Hi Friends!
This Tuesday September 6th I’ll be leaving for Indonesia. The travel time is a gruelling 21 hours and 44 minutes. By the time I get out of the airport in Jakarta it will probably be almost 1AM on the 8th, Western Indonesia Time. I’ll be There for 7 weeks.
Some of you may be wondering how I will manage to keep the daily podcasts going while I am in Indonesia. I already have 25 episodes scheduled to go off at 12AM Greenwich Mean Time on their respective days, and I will have another 30 episodes for which I have already recorded the main content. So I will edit them, add the prayer at the end, and send them out in Indonesia— Lord willing. I have been working a bit extra every day since returning from my last trip there to get that far ahead again. Often in Indonesia it is really hard for me to record anything because of all sorts of environmental noise, and at other times, I don’t have a good enough Internet connection to send an audio file anywhere.
At least for the Android users, we have newly released updates for both the Youversion Bible reading app and also for the Daily Bible Reading podcast app. I’m pretty sure you Apple product users have updated apps also. I really enjoy the improvements to the Bible app.
Gale would tell you that I think each of my trips to Indonesia is going to be the most important one ever. That’s just who I am. It’s no different this time. This is my most important trip ever. Here’s the difference for me this time: I believe the Lord wants me to change the whole way our organization is doing its Bible translation ministries.
Three years back we started a nonprofit Bible translation organization in Jakarta with the short name of Albata. It seemed necessary to have an organization name in order to publish our Plain Indonesian New Testament. Let me describe what it’s like for an expat missionary to sort of ‘own’ a legally registered nonprofit org. An organization needs an office. Our office is just a bit larger than a spacious walk-in closet. I hired a manager to work in the office. An office needs equipment and a vehicle. Hey, we need donors to give more funds. Our organization grows as the Lord blesses, and we add a full-time translator at the office. Hey, we need donors to give more funds. Then, growing more, we need a secretary and a coordinator for developing partnerships. There’s not enough room for 3-4 people to sit in the office, and it isn’t appropriate if one is a woman! Hey, we need to rent a bigger office for Albata. It would be helpful to open a branch office in Medan. How much will that cost? We’ll need to hire someone. Have I mentioned that we need donors to give more funds?
Our Albata web site says that our main strategy is prayer. (I got that idea from Pioneer Bible Translators— my sponsoring organization.) But it’s become obvious to me that prayer has not really been our main strategy so far. I led us into getting trapped into doing what all nonprofit organizations do that are not already sponsored by rich people. Seek donors. I’m going to dismantle that on this trip and totally rebuild. Here is our new identity:
Albata is a network of friends who pray that the understanding of God’s Word will increase everywhere in Indonesia.
Albata will be based on prayer cells. I’m going to deactivate our office. People will think I’m crazy, but we won’t be doing business as usual any more. Prayer cells don’t need an office. Prayer cells don’t need government permissions at multiple levels. Prayer cells don’t need to hire someone to start another prayer cell in a new city. And here’s another thing: Indonesians are not great at being donors, but they are fantastic at networking!
Albata is a network of friends who pray that the understanding of God’s Word will increase everywhere in Indonesia.
The cool thing is that this is already happening. In a little out-of-the-way island called Bangka, 24 volunteers are recording our whole New Testament. (This is a project in cooperation with a state-side organization called Faith Comes By Hearing, but that group was already operating a year before that partnership happened.) Since the group formed, no one from there has ever asked me for money. I’m putting a link in the episode notes to the Friends of Albata Facebook group so that you can see pictures posted by Kristiana in that group. Another group has formed in a major city, where they already are using radio and print media to promote our New Testament. In another major city, we have people who would like to see our New Testament translation modified to use terminology that will make it more acceptable to new believers who are coming out of the nation’s major religion. I believe that if we have groups of people praying about that, the whole adaptation project could be done by volunteers who are members of the target group.
Please pray that prayer groups will be started in 6 different locations during my trip to Indonesia. That’s a big enough request that I think we’ll know that God is answering if it happens.
Our online Bible translation course is the way that volunteers get the skills needed before becoming involved with our Old Testament translation team. We now have 7 people in the course. Please pray that we would have a total of 30 people in the course by the end of September, and that 15 would become volunteer friends of our translation team.
If you enjoyed the JoySightings series readings of the book Tales of the Resistance, by David & Karen Mains, and if you have a suggestion for another book for me to read, please give your suggestion our Digging Deeper Facebook group. See the direct link to the group in the episode notes. https://www.facebook.com/groups/DBRPdiggingdeeper/ I’ll also share pictures with that group while I’m in Indonesia.
You can sign up for our There, and Back Again letter list using another link in the episode notes:
http://pioneerbible.us1.list-manage2.com/subscribe?u=6087c6506e6f44abed060167e&id=c4c06b0c71
As always: May the Lord bless you real good.
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