Resurrection Legos

Here's a little video we made to celebrate the death and resurrection of our Savior.
Enjoy!

Checking 1 Peter and celebrating birthdays

This is a very exciting week!

Yesterday we celebrated Kara's 11th birthday. Her highlights were passion fruit juice and decorating her own cake (with lots and lots of frosting). We thank God for the joy that Kara brings to our family.

Tomorrow Ben will help the Jita team as they finish the book of 1 Peter in the Jita language. They are doing the Consultant check which is the final step in translating a book. Please pray for health and strength for Ben, Magesa, Neema and the Consultant. Pray that they would all communicate well and that God's Word would be translated clearly, accurately and naturally into the Jita language.

Then on Tuesday we celebrate Luke and Ellie's birthday. They will be turning 9. Please pray with us that all of our children would follow Jesus and love others.

many Jita verses done, many more to go

We're thanking God for all the progress that the Jita team has made recently.

"Done!" means that these books have been checked by me, the Translation Advisor, for accuracy and clarity. Then they were double-checked by a Translation Consultant. Finally, we checked them for naturalness and acceptability by community members in Jita villages. Some of them have been published as individual books, the rest will wait until we publish the whole New Testament.

"In process" means that we are in various stages of drafting, editing, spell-checking, and cross-checking.

"Not started yet" means we still have a ton of work to do. Please pray for us. Pray for the Jita translators: Magesa and Neema. Pray that the Jita community would provide good feedback for the translation. Pray for wisdom and knowledge for me as I check the translation. Pray that the Jita people will be transformed by the Word of God!

fresh beef

Tonight we enjoyed Jeannette's lovely homemade beef stew. Here's how we get our beef...

On Saturday morning at 8am I go to the local butcher and wait for the cow to arrive. It doesn't get any fresher than this!

I bring home the fresh flesh in black plastic bags and then Jeannette does the dirty work. (don't ask what's in the green bowl)

Then we can enjoy beef stew or shepherd's pie or BBQ beef or whatever. We don't think Jenna really understands how we get our meat because she still refers to all meat as chicken :)

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."