2015DBRP_211NewsfromPhil&Gale

Time to make clarifications, repeat info, and give news!

• Some have asked, and I am sorry I didn’t make this clear earlier: In the 2014-2015 podcasts I am reading from the NLT (New Living Translation), which is my all-time favorite translation. In future years and as long as someone pays the monthly fee, our publisher will keep the 2015 podcasts available for any who would like to use the NLT when following Digging Deeper Daily reading plan.

• For the 2016 podcasts, we’ll use the same reading plan, but I will be reading all the way through the GNT (Good News Translation). I will share more about that later.

• Let me give you some prayer requests for our Bible translation work in Indonesia:

• Praise the Lord! A Bible teacher in Jakarta recently ordered 300 copies of our Plain Indonesian New Testament.

• It is always timely to pray for wisdom for each of our 4 translation team members plus me— for how to translate the Old Testament. Recently we have worked on our first easy books: Jonah, Esther, and not so easy: Genesis and Psalms 1-25.

 

• Our organization in Indonesia is growing too fast! Please pray for the Lord to supply PEOPLE who can help us manage our growth. We need someone experienced in the organizational development of a Christian non-profit org, and 2-3 people with expertise in Bible translation, or with experience in leading Bible translation programs in ethnic languages. These people need to be Indonesian speakers or be willing to learn that language. As you might imagine, such people are not easy to find.

• Please pray for the new semester starting on August 1 in our on-line Bible translation course. Most of those taking the course will be seminary students. Pray that all would catch a vision for supporting and promoting Bible translation for many ethnic groups in Indonesia, and that some will feel called to translate the Bible for those languages, or help us in translating the OT into plain Indonesian.

• Pray for me. I can’t keep up with 4 team members translating the OT, so how can I keep up if we add more members from those who graduate from the course?

• Gale and I will be traveling to Indiana and New York in the second half of August and the first part of September. Travel is always hard on Gale because of her health situation. Thank your for your prayers!

• Some 600 people are faithfully visiting the dailybiblereading.info web site every day! I praise the Lord for each of you! These are web browser visits, not people using our listening apps. A few months ago I changed the landing page of the site, hoping to make it easier for you to find what you are coming for. I think you all are coming from Youversion (or Bible.com), where you are reading the DDD plan. From the download statistics, it seems that around 100 people are using web browsers to listen to the podcasts, while 500 are just visiting in order to read the introductory material. You people who are using the DBR site, please tell me how I can improve it! And please remember: When searching for a podcast by the day number, include the underscore character before the day number. The large majority of our listeners are using apps for smart devices instead of the web site.

• How many people do you think are signed up for Digging Deeper Daily reading plan at Youversion? Not, podcast listeners, but readers of the plan. Before I tell you the number, I want you to know that only a tiny fraction of the people registered at Youversion are listening to the podcasts. But I find this number mind-boggling: Three months ago the number of people following our reading calendar was approaching 16,000!

• The number of DBRP listeners is … (drum roll)— nearing 700 per episode, and increasing about 50 people per month. I give that statistic in order that you can share in the joy of what the Lord is doing.

• There might be some of you who are saying, “I also would like to leave a recording of God’s Word for my grandkids. Maybe I could do a similar podcast.” And I say, “Go for it! Come on in; the water is fine.” Let me know what you want to do, and I will be glad to answer questions or give pointers on how to start.

• If some of you have been blessed by the podcasts and would like others to find them, here are ways you can help:

• Tell your friends about it. Word of mouth is by far the best promotion.

• Go back to where you originally found the podcast (such as iTunes). Find a Like button, click it. Or please use the little box available there to write a short review. Your Like vote will increase our visibility in search results.

• Another way to spread the word is to Like the dailybiblereading page on Facebook (linked here). Feel free to write something on our Facebook wall. And sharing Facebook posts about the DBRP will also really help.

• The forum is still up at dailybiblereading.info/forum. Not much happening there. But I want to leave it open, because it is a place where some of you may want to ask questions.

• I hope you have tried out the extra series called JoySightings. We are up now to edition _009. I played one of the episodes for a friend in her late 20s, and she said it was hard to understand the King James English that Safed uses in his parables. I would like to know how many of you have trouble understanding them because of the antique language. Please join the forum linked above and tell me!

• Some of you read our prayer letter that I linked to in my last news post. We shared that we needed a different car. We found one that we liked, but we didn’t have the $8000 price. Some dear friends gave us $2,500, and we had $1000 that was a gift from a church where we recently made a presentation. After waiting a week and finding out that the car was still available, we decided buy it and carry a loan for the remainder. But now, through a collection of unrelated special gifts, we have enough to pay off that debt. Praise the Lord for the way He provides at the right time! One touching way God provided this time was through the memorial gifts from the funeral of a precious friend. Nancy faithfully supported our work and prayed for us for over 30 years, originally starting when her husband George was still alive.

• Perhaps you would like to give a one-time gift to help with the cost of publishing these podcasts, or even give on a recurring basis to support our Bible translation work like Nancy did. The four different ways to send gifts to support us are explained in a PDF document that is attached to this podcast, also linked here in the episode notes, and linked at the bottom of the Our Story page at dailybiblereading.info. People who support us enjoy the letters that Gale sends along with the tax deductible receipts.

 

Thanks for listening. The Southern blessing that I use often in the podcasts was one I remember Billy Graham using when I was listening to his radio programs in high school. And I’ll close with that. May the Lord bless you ‘real good’!

Check out this episode!