The Living Word

In my last blog, I wrote about the ministry we have the joy of working with 5 days each week, Actsco. I’ve been getting the joy of spending my days handling the word of God, and largely sorting out translations in English. However, yesterday, we began to come across boxes of bibles in multiple languages.

All of the languages we’ve come across thus far (aside from English) include: Tamil, Hindi, Spanish, French, Thai, Burmese, Karen (ethnic group of Burma), Indonesian, Hmong (indigenous people group spread across East and Southeast Asia, including Vietnam, Laos, Thailand, and Burma – *my teammate, Cheeka, is Hmong!!!), Arabic, Chinese (*my teammate, Sarah, grew up in Taiwan, and can speak Mandarin), Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, Guhu-Salmane (New Guinea), and Russian.

Yesterday, when we were doing intercessory pray, I was thanking God for all of the bibles He gave to us in different languages, and that they would be a blessing to people who received them. I then began listing all of the languages we came across. David, our point of contact with Actsco, heard that I mentioned “Russian” as one of the languages, and said that he just got a request for several bibles, and one was in Russian. He was shocked that we would find one in this part of the world, but won’t God do it!

Today, I asked about the other bible that was requested. He was also looking for one in Hindi. As we were praying, I found not only one but three! Even one with side-by-side English translation! After lunch, David came back with an update. He had gone back to the office to drop them off, and the missionaries who requested the bibles came in while he was there. If he had been off by a few minutes, he would have missed them. Again, God moment! The missionaries do work in prisons, and are taking the bibles in to inmates.

It was so touching, and kind of the Lord, to show us the end of our labors. Much more of our work in this ministry is behind the scenes, and rarely do we get to hear about – much less see – people finally receive these bibles into their hands. But what also touched me was knowing that these bibles have been sitting in this storage container for years. This ministry hasn’t had teams visit since before Covid-19. Yet God, in His perfect wisdom and foresight, orchestrated for these bibles to be here, so that at the right time we would come across them when they were needed. God put those bibles into the shipping container so that today two people could receive the gospel, perhaps for the first time. Because God goes after the one. He sees each person, and He intentionally and uniquely pursues them with His love.

It makes me think of the book that has been so inspirational to me, “Imprisioned with Isis” by Petr Jasek, a Czech missionary who spent over a year in prison in Sudan. God used him to reach and bring to Christ 300+ death-row inmates and guards who would never have heard of the gospel. God’s heart is for the lost, and no one is ever out of His sight or His ability to reach them. It is also an encouragement when He seems to work in people more slowly than we would wish. Yet, “the Lord does not delay [as though He were unable to ack] and is not slow about His promise, as some count slowness, but is [extraordinarily] patient toward you, not wishing for any to perish but for all to come to repentance.” 2 Peter 3:9