The Beans'talk May/June 2022

Download The Beans'talk May/June 2022 letter with photos here.

80 years of translation

Wycliffe Bible Translators began in 1942. That makes this year its 80th anniversary. For the occasion, they produced a less-than-a-minute long video celebrating the many groups of people who’ve had a part in Bible translation these past 80 years. That in-cludes each of you as you’ve prayed, sup-ported projects and/or supported mission-aries. You can see it by navigating to https://vimeo.com/686443790. If you pay close attention, you’ll see an old clip from when Mark worked with the translation committee.

Current work

Wycliffe continues to come alongside language communities all over the world to help provide them with God’s word in languages that they understand best. Mark’s current contribution is checking translation for two groups in Peru and mentoring a translation consultant-in-training in Guatemala.

Praying for Jeremiah – grandchild #1

After coming down with a simple stomach bug, our 13-year-old grandson’s health took a rapid turn for the worse. Paramedics had to be called to the house after Jeremiah lost consciousness and stopped breathing, arriving soon after his parents were able to revive him using CPR. Multiple compounding issues prompted the local hospital to arrange an emergency transfer to MUSC in Charleston, South Carolina. His first week was punctuated with several life saving interventions.

What a tremendous outpouring of prayer went up to the throne of our gracious God on Jeremiah’s behalf. It is with much thanksgiving that we report that Jeremiah is out of the danger zone. Portions of his large and small intestine eventually needed to be removed before things began to improve. Thank you for remembering him in prayer as he continues to heal. I’m thankful that I got to visit him and his family.

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Mark & Patti May 2022 Prayer Requests

* Praise God that the training of people to sell Quechua Bibles finally took place. Mark attended and took his turn teaching by computer. The training included teaching about features in the Bible that help us understand it better. At the end of the day, several participants come up to the computer to tell Mark what they most appreciated learning. One said that she was glad to finally learn what those tiny little letters and crosses in the Bible were. Those are the markers for footnotes and cross-references!

* Pray for steady progress as Mark reviews Scripture translations made by two different teams, checking for accuracy, clarity and naturalness.

* In May, Mark anticipates getting a PET scan that his oncologist will review to determine if he needs to continue on chemo a bit longer or if he can stop. We hope the word is stop!

The Beans'talk March/April 2022

Download The Beans'talk March/April 2022 with photos

God’s gracious answers to your prayers

In our last Beans’Talk we had a number of prayer requests. We’d like to briefly comment on them, for God graciously answered.

1. Peruvian Bible Society webinar

There were nearly 300 people signed on to the Peruvian Bible Society’s webinar that Mark taught. We couldn’t keep track of all the countries represented in the audience; at least a dozen. Plus, one friend mentioned there were yet more people watching via Facebook. The feedback has been positive. Mark spoke on how all translations make adjustments to fit the target language, illustrating with examples from a popular Spanish version of the Bible.

2. Training future consultants

February 21–25, was the week-long online training for Latino translation consultants-in-training. After Mark taught all Tuesday morning, a colleague mentioned that he had been skeptical wondering how Mark was going to safely talk about the breadth of evangelical positions on two doctrinal issues. We are thankful that instead of being divisive, it seemed to be helpful.

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