Hello and greetings! I’m thankful that you are listening to my news. In this episode I will tell you about
- Changes to the DBRP web site, and our new web address
- A new feature soon to appear on our DBRP listening app
- What?! Now Phil has a secretary?!
- Changing the way the NET podcast will be structured and re-releasing the first episode
- Answers to prayer
- And news from our family.
Our main Internet address is dailybiblereading.info. Today we have a second Internet address with a very different format where you can also access the DBRP episodes, and that is dailybiblereading.xyz. (The first part of the address is identical, and just the part after the dot is different.) So why in the world would I make a new site and address?! What you see at the .info site is a WordPress site that I created. It has served us pretty well, and there are about 60 listeners accessing it daily. But there is a new and improved automatically generated web page supplied by our podcast publisher that really is better than our .info site. The .xyz site has the new web site, and I invite you to try it out. Here are some advantages in the new site:
- It has a more unified structure and appearance with our dedicated DBRP listening app.
- It is much easier with the new .xyz site to access the different Categories of our podcasts. Those categories include NL podcasts (New Living), GN (Good News) podcasts, Parables (which contains the JoySighting series), and also the News podcasts like this one, which are under the Information category.
- You can now leave comments about any podcast using the .xyz web site. And very soon, the DBRP listening apps will be updated and you will be able to leave a comment right from within the app.
That comment feature is really cool! The comments that you listeners can now leave via the .xyz site in the future with the listening app, use a Facebook plugin. You will be able to choose if you want your post to just stay in the DBRP web site and listening app, or— if you check a box, your comment will also be posted to Facebook. This will provide a way to say something about any episode to other listeners who access that same episode. Also, if you post to your own Facebook timeline, your post will encourage your friends to listen to that episode. But for asking questions or sharing with the DBRP listening community, visiting our Digging Deeper Facebook group directly would be better. The link to the group is here in the episode notes, and will soon be prominently linked at the .xyz site.
I am sure that a few of the legacy .info site’s users will not want to learn how to use the new .xyz site! So I am going to keep the legacy web site still available. However, one week from now, the two web pages are going to switch places. The NEW site will take the default spot and occupy the .info address. If you want to keep on using the old web site, you will find a link to it right in the landing area of the new-looking .info site.
I haven’t had a secretary since 1981, when I was a music instructor at what is now Cornerstone University. And back then in that job, I couldn’t keep the student assigned to help me busy. But now I have a secretary, and for me, that will take some getting used to. Her name is Vicky Pool, and she has recently joined our Facebook group as Victoria Pool. Vicky is a member of our church, and she is legally blind. Smart use of adaptive technology enables her to help me. Vicky is volunteering her time as a service to the Lord, and I’m just praising the Lord for her help! And this leads naturally to another topic: I have asked Vicky to promote the use of these Bible reading podcasts with various communities connecting blind and legally blind people. If any of you have any ideas or links to such groups, please make a post in the Digging Deeper Facebook group, or send a Facebook message to Victoria Pool.
I want to give a shout out to Doug Pack and Carol Visser from the Facebook group, and thank them for helping me to look critically at the new NE series of podcasts, which are for the New English Translation. The NET is a translation that has a vast amount of footnotes, and it is a great translation to use for Digging Deeper. So I thought that I might encourage more digging, by digging deeper myself— making longer podcasts including more of my comments. Instead of around 22 minutes, the first NE podcast was 50 minutes long. I think it was Carol who said that some people with shorter commutes might be tempted to try to fast forward in the listening app while driving. We don’t want that. In an effort to give something to the normal commuting DBRP listener and also to those special people who want to dig deeper, the NE series will be released in two parts like this: The first part will have a plain three digit number, and the second part will have the same number plus a letter C. The re-released first episode will be named NE-DBRP_001 and will contain the regular 22 minute podcast, structured just like the GN and NL podcast series. BUT, another podcast will be released with the same name and number, but with a C at the end— NE-DRRP_001C. The C stands for Comments. That 001C podcast will probably be 50 or 60 minutes long, even though it will not contain the Scripture readings. If you decide to listen to a podcast with a C following the number, listen to the plain numbered postcast first, or have your Bible reading app open.
Your voice could be included in the NE podcast series! If you would like to read a portion, or several portions of the NET Bible for the podcasts, please contact my secretary, Victoria Pool, via a Facebook message. The most difficult thing in this will be getting good enough quality recordings of you reading, without background noises.
