May update
Rejoice with us! God has opened the doors of heaven and poured out his blessings on us! He is meeting our needs through the generosity of so many of you! We are in awe of what He is doing…and how He is doing it. Each person who has made the decision to begin or increase partnership with us financially has not only helped us materially, but encouraged us emotionally and spiritually as well with their words of love and affirmation. We are so blessed! I thank God that He allowed us to go through this difficult time because through it He has blessed us relationally in ways we could never have imagined! (Can you see Shevawn dancing around the room as we praise the Lord? Well, it is a little hard to configure that into a prayer letter!)
As of this point 28 families/individuals and Northminster Presbyterian Church in Tucson together have combined to provide what we lacked when Christ Community Church ended their support of us in April. We needed to replace $1500 a month ….and God provided! In addition to this $1500, we were a couple of hundred dollars short each month from meeting our full support needs…and that too has been pledged, although some of that promised support has not been received as of the date we write this letter. To have this financial gap bridged in eight months is amazing under any circumstances… but given the current state of our economy, it seems even more so! Words are not enough to express our thankfulness… to God and to each of you who are praying and giving. What a partnership team we are blessed with!
SUMMER INFO AND PRAYER REQUESTS
We frequently talk about the Ghana Discovery trip, which we have organized and/or led almost every year since 1998… but what we don’t mention as often are the other Discovery trips we plan. These other trips do not involve us traveling overseas, but we do “coordinate” them. OK, coordinating a trip involves what??? Everything from designing the trip and securing the all important invitation from our field workers who will host the team to writing trip descriptions and promoting the trips here: http://www.wycliffe.org/discovery. We also recruit and screen team participants and mentor them through the lengthy process of preparing for their Discovery missions trip; design curriculum, recruit and train team leaders and assist in follow-up, which is key in helping young people move from short-term to longer term Bible translation involvement.
The other Discovery trips that we coordinate often change locations and focus from year to year… here’s what we’re involved with in 2008:
· An ethnomusicology internship to Togo/Benin –involving 1 seminary student
· A team that will go to Solomon Islands, where they will participate in 2 Bible dedication ceremonies and assist in training people in using their new Bibles. This trip involves 8 participants from the US & Canada.
· An East Asia internship –1 married couple will be exploring future options to serve in linguistics, literacy & finance.
· The SE Asia team will concentrate on language & culture learning as well as exploring how their skills fit into Bible translation. - 9 participants (and 4 leaders from 3 different countries)
· Scripture use in Benin – 4 participants from Finland, US & Ghana will be oriented & debriefed with the Ghana team and serve at a National mission organization in Benin
· And, as usual, there is a trip to Ghana, this year consisting of 1 Slovakian, 5 American and 6 Ghanaian participants.
Here are some facts and prayer requests for the three Discovery teams that will go out this summer:
Solomon Islands Trip dates: June 12-August 10
Dan & Brenda Boerger are Bible translators in Solomon Islands. Both their high school age son Micah and their college age son Alex (not included in this photo) are going with them on this trip. This Discovery team will be involved in distributing some of the NT’s the Boergers translated.
Prayer Requests:
* For Dan and Brenda’s health; both have recently experienced significant problems in this area.
* For the Lord to use the team as the lead the SALT courses (training people how to use their bibles)
* For the Lord to speak to each of the team members about his will for their futures
Southeast Asia Trip dates: June 12-August 5
This trip has four leaders: George & Doris (she is Swiss, he is Indonesian) have led the SE Asian Discovery trip for the past several years. Dave & Helen are both alumni of previous SE Asia Discovery trips, (he is from USA, she is from Indonesia). Dave and Helen will be married on 14th June and then help to lead the Discovery trip! What a honeymoon!
Prayer requests:
· Dave and Helen's wedding is going to take place one day after most of the Discovery participants arrive in the capital city. Please pray for smooth arrangements.
· Pray that the Lord will show Doris the best time for her to travel that will best meet the needs of her teaching job and family. They are deciding whether to bring their youngest son, Lucas, as he would like to come to get some closure of his time growing up in SE Asia.
· For George; that the Lord will continue to give him the strength and endurance to withstand the side effects of his ongoing treatments for Hepatitis C, especially during his traveling when he will away from his medical team.
Ghana/Benin Discovery Team Trip dates: June 9-August 1 (John will be gone from June 5-August 5)
A couple of big changes here this year; first, Shevawn will not be going because our daughter Leanna plans to get married in August (soon after John returns). God has provided Claudia Lopez, a Discovery alumnus from our 2006 Ghana team to help John lead, as well as Patricia and possibly Elizabeth, alumni from our 2005 team. Claudia lives in Mexico City, Patricia and “Lizzy” both live in Tamale, so we will have a wonderfully diverse leadership team. The other big change is that four of the team members will spend their project assignment team in Benin, a neighboring country.
As usual, while the Ghana trip is in progress, we will use our blog as our primary means of communicating with you. We are excited to now be able to offer you a way to subscribe to our blog so that it will notify you whenever there are updates: all you have to do is go there ( http://ramseydiscoveries.blogspot.com/ ) and subscribe! We hope this will save you time….and enable you to be able to pray for our current requests in a timely manner. If, however, you and computers are not the best combination, this year you can just call or write Shevawn and she can arrange to send you copies of what is on the blog periodically in the mail.
Prayer Requests:
· For unity and joy among the team leaders…and the participants too!
· For John and Shevawn as they are separated for eight weeks. (We did this in 2003, so we’ve done this before, but still……)
· For God’s will to be done in each person each day on each of our trips; that He would be glorified in all that happens and that many of our participants would choose to become part of the Bible Translation team at the end of their experience.
· For wisdom as we begin planning our 2009 Discovery trips while leading the 2008 trip.
Sooo….off we go, with your prayers behind us! Thanks so much for your partnership as we seek to recruit more people to be involved in the work of Bible translation!
In His service;
John & Shevawn Ramsey
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