PREPARED FOR GOOD
Hi kids. Aunty Gill here again. I hope you had a lovely Christmas and that you have had a very happy New Year so far.
I was so blessed to go on a very special holiday over New Year. I visited a country called Italy. The people in Italy speak a language called Italian. Some people speak a little bit of English.
One day, when my family and I were in Italy we went to a little restaurant for supper. We were very hungry when we got there. We went inside and sat down at the table. The waiter smiled and said “Buona sera” to us. This means “Good evening” in Italian. Then he gave us the menus. We opened them up and everything was written in Italian! There was not one English word, and there were no pictures. We all had to choose something to order, when we couldn’t understand any of the words written on the menu. It was very hard to read it when we could not speak or understand that language! My husband, Karl, and I ended up with really nice meals, but both of our sons are still wondering exactly what was on their plate that night. They didn’t really like it, that’s for sure! They were still hungry when we went home, because they could not understand the language that the menu was written in and so they had to guess and order something, but it was something quite unusual and it didn’t taste very good.
When I thought about it afterwards, how hard it was to read something in a language we did not understand, it reminded me of all those many, many people who have to read the Bible in a language they don’t understand. It must be so difficult for them!
I felt a bit disappointed that the owners of that restaurant had not been better prepared for English visitors. There are so many English-speaking visitors in their town during each winter. If they had thought about the sort of visitors that would be coming at that time of year and prepared for them coming, they would have been ready for us with an English menu. They would have been willing to make a few changes for the good of their business. That would have really helped their business. We would have told people how good the restaurant was and suggested they all visit there too. Things at the restaurant would have been good, with more customers, if they had been better prepared.
The Wycliffe Bible Translation teams always try to do a great job of being prepared for good things. They think carefully about what work they want to do and then they prepare well so that they can do their work really well. When God leads the team at Wycliffe South Africa to a new group of people who don’t have any Bibles in their own language, they spend a lot of time getting ready to start working with this group of people. They spend time researching on their computers and have lots of meetings. Some people from Wycliffe South Africa go to visit the group of people and get to know them, and they talk together about who will be on the translation team and who will do which jobs. Then the translation team does lots and lots of work before they can have even a few verses of the Bible in the language they understand. They really do a lot of preparation so that they can do a good job of Bible translation. They don’t want to make any mistakes. They want the words they give to the people to be really excellent so that the people can learn about Jesus and the love He has for us and their lives can be changed. They prepare well for good stuff to follow.
Why don’t you pray for the people at Wycliffe South Africa this week? Thank God for the work they are doing and ask God to help them and guide them, to give them finances, wisdom, time, protection and His blessing as they do their really important work.
Love from Aunty Gill
