for such a time as this: pray for next week’s Roma missions conference

Next week here in Budapest there will be a very significant conference. It is the first conference of its kind to bring together 200 leaders involved in ministry to Roma. I just found out that I have been asked to speak at one of the main sessions. Please pray for me as I prepare and for the conference as a whole to be used by the Lord to further his work among the Roma. The goals of the conference, written by the organizers, the Great Commission Center International, make excellent prayer points, so please pray for the Lord of the Harvest
1. To stir up the awareness of the global church to care for the most neglected Roma people
2. To encourage churches and mission agencies to strengthen their mission work among the Roma
3. To encourage Roma Christians to become missionaries
4. To help network small Roma churches for mutual support
5. To provide opportunity for churches and missionary organizations to form a united effort for Roma missions.

The conference will take place in English, Serbian, Albanian, Bulgarian, Hungarian and Romanian, and runs September 29-October 3 here in Budapest.

My talk will be Thursday morning, Oct. 2, on the topic of “Bible-Centered Ministry”. I hope to challenge the listeners to make God’s Word the center of their ministry strategy and to use Scripture in all its forms (written, audio Bible, videos illustrating Bible texts, etc.) in ministry to Roma using their heart language. I will be introducing our new initiative, the Roma Bible Society, whose goal is to see Bible translation started in the next 10 years for each of the Roma dialects which need a Bible translation. Please pray for unity among all the participants and that we will come away from this week with practical goals, plans and action points to get God’s Word to all the Roma of Europe and western Eurasia in their heart languages. (There are over 85 Roma dialects spoken in this part of the world; to our knowledge, only 10 have the Scriptures translated.)