MICHEALS’ MEMOIRS Update
Dear Friends and Family, How do we pass on to all of you our continued thanks for your support of our work? First, a huge thank you to all who have stood in partnership with us with your prayers, letters and emails and financial gifts. Little did we think when we first joined Wycliffe Bible Translators in 1985 that we’d still be involved today, but because of your generous support we have and are able to continue our work with Wycliffe. We continue to ask you to pray for continued support of our work since we are today, as we were on our first day with Wycliffe, dependent solely on the gifts of God’s people. Details on how you can do that are found at the end of this newsletter.
Translation Needs Continue To Drop!!! In May we reported that there were 1,859 languages that needed Bible translation work started. However, the new figures have just come out and that number has dropped to 1,778 and it is going to drop even lower as Chuck this year recruited two couples join Wycliffe as Bible translators!!!
That means in the last year over 80 Bible translation projects have been started. We praise the Lord for new Bible translation work in these languages!!! Recruitment Update Your continued support of our work not only helped reduce the number of languages needing translation work, but also allowed Barb to work with a dozen young people who took short term trips this past summer to Papua New Guinea (PNG). It also allowed Chuck in the last three years recruit over 50 support personnel to assist in our work! We give praise to the Lord for these new workers! Several new members Chuck recruited are serving as organizational consultants by helping new Bible translation organizations in Latin America get started. Several are serving as teachers and boarding home parents for missionary children in PNG. Others are taking on work as accountants in the Philippines and PNG, as an audio/video technician in Australia with language communities, doing government relations work in Washington D.C., serving as a physician to assist new missionaries heading overseas, helping manage regional centers in PNG, serving as the Dean of Students at our linguistic/Bible translation school in Dallas, TX, doing training in Conflict Resolution and another serving as an Aviation Safety officer in PNG.
Our aircraft fleet in PNG – Flying Bible translators to some of the world’s most remote locations in PNG!
New Bible Translation Needs List
One of the significant things the Lord has helped us in is to learn how to do recruitment at a lower cost. In the past, at times it has cost Wycliffe $ 5,000 to recruit a new member since it often required travel to meet interested people. Since Chuck does recruitment work from our home and does almost all his recruitment by Skype, email or by cell phone, he has been able to bring down the cost for recruiting one new member this year to just $170!!! We praise the Lord for the use of technology to help contain recruitment costs.