Recently we have been given some huge answers to prayer for our Bible translation work in Indonesia. Our big long-term prayer request is to finish the Plain Indonesian Old Testament draft (not the final product, just a good draft) sometime in the year 2020. We cannot meet this goal unless we have more people helping us. There are three amazing answers to prayer that have come recently:
- We won’t meet our goal if I am the only consultant-level person working with the team. The Lord has now brought someone willing to help us who has 17 years of Bible translation and translation consulting experience in Indonesia. The arrangements are not all in place yet, but please pray that nothing will hinder this person from joining our team and taking over about half of my load. In fact, please pray that the Lord will bring several more qualified people to join us.
- We also need more Indonesians to join our translation team to create that first draft of the Old Testament. I send out a prayer bulletin each month in the Indonesian language, and this month I included a letter from Paula— one of the members of our translation team. She gave a very frank testimony about her personal struggles just prior to joining our translation team. How could she endure the stares and whispers? And could such a person as her be a Bible translator? How could she make any progress going forward if she was always looking back? After a season of prayer and reading God’s Word, she was blessed by Ephesians 1:3-14. She understood that God loved her and chose her from before the creation of this world, that she is now part of the people made holy by God, that through Jesus she has been adopted as God’s child, and that the Holy Spirit is her guarantee of all this. Now, several years later, she is the most productive member of our team. She created the rough draft of 11 chapters of the OT last month. In my prayer bulletin, just after her testimony, I commented that the work of Bible translation is not done by angels, but by ordinary Christians who have weaknesses. Guess what! We now have five new people who are taking our online Bible translation course. Please pray that at least 3 of them will finish the course by the first week of September and join our team. My next trip to Indonesia starts in the second week of September.
- In a string of the most unlikely coincidences, the Lord has supplied the funds to bring our translation team together for a week of meetings. We now have funds to add another full time employee for managing the checking of our Old Testament drafts. And we have the funds to expand our office in Jakarta and rent a good satellite Internet connection for our translation coordinator— who lives in a rural part of West Kalimantan.
We have some very big prayer requests, and the Lord is answering them!
Paula (a single parent) with her children
In my last news podcast (number 172) I mentioned that I was putting pictures in the episode notes. But I didn’t realize that our DBRP listening apps won’t show you the pictures. But our two web sites (dailybiblereading.info and .xyz) show you the pictures. This time I will include a picture of Paula’s family, and pictures from Gale, who is currently in East Africa visiting our daughter Rachel.
Rachel is wrapping up her service in East Africa next month. Her health does not support her living there long-term. Please pray that the Lord will increase her monthly financial support, so that she can move to Dallas and work in the home office of Pioneer Bible Translators. Being able to better control her diet in the USA, she anticipates being able to work full time in Dallas managing financial accounting for projects and grants in several PBT branches.
Monkeys in Rachel's yard.
Our daughter Hannah (with Brandon and three children) have moved to Jakarta. I will be able to read books to three of our grandkids (Ava, Joel, and Devan) on my trips there! Brandon is managing a learning center to help the children of Middle-eastern refugees that get stuck in Jakarta. The web site for the Roshan Learning Center is linked in the episode notes. The work of the Roshan Learning Center is sponsored by the church I attend in Jakarta. I also link here a very beautiful video describing this ministry.
I seldom have mentioned our son David. He and Jen with their children Luke and Laura, are a blessing to us here in our home town of Siloam Springs, AR. It is so neat to worship in the same church with them. David is one of the principals of Solve, a company that makes applications for managing and interpreting large sets of data.
The theme of this podcast has kind of been Changes: Changes in our web site, changes in the NE podcasts, changes in where our kids live and are ministering, and changes due to God answering our prayers. There is a song entitled Changes that was on a cassette tape sent to us by a dear friend when our kids were young. Our kids would often go to sleep listening to this informally recorded performance. The cassette only listed the name James Croggert, but I have never been able to find out who he is, or was. If anyone knows about him, please contact me! This was probably recorded around 1986 in the Chicago area. There is a charming, self-taught musical style to the recordings. The words to the song Changes are in the episode notes, and this podcast will close with that song transfered from that well-used cassette tape.
YOU, dear friend, are one of those ‘faces carrying Sonshine’ mentioned in the third verse. And may the Lord bless you ‘real good’!
Changes coming upon us,
He keeps moving, moving around us.
Gotta keep dancing, knowing He loves us,
Gotta keep joy in our hearts.
He knows all of our needs and
He will meet them following his plan.
Even the changes turning in his hand
Soon will be part of it all.
So we enter a new time,
There are places where it’s a hard climb.
But there are faces carrying Son-shine
Warming our path as we go.
Sometimes we may be lonely,
It’s a hard job making us holy.
But in the long run there will be glory—
Glory to rival the sun.
Gale's picture of sunrise on the coast
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