Hi there. 

It’s Aunty Gill here again. I hope that everyone reading this is feeling happy and well. 

Have you ever heard of a game called Padel? 

It is similar to tennis, except the bat is smaller, thicker and made of a kind of foam and the court is much smaller and it has glass sides all around it. You normally play with 4 people- two on each side of the net. You hit the ball over the net and get points when the other people can’t get it back to you. 

I hadn’t heard of it until a few months ago, but I have started playing it with my friend, Debbie. Debbie and I are PARTNERS. Here is a picture of Debbie and I after we played padel last week. 

We play together against other people. We are on one side of the net together and we work together to try to play the best we can. Debbie and I are good PARTNERS. There are some things that she can do very well and other things that I am better at, so we make a good team. Debbie is very good at hitting the ball when it comes off the glass sides. I am not good at that at all. I am quite good at serving the ball across the net for the first shot of the game, and Debbie is not as good as me at that part. If I tried to play padel all by myself, I would not be very good at all. I would not be able to play well all by myself. I could try my best, but to play good padel, I need a PARTNER. Having a PARTNER means that we play much better and we both have different skills and talents that our team benefit from and we help each other with the things that each of us are not so good at. We are definitely much stronger and much better together! 

The team at Wycliffe South Africa know that about half of the languages that people around the world speak do not even have one verse of the Bible in that language. This means that millions of people all over the world have never heard any of God’s Word in the language  that they speak in their home! 

Wycliffe South Africa are working so hard to get the Bible translated into more languages so that more and more people around the world can understand that Jesus loves them, that He died for them, that He rose from the dead and that God wants them to believe in Him and accept Him as their Lord and Saviour. The team at Wycliffe South Africa are doing a very good job at this, but…just like I would not play a very good game of padel if I did it all by myself, without a PARTNER, Wycliffe can do a much better job with a PARTNER! 

They do not need PARTNERS who have padel bats and can run fast and hit a ball well, Wycliffe needs churches to be their PARTNERS. When the team and Wycliffe and the people at churches work together as PARTNERS, they can do a much better job at helping more people get the Word of God in their own language so they can understand it. 

The team at Wycliffe South Africa is a small group of people. They do a very good job, but they could help even more people get God’s Word if they had more people to work with them. 

I am sure that a lot of the boys and girls reading this go to a church. I have a challenge for you today! Are you ready to say YES to this challenge? 

My challenge to you is to go and speak to your pastor. Ask him this important question: Can our church partner with Wycliffe South Africa to help them help more people to get a Bible, or even part of a Bible in their language? If he asks how then you could suggest that he checks out the ideas at https://wycliffe.org.za/wycliffe-links/resources. Some of the people from Wycliffe could come and visit your church and tell you all about their work and give you some more ideas about how you could partner with them. You could start to collect money to help Wycliffe do their work. You could have an event where you even invite other churches to maybe involve them in partnering with Wycliffe too. 

I look forward to hearing from you about how you got on with our challenge. Hope you had a great chat with your pastor. 

Love,

Aunty Gill