Mark preached last Sunday at Tokyo Deaf Baptist Church. His passage was Gen. 24, finding a bride for Isaac, and his “sermon” style this time was highly interactive, with the focus on the passage as translated by Pastor Minamida on the ViBi DVD. Mark would play a paragraph or two of the translation, ask some questions, listen, make some observations, and move on to the next portion. After the service, a new person introduced himself. He was a Catholic Deaf man, and so impressed with the clarity of the translation that he bought the whole set of available DVDs. “I’ve never understood the Bible so clearly,” he said. Pray that we will get the funding and the personnel to complete the translation so that someday, he’ll be able to buy the whole Bible in his language. *
Talking with him over lunch, we found that he had a strong interest and a good understanding of his faith. His father had been of the “hidden Christian” line, so he wasn’t even aware of his father’s faith until the funeral. It was to honor his father and preserve the family faith that he began his quest into Christianity, but it appears that he has moved beyond that now. Pray for him, and for our future interactions, that God will use him to bring the Word to many of his friends, people in circles that go far beyond those we normally encounter.
*$3,000,000 in hand, or $300,000 pledged for the duration of the project could hire the team we need to finish the OT and NT in 10-13 years. Some have all but laughed out loud when we talk about this as if it could actually happen. So pray. Not that we can, or should even want to, twist God’s arm. We serve God, not God us. I wanted to have this in hand by the end of April so we could plan our next year accordingly (board meeting May 15), but what God is planning remains to be seen. I certainly don’t need to be right, and by God’s grace will wait as long as needed, but it does hurt to see the needs and the possibilities so clearly and yet be so far from realizing our vision.
