Translation work continues on at a regular clip. The North Maluku Malay team has just finished meeting at a central city on their island to prepare Acts for printing. Jacqui has daily contact with them, working with them to make some final decisions on standardizing terms before printing. She has also been helping the main translator get a draft of the first ten chapters of Matthew ready to pass out to the team members so they can take this with them to their respective villages and do checks on them. The past two weeks I (Ron) have been working on Matthew 6-16 with the Manado Malay translation team. The Manado team is also doing field testing of 1-3 John and parts of the book of James.

You’ll remember that the Lord led us into more of a training role when we opened up the Translation Center on a Christian university campus in Indonesia in the year 2000. We’ve been working on training leadership since then. Well, this very week another step has been taken. One of the translators on the Manado Malay team, Yanti, has shown great promise as a translator and has assisted in translation checking in the last couple of years. And right now Yanti is in the southern Philippines getting further training in her path to become a translation consultant. We praise God that she has been able to take this next step. She studied a lot the last couple of months before she left Indonesia. She has been studying English, especially working on her linguistic and translation vocabulary. We’ve heard that she is struggling a little with the English in the seminar, but is keeping up with a little assistance from others. During this two week training seminar for translation consultants, there will be a hand full of senior translation consultants who help the consultants-in-training get some practice in consulting. Please pray for Yanti and the other 25 or so who are taking the training. This is a big key to the future of Bible Translation in Indonesia and other parts of Asia.

Anskar and Grace continue on with their Bible schooling in the city of Manado. We had some good communication with Anskar recently. He shared in some detail this week how he had a chance to share the Gospel with some of his friends during Christmas vacation when he was back in his Sawai village. In early February, one of his good friends phoned Anskar from his Sawai village, telling Anskar that he had accepted Jesus as his Savior. Praise the Lord! Both Anskar and Grace have an exciting new faith, and it is contagious. Let pray many, many more into the Kingdom.

We just got word yesterday that Grace’s younger brother (he was only 7 years old) passed away in her village. So she has left the Bible School in the city of Manado to return to her village in the Sawai area. Please pray for Grace and her family as they deal with this very difficult situation. Pray that God would use this time to reach others with the Good News.

Serving together,

Ron (and Jacqui)

 Our new address and phone number:

Ron and Jacqui Whisler

3571 Sterling Woods Dr.

Eugene, OR 97408

Home phone: (541) 485-9653