We are very proud of Daniel, our 2026 graduate! We will celebrate with Daniel and two of his friends, who are also graduating, from the school our kids attend on Wednesdays. Daniel will continue the work he loves, learning and honing his skills in plumbing, electrical, and HVAC at PS Property Services in Blue Springs, MO. We are delighted that he will continue to live at home!

Ariela is performing in the Cinderella musical at their school, Mighty Roots Academy. She does a great job acting and singing (see the pictures below). This Saturday will be her second performance.

Ariela as villager (far right)

We’ve been traveling recently. Todd preached and gave a missions update at Graham Union Church in Graham, Missouri. We visited Todd’s mom in her nursing home in Oklahoma City, OK, and then went on to Dallas, TX, for a family reunion with Pam’s side of the family. It was a special time for Pam and her three sisters to be together, and for us to catch up with our Texas nephews, nieces, and their spouses. A highlight for Ariela was a horse-riding lesson from her cousin! We all visited the Dallas/Ft. Worth National Cemetery, where Pam’s mom and Dad, Mal and Barbie Hughes, are buried. This was our first time seeing their finished headstones (see pictures below).

We are plugging away at translating 2 Samuel in the Gurbet language. We’re thankful that Goran, one of the Gurbet translators, was healthy enough today to join us online for our regular Wednesday session. Thank you for continuing to pray for him as he battles health issues with his breathing and autoimmune system. We’ve also made good progress translating Acts and James into the Macedonian Arli language during our Friday online sessions.

Thank you for being on our team for the Kingdom!

Todd & Pamala

Hello from Serbia, where Pamala and I arrived yesterday. We’re thankful for safe travel, our bags coming through without a hitch, and good sleep on our first night despite jet lag. We enjoyed the warm fellowship of friends/colleagues who live in Belgrade, Serbia, Eric and Susan. They were on our team in Bosnia 22 years ago, studying language, and have been dear friends ever since. We hadn’t seen them for seven years, so it was wonderful to catch up. They are pictured with us below.

Since we flew through Atlanta, where Matthew lives, he came to meet us at the airport, where we had coffee and pastries and caught up for an hour. See the picture below.

The reason we came to Serbia is to celebrate the completion of the New Testament in three Roma languages: Arli, Gurbet, and Chergash. Tomorrow there will be a dedication and distribution, and we’ll be sure to share pictures with you of the event. It is a huge milestone, marking many years of labor, and we praise God for bringing it to completion.

Please thank God with us for a safe and smooth trip.

Please pray that God will be glorified through the events of the next few days at the NT dedication and distribution, and our time visiting with the translators and other colleagues involved in this Bible translation work.

Thank you for your prayers,

Todd & Pamala

This week, I finished the consultant (quality assurance) check of 1 Samuel with the Gurbet language team. As soon as they run the final checks for punctuation, spelling, and formatting, and do one more read-through, this will be published to the Internet and available for the world to see! We love it when each verse of the Bible is translated, but it is always special to finish an entire book.

Samuel anoints Saul as king

Whenever we translate, our goal is always for the meaning of the text to be clear to those who will read or listen to it. Since many phrases are unfamiliar to those who have not grown up reading the Bible and attending church, we work hard to ensure they can grasp the implied information that the Bible’s original readers would have known intuitively. Here are a few examples from our work in 1 Samuel.

In 1 Samuel 28:6, it says that the LORD did not answer Saul’s request for guidance “by dreams, nor through the Urim, nor through prophets.” Because some will not know that the Urim was one of two stones (Urim and Thummim) used by the priest, like lots, to determine God’s will, we translated the phrase as “nor through the Urim stone.”

First Samuel has many references to the “ephod”. The word “ephod” would be meaningless to many of our readers. Some Croatian translations say “vest”, but we made the meaning clearer by translating “the priest’s vest”.

Sometimes the lack of clarity comes not from a single word but from a cultural or background issue unfamiliar to today’s Roma readers. For example, the draft translation of Gurbet of 1 Samuel 4:12 said, “That day a Benjaminite escaped from the battle in Shiloh, his clothes were torn and on his head was dust.” However, readers might think the man just happened to be dirty or ragged from the war or from running, and might miss the symbolic meaning of his appearance. We made this clear by adjusting our translation to say “… His clothes were torn and on his head he had put dirt/ashes to show his sorrow.

Another unclear verse is 1 Samuel 26:19c, where David is speaking to Saul while he is fleeing for his life from him: “Now they have driven me from my part in the LORD’s land, saying: ‘Go and serve other gods.’” The participle “saying” in Hebrew can sometimes have a clarifying meaning, such as “in other words” or “that is”. Here, David is saying that Saul, by chasing him and driving him out of the land of Israel and away from the land of the tabernacle, is forcing him into a pagan land where he cannot worship properly. We made this clearer in our translation this way: “Now they have driven me from my part in the LORD’s land. This is like they are saying to me: ‘Go and serve other gods.’”

Samuel anoints David as king

I hope these examples help you see some of the issues we deal with as we translate the Scriptures for the Roma who do not yet have the full Bible in their language.

Praise God with us for the completion of 1 Samuel in Gurbet, and continue to pray for wisdom and efficiency as we move on in the OT, translating 2 Samuel and 1-2 Chronicles next.

Thank you for your prayers and support!

a Dead Sea Scrolls portion of 1 Samuel from Cave 4 at Qumran

FINANCIAL UPDATE:

Please pray that the Lord will provide the remaining $2,000 per month we lack in financial support pledges. If you would like to give toward this need, please see the giving information below. Thank you so much!