July 2010 Prayer Letter
Subject: Dear Friends and Coworkers,
Yesterday as we were busy on our computers a Skype ring was heard and we soon saw not only our Tenek translators Fernando and Christy Angeles appear on a laptop but also the entire Tenek committee. They were working through the portions we had checked in May and had questions for us. Can this really be happening? We are in our children’s condo in Grand Rapids while they are in a tiny house on a dirt road in the jungles of Mexico, but we can work together face to face! The day may well come soon when we can use such a system for a full workshop. Lord willing we will be having the next Tenek workshop at Northland University in Wisconsin from October 11-15. We are praying that the students at the college and seminary will come to appreciate and support the ministry among the Tenek and our work of Bible translation in general.
The past few days have certainly reminded us of our mortality. We returned briefly to Maine for the memorial service of Cathy’s dear sister-in-law Ellie. During that time we received word that her younger brother Mark had been seriously injured in an industrial accident. A few hours later we received word that Ross’ dad had been hospitalized with serious symptoms. The simple fact is that the calendar is still flipping no matter how much we would like to stop it. Cathy and I feel a real constraint to complete a number of training manuals we are working on so that the young workers that the Lord is raising up behind us can effectively do the work even though they do not have all the experience that we have enjoyed. We have ten weeks remaining before our travel begins again, please pray that we will invest them wisely in the rewriting of these manuals.
One big help that Bibles International gives its consultants is to stage a seminar each summer where we can work together to create better ways of doing our work and listen to really practical ideas from men outside our own group. The first of this month saw some twenty of us working together. As we listened to reports from Birch, Connie, and others about improvements in soft ware and language research, it was hard to keep from being just a little envious of the generation that is following us. If the Lord tarries, the next few decades should see not only a great increase in the accuracy and speed of Bibles being translated but also tremendous improvements in the way they are made available to their readers. Another great joy for us at the seminar was to look around and see the number of the young people present who had started out making trips with us just to help out in small ways. Through on the job training, they are passing their teachers and establishing their own ministries.
Our plans now for September and October is to teach at Northland and conduct the Tenek workshop there. We will then fly to conduct workshops in New Guinea, India and finally Myanmar with our return in the spring. Please keep us in your prayers.
In Christ,
Ross and Cathy Hodsdon
Hodsdon
