Our recent Oral Bible Translation (OBT) outreach to Malawi was a pioneering trip filled with unexpected twists and turns, but one thing that we really saw God moving in was our preparation for the workshop we held in early March. My team and I had no idea what to expect in coming to this workshop, but we felt that our preparation was paramount to what God wanted to do in that short window of time with our friends and mother tongue translators. Our goal was to see 70 mother tongue translators (MTTs), or 7 languages and 10 MTTs from each language, trained in OBT and prepared to begin working on the translation of some short Biblical text. In order to approach this training, we would need to facilitate the translation of our YWAM OBT curriculum.
God made a way for us to translate the OBT resources by sending three YWAMers from the base in Malawi to help us! During the first two months of our outreach, our team of facilitators and mother tongue translators worked for many hours translating the Embodied Principles of Bible Translation, the Holistic Oral Bible Translation chart, and the Translation Village Story, a story-lesson inspired by true events that our teachers, Marcia and Suzuki, leaders of the OBT movement within YWAM, had experienced as young people in the Amazon jungle of Brazil. We hoped that with all of our hard work, we might see the churches of Malawi equipped to do the work of Bible translation, and our friends who helped us might get inspired by Marcia and Suzuki’s story and want to continue doing something within OBT as well. We prayed that this work would catalyze the multiplication of our movement within the nation of Malawi in a way that could only be an act of the Holy Spirit, seeing the entire nation of Malawi discipled by the Word of God!
Thanks to our incredible friends at the YWAM base in Malawi, who together translated the OBT curriculum into the bridge language of Chichewa, we were able to begin our workshop with the 70 MTTs in the city of Mzuzu! Our time with the MTTs inspired our whole team and the community around us, who could see that God was inviting many people to take part in the work of Bible translation. We were able to collaborate together with many different churches from all over Malawi to start 7 Oral Bible Translation projects with the story of the Widow’s Offering out of the Gospel of Luke (Luke 21:1-4). And not only that, but we were able to see how by using the YWAM OBT curriculum, many people were being discipled and discovering that they can translate the Word of God themselves! All in all, our outreach to the nation of Malawi was successful in bringing together the body of Christ for the sake of Bible translation, but what has made it even greater is that in all of the hours of hard work translating OBT resources, God gave us the opportunity to build true friendships with the YWAMers in Malawi and with the inspiring Malawian people who chose to come and learn about OBT with us. With the wisdom of God and the willingness to follow it, anything is possible when we work together for His glory!
A Few More Testimonies:
Muslims Hearing the Gospel
One of the people groups that attended the translation workshop is a primarily Muslim community, and they were able to hear the Gospel preached in a language that they understand, and worship Jesus together with many other Malawians. We could see that God was moving in their hearts over our time together, and we really feel that God is going to mark this community through the work of Bible translation in the future!
Free Dental Clinic for the Community
A team of OBT leaders/mentors/content creators came to help us with leading the workshop and give wisdom to our team, and one of the ladies on the team is a dentist. They brought a whole dental clinic, and a local doctor joined her to help with performing free dental procedures for the whole community around the church. Many people including the chief of that village came to receive dental care and see what we were doing, and many people were touched by the love of Jesus in receiving dental care and seeing their own people learning about Bible translation! God moved in this dental clinic!
Bibles… Healings… The Love of Jesus…
Every Malawian who attended the workshop, including the ladies who cooked the food, received their own Bibles in Chichewa! Also, we saw at least two women get healed from stomach issues while we were sharing the Word of God and praying together! Not only that, but we were so blessed to hear from the Bishop of the church that he has received a deeper hunger for prayer and worship now because of the time we spent together during our outreach. God bless him!!! PRAISE JESUS!!! Here are some photos from the workshop below:
More Recent News
This week I celebrated my 25th birthday (April 16th), and I just wanted to ask for your prayers over this year, and if you receive any encouragement, to please send it to me. I am so grateful to God for saving me and bringing me into this new life that I now have, praise God! I am also very grateful for all of your love, prayers, and support, and I just want to say thank you for supporting me and blessing me to be able to do this work. Some prayer points for this year are below.
Prayer Points for the Year:
- Pray for financial support for all of the travel expenses for this year. I have many potential travel plans to do ministry/training, and to visit friends and family for weddings and holidays, but I need God’s provision to make these opportunities possible.
- Pray for wisdom and prophetic insight and vision over the next year and into 2025, because without vision men perish. I am asking God for increase in wisdom and favor from both God and man (Luke 2:52).
- Please pray for protection and wisdom, strength and good health for me and all those associated with me, asking God for specific prayers, that it may be well with me, my family, friends, and associates. Pray as if they were your family, because hopefully they will be!
Until next time… Blessings and so much love to you and your family! 🙂
How good and pleasant it is when brothers live together in unity!
– Psalm 133:1
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