Something New

A while back, Isaac approached me with an idea to give more to others on a consistent basis. You see, we're regular tithers, and we try to support other good causes as much as possible. Generally speaking, if there was an opportunity to give a little bit financially to an organization, an individual, or a church that we felt was doing good work, we would go ahead and give the extra 5, 10, or 20 bucks.

But we weren't real intentional about it.

We're trying to change that now. Each month, we're choosing a specific cause- whether it is an individual, a family, a church, or an organization- and we're giving a little bit to that cause, in addition to our regular tithing commitment at our church. We're also committing to pray for that particular cause throughout the month. The monetary amount we can give each month isn't a lot, but we know that prayer is powerful and our God is faithful to complete the good works He has begun.

Once we have chosen the cause for the month, I plan on writing a short post about it so that my readers can learn more about the cause which we've chosen; there will also be a permanent spot in the sidebar to the right about the Focus of the Month with a link or links to appropriate website(s).

We hope that we can establish this focus of praying and giving as a family tradition; we feel that focusing on meeting the needs of others in whatever capacity the Lord allows is an important lesson for children and adults alike. We want our children to have a firm grasp of the concept of "it is more blessed to give than to receive." See Acts 20:35.

With that preface, we've chosen our very first Focus of the Month. For security purposes, I will call this couple P and A. P and A are currently training with Wycliffe Bible Translators and are planning on moving to Central Asia sometime this fall. We met this couple before when they came to speak at Grace a while back. They recently returned to our church to be a part of our annual missions conference. I had the privilege of learning from P and A in Sunday school this week, as well as hearing P preach tonight. Isaac and I talked with both of them several times throughout the conference; their passion for the nations and for translation so that all people might have the Word of God written in their own language is completely contagious. I ask that you pray for: their diligence as they are completing linguistic training, logistics involved with them moving to Central Asia, safety in the nation to which they are going, and their work in that nation over the next several years.

P and A work with Wycliffe Bible Translators, an organization which is dedicated to making God's Word accessible to all people in their native language. Did you know that today about 200 million people do not have the Bible in their own language? The most startling thing I learned from P and A is this:

There are 6,912 spoken languages in the world today. Of those languages, only 438 have complete translations of the Bible available. One thousand one hundred and sixty-eight languages have translations of the New Testament. And 2,251 languages do not have any part of the Bible translated; one hundred ninety three million people in the world speak these 2,251 languages.

Dear ones, the harvest is plentiful. The harvest is ready.