Praise God for finishing phase 1 of the Bible translation project

Today I filled out the final quarterly report for progress on the Gospel of Luke and 50 Bible stories in the Ludari Roma language. This completes phase 1 of the Bible translation project!

In the report, I answered the following question, and gave the following prayer requests, which I wanted to share with all of you, our faithful prayer partners and supporters:

Q: What was the biggest translation challenge that the translation team faced this last quarter and how did they respond?

A: We chose a female to do the audio recording of the 50 Bible stories. She was a good reader, except when it came to reading numbers for verse references, which we list to show where the stories are taken from in the Bible. She was struggling with that but then she and Sergej figured out that if they wrote everything out in letters it would be much easier to read than the Arabic numerals. Once they made that change, she showed real improvement in reading speed for the audio recordings.

For Luke, we wanted a male voice. We hired someone that we thought would do a good job. But Luke is a long book to read and we found that he was having a very hard time reading and had to repeat things numerous times and make numerous recording attempts. He eventually told us that he hadn’t been speaking Ludari at home for years (he had been using Croatian) so he was having a hard time reading in Ludari. Sergej did the math and saw that with the time remaining there was no way this reader could finish the project by our deadline. He approached another potential reader who agreed. We were so encouraged to see that he read much faster than the previous narrator, so we were able to bring him on and finish the audio recording of Luke by the deadline.

Please pray for the following:

1. The Pioneers team in Slavonski Brod, Croatia, has plans to go door-to-door in the two largest Ludari villages to offer the printed copies of Luke/50 Bible stories/glossary that we printed. Please pray that many Ludari would be interested and that the Lord would use His Word powerfully both to bring Ludari to Christ, and also to strengthen the few Ludari believers.
2. Pray for the two churches who have Ludari speakers. One is very supportive of the project and we ask prayer that the believers in that church will greatly benefit from having Luke and the Bible stories in the language. One of the churches has people who have been extremely critical of the translation. Please pray that the Lord would soften hearts, that He would use the translation among people in the church, and that we could forge a good working relationship as we desire to see the rest of the NT translated into Ludari.
3. We have printed business cards that give the website address and YouTube channel name which the Pioneers team will hand out so people will know where to go online and listen to Luke and the 50 Bible stories in Ludari. Since we think people will find that more usable than reading (at least at this point), please pray that many would listen online to these audio recordings of God’s Word.
4. Pray for the long-term goals, that God will raise up two or three Ludari translators who can commit full-time to the project and a Diploma in Bible Translation so that we can complete more of the NT as soon as possible.

Thank you so much for your prayers and faithful support!