You mean it’s really happening?…
Hey friends,
What a crazy year 2021 was for us! We made an unexpected move from Kona, Hawaii, USA to Quebec, Canada, but we’ve done plenty of updates surrounding our family. This time we want to share the great things that God has been doing through our efforts to End Bible Poverty.
“What’s really happening?” you may be asking yourself after you read the title. Good question! Let us tell you.
A few years back God led Rob to start learning to code and to build some unique tools to help End Bible Poverty. 2021 is the year that we are really seeing some fruits from those efforts. We’ll start with two stories and end with some encouraging statistics.
Young people can initiate Bible translations?
This past month we received an email from a group of young people in South Africa. The youth are doing an Oral Bible Translation (OBT) school, learning how to start Bible translations with the people who speak Bible-less languages. The team of young ladies went to Uganda and South Sudan to do what they could to help.
In Uganda they went to a refugee camp of South Sudanese people and began asking around regarding Bible-less languages. Here’s their testimony:
Two weeks ago, some of our long-term staff (and OBT students) did a short 10-day staff outreach to Uganda – and other places. With our Uganda team, we used the StartBibles app to locate about six Bible-less languages (South Sudanese) in a refugee camp in Northern Uganda and… two when I travelled to Juba, South Sudan, right after. It was such a joy!
Jolien from South Africa
News travelled quickly that we were on the hunt for bible-less languages. On our very first morning there, we were met by this South Sudanese man who is a pastor in the community. He believed that his heart-language, the language that he grew up speaking, did not have a Bible. We checked our list and sure enough, there it was. We were so excited because this would be our VERY FIRST RECORDING of scripture being translated into a bible-less language! Something we had been dreaming about in our OBT school in the weeks leading up to our outreach. With his notebook and pen, he came so prepared to dive right into translation, teaching us some of the alphabet. His hunger to see the word translated into his language was so encouraging, stirring our own hearts even more deeply to see these languages translated. This man had been a soldier in South Sudan and gotten badly injured which resulted in him loosing his foot. While he was in the hospital he gave his life to Jesus, recognising how God has spared his life. In 2016 he fled with his wife and family to the refugee camp in Uganda and has dedicated his life to sharing God’s love with people.
So what actually happens when people distribute the Bible?
The Share Bibles app that Rob built is designed to track Bible distribution with purpose of recording where we (the body of Christ) have gone so that we can go to those who have not yet had a chance to receive God’s word. Often times it’s easy to look at a map of pins and think about the task that has been accomplished. However, so many of those pins are real encounters between God and the lost, facilitated by volunteers freely distributing God’s word. The following are testimonies of just two encounters…
At the second house where we stopped, a woman named Diane had been experiencing severe back pain for the last 5 years. She had a stimulator (nerve blocker) attached to her back that she said she hadn’t been working for a while, so we prayed… and God healed her back! As we prayed she said, “Oh, I’m feeling all tingly!” We told her that was the Holy Spirit, and Jack said, “Well, I hope it moves to your back,” and she started stretching and said, “Whoa, this is so weird…” and walking around and stretching. She couldn’t stop commenting on how weird it was, then said “I’m gonna go do some laundry!” and walked inside free of pain!
A volunteer Bible distributer
“At the 9th house we knocked on, a woman opened the door and immediately invited us in when she heard that we were praying for people. Her name is Angie. She asked us to pray for her oldest daughter, Carol, who had struggled with alcoholism and was stabbed by her boyfriend a while ago. We listened to her for a while, prayed with her, encouraged her, and shared the Gospel and talked about how Jesus sets us free from guilt (that had come up a few times). After we talked for a while, her daughters both showed up at the house! Angie coaxed Carol to come in, and told her we wanted to pray for her. I sat with Carol for a bit and immediately her story started spilling out – all the hurt and guilt and regret. I started feeling like the Holy Spirit wanted to heal Carol from the memories of the night she got stabbed, and when I told her she started crying and readily agreed to prayer. After we prayed, my partner April joined us in the room and got caught up to where Carol is at, and asked her if she had ever given her life to the Lord. Carol told us she really wanted God in her life and wanted to be forgiven and to forgive all the people who had hurt her, and poured out all her hurt and how much she wanted peace! April led her in a beautiful prayer of repentance, and then we spent time talking about reading the Bible (she has one), getting into a strong community that will help her keep choosing good things, and connecting her with the church we are working with here. God is moving in such exciting ways in this family!!!”
A couple young people who distributed Bibles in Los Angeles, California
Take a moment to pray for these encounters and for fruit that will remain.
Share Bibles 2021 Statistics:
How are people using the SourceView Bible Reader?
In November I sent the following report to The International Bible Society (the publishers of the NIV Bible) to let them know how their versions of the Bible were being used in the web app that we built…
The following statistics are based on the last 6 months (April 1 => October 31, 2021):
English NIV
Total users: 475
Returning users: 423 (89%)
Average time on site: 14:49 (yes, that’s almost 15 minutes each time!)
Chinese CCB
Total users: 29
Returning users: 18 (62%)
Average time on site: 20:27
German HFA
Total users: 43
Returning users: 20 (46.5%)
Average time on site: 12:39
French BDS
Total users: 92
Returning users: 92 (100%)
Average time on site: 10:37
Portugues NVI
Total users: 59
Returning users: 59 (100%)
Average time on site: 18:15
Spanish NVI
Total users: 67
Returning users: 67 (100%)
Average time on site: 16:57
Here’s what we learned…
1. All language groups are spending more than 10 mins on average (that’s longer than it takes to read a chapter or two of the Bible).
2. Most users return again
The most important part of this report for us is the amount of time that people are actually reading the Bible. When God’s people engage with God’s word together the leading of the Spirit can produce great fruit! This is why we End Bible Poverty Now!
Regular Prayer Requests for 2022
Pray for the end of Bible poverty in all the earth.
- Pray that there would be a Bible translation in every language on earth (approximately 2,000 remaining languages)
- Pray that every person would have access to the Bible
- Pray that they would be educated so that they can understand and apply God’s word
…And pray for our family too! Thanks
- Learn French: This is a constant prayer point for 2022!
- Adjusting to life in Quebec: Adapting to a new culture (yes, living in Canada is a new culture for our family) takes approximately 2 years before it starts to feel like “home”.
- Establishing relationships: We’re already beginning to build relationships with the YWAM community. Elias is beginning friendships in school. Our neighbors are friendly. We desire deep, genuine friendships with the people in our lives locally and we ask for prayer for this.