit in the head with a fish. Check out this video...

We fix our eyes on the land of no goodbyes

We hate goodbyes. We hated saying goodbye to grandparents, cousins, siblings, parents, friends and churches in America. And now that we're back in Tanzania, we're saying goodbye to our dear friends who are returning to America for their furlough. We hate goodbyes.

But it has forced us to fix our eyes on our future hope of resurrection and reunion on the new earth. Many times we find ourselves clinging to the hope that, "when we finally get home on the new earth there will be no more goodbyes." And of course, we remind ourselves that the most glorious joy of the new earth will not be seeing all our beloved friends and family members (even though that will be fantastic). Rather, the most massive, magnificent joy of the new earth will be seeing Jesus and being with Jesus and enjoying Jesus forever. That's our hope!

So as we've been rehesarsing the glorious truths about the new earth from Isaiah and Hebrews and Revelation, I tried to combine many of them together in one place. Here goes…


We Fix Our Eyes on the Land of No Goodbyes

We fix our eyes on the land of no goodbyes
where there can be no night
because Yahweh is our everlasting light;
where bitter weeping is forsaken
as we zealously proclaim, "Behold your God."

We fix our eyes on the land of no goodbyes
where violence is silenced
and destruction is demolished;
where righteousness thrives
and death dies.

We fix our eyes on the land of no goodbyes
where troubles are forgotten
and joys are everlasting;
where mourning is banished
and gladness reigns forever.

We fix our eyes on the land of no goodbyes
because we desire a better country, a heavenly one
and we desperately seek a homeland
so we fervently wait for the enduring city
whose designer and builder is God.

We fix our eyes on the land of no goodbyes
where the curse is reversed
and desolation is transformed into delight;
where pain and rebellion become peace and rest
while old things pass away and all things are made new.

We fix our eyes on the land of no goodbyes
where we will see our Savior Jesus face to face
and God himself will wipe away every tear from our eyes;
where God will dwell with us
and we will live with Jesus forever.

We fix our eyes on the land of no goodbyes
joyfully awaiting the new heavens and new earth.

--

Here are the Scripture passages that I drew from. Spend some time meditating on them and preach to yourself the hope that we have in Jesus!

Revelation 21:25; Isaiah 60:20; Isaiah 65:19; Isaiah 40:9; Isaiah 60:18; Isaiah 60:18; 2 Peter 3:13; Revelation 21:4; Isaiah 65:16; Isaiah 61:7; Isaiah 60:20; Isaiah 65:18; Hebrews 11:16; Hebrews 11:14; Hebrews 13:14; Hebrews 11:10; Revelation 22:3; Isaiah 62:4; Revelation 21:4; Hebrews 4:9; Revelation 21:4-5; I John 3:2; Revelation 22:4; Revelation 21:4; Revelation 21:3; 1 Thessalonians 4:17; Isaiah 65:17; 2 Peter 3:13; Revelation 21:1

New video of our first three years in Tanzania

Hey wonderful friends and supporters,
Check out our new video. We tried to summarize three years of Tanzanian adventure into one video. It's on google drive so you can watch it or download it. Enjoy!

Click the link here:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B1XCekGacO5fUE8xbzlvWHA2RGs/view?usp=sharing

Where is Tanzania?

Can you find Tanzania on the map? This video will help...