Team Vanuatu Update November 2019.

Houghton made this video for our main sending church Grace Bible in Miles City, MT USA.  But it is a good overall update of what we're working on now and what our needs and goals are.  Thanks for praying!

59% NT drafted!

Just this month we hit a huge mile marker!  Nearly 60% of our New Testament in the Rral language of North Ambrym has been drafted.  By drafted we just mean that a first draft has been written.  This is of course a small step in a long process including exegetical checks (checking that the language says what the Greek means), edits, formatting, translating it back into either Bislama (Vanuatu's trade language) or to English so an outside consultant can check it for us, and checking for naturalness and meaning with native Rral speakers, but we are excited that we have gotten to this point.

Our team that did the last check (consultant check) on Genesis in July.

We now have the following books completely finished:  Genesis, Ruth, Esther, Jonah, about 200 other OT verses, and Mark.  Acts is nearly in this category but we are awaiting an available consultant to check it before we print it.

My screen for Acts.  On the left is the back translation in Bislama, on the right is the Rral language, left bottom is Bislama Bible, various English versions, and translation notes.

We are currently editing Exodus and Matthew.

The books we have fully drafted but not finished yet include:  Exodus, Matthew, Luke, John, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and James.

Praise God with us for His faithfulness to us in giving us great helpers and wisdom as we work through these books!

The bay below our house.

Mark phone app

Another tool we have to go along with both our Gospel of Mark and our Family Story Bible is an app for smart phones.  It plays audio for the chosen chapter and highlights the scripture that is being read, which is a great literacy tool!  We also have pictures to go with each chapter, to give visual interest to those listening.  It can of course just be read on the phone too, without audio.  The tool allows links for glossary words, footnotes, and cross references, as tools for church leaders.  Please pray with us that as more and more people get smart phones here, this is able to be an effective tool to get God's Word heard and read in our communities of North Ambrym.

Mark Video

Our teammate, Casey, worked with a friend (who translated the Bible for a language on a southern island of Vanuatu) who works now with Faith Comes By Hearing to dub the Lumo video for Mark with our full Gospel of Mark!  Each chapter of Mark has its own video so they can be used with Sunday School lessons, or along with sermons or devotionals.  Praise God with us that these types of media are available to our people in North Ambrym!

New media option to go with our translated Scripture

We are excited that our teammate, Casey Ellis, is looking into some
other options of ways to get our translated bits of Scripture out and
usable for our people.  One of these options he's been looking into is comic-style videos and books.  A company called Kingstone has these on offer that we hope to translate and get in the hands of the people of North Ambrym.  Here is a sample of one video we hope to do to go along with our completed Genesis: