The Plans of Mice and Men
Things don’t always go according to plan — and that’s usually viewed as a bad thing. So when I tell you that is what happened with the Manjui New Testament, you might be ready to despair.
Not According to Plan
And it’s true. Things did not go according to plan. The Manjui New Testaments did not arrive at the specified time, and the trucking company that delivered them changed their shipping fees after the delivery had taken place.
But really, don’t despair!
Instead of arriving on schedule, the Manjui New Testaments arrived two weeks earlier than the publisher promised. And the change in shipping fees?
When they learned it was Bibles being shipped, the company dropped all charges for the shipment.
The Ultimate Plan
“We continue to praise God for each little miracle as He works toward seeing the Manjui get His Word in their language!” wrote Bible translators Gordon and Nancy Hunt. “We are looking forward … to taking the Bibles out to the Manjui community and celebrating with them on May 17. The Manjui believers are as excited as we are that God’s Word is all in one book now and can’t wait to have a copy in their hands. ”Things don’t always go according to plan. Sometimes they go better!
Please pray for Gordon and Nancy as they work out the details for the upcoming celebration on May 17.
Prayer Points for This Week
Monday: NTM Canada is exploring opportunities to minister in First Nation and Inuit communities in Canada. We want to work with other organizations and churches where and when possible. Right now we are asking the question: where would NTM be the biggest blessing, leveraging our 70 plus years of cross-cultural church planting and church development experience? To learn more, read the Edmond’s blog post…
Tuesday: “Countless hours go into exegetical study, drafting, checking and rechecking (multiple times) the translated Scriptures,” wrote Levi and Robin Lenz about the Bible translation effort among the Wahgi people of Papua New Guinea. “After about 3 ½ years … we are gearing up to print our first Scripture booklets into the Wahgi language. These will include a large portion of Genesis and Exodus … many other Old and New Testament Scripture portions … and the entire books of Mark and Ephesians.” Pray as they hope to add Acts, Romans and 1 Corinthians in the near future. Read their blog post …
Wednesday: “This past week we were able to finish proofreading, formatting and spell-checking the complete New Testament and Old Testament Bible portions and we finished combing them all into one book for publishing,” wrote Gordon and Nancy Hunt in February. This month the printed Scriptures will be presented to the Manjui people of Paraguay. Read More …
Thursday: “During our last term in Guinea, Kirk and Masalu finished translating the initial, ‘mother tongue’ draft of Romans in the Landuma language,” wrote Kirk and Yolanda Rogers. “There still remain several checks it must go through before it is considered a finished translation. One of these is the content check.” Pray for Kirk and his coworker, Dan Bryant, as they work on the content check. Read their update …
Friday: “The Manjui community … stood up in their church meeting and said they all needed to pray that God would ‘pray off the debt’ that we missionaries have incurred here for printing their Bible,” wrote Gordon and Nancy Hunt, missionaries in Paraguay. “Jeff
