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God on the Move: Changing the Landscape of Deaf Bible Translation

In 2020 an exciting milestone was reached in the world of Bible translation when the American Sign Language Version (ASLV) of the Bible was completed! After nearly 20 years of work, Deaf Missions and partner organizations finished the complete translation — making ASL the first sign language to have the whole Bible.*

Today there are more than 350 sign languages known around the world representing 70 million signers. Of this population, less than 2% have encountered Jesus in a language and format they clearly understand.

With only one full sign language Bible complete, the Deaf represent the largest unreached people group in the world. But God is on the move, and technology is being developed that could change the landscape of Deaf Bible translation for sign languages around the world.

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My Meatpacking Home

“In the last days the mountain of the LORD’s temple will be established as the highest of the mountains; it will be exalted above the hills, and all nations will stream to it.” (Isaiah 2:2)

Hometown Diversity

“Miss, I forgot my house key. And my sister won’t be home from work until after midnight.” We scrambled to figure out a plan to get this Somali teen home safely from tutoring. My husband, Steve, decided to swing by the meatpacking plant on his way to taking kids home, to see if our young friend could acquire a house key from her sister on her work break. 

Steve and three teens from three distinct ethnolinguistic groups sat together in the parking lot of our local meatpacking plant and waited. Each of those kids had a family member in the plant. Their families had relocated to Greeley, Colorado because the meatpacking plant would offer them employment–ASAP. They didn’t need to speak English or be literate to start supporting their families as they resettled after various long and difficult refugee journeys.

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MMU (Media to Movements)

Media to Movements is changing how teams and churches around the world use media strategies to find seekers and “persons of peace” so spiritual multiplication results. Check out these stories from teams around the world! Live, mentored courses are available twice a year. The next sessions begin soon.

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How God Uses the Diaspora to Reach Across Borders

Sunny Hong

As a Korean American, Sunny Hong understands firsthand the critical role of diaspora people groups in translation work. (Diaspora are dispersed people groups who settle outside of their homeland.) But Sunny’s own path to serving in missions took many unexpected turns.

Sunny moved to the United States after college and looked for ways to serve in missions as a computer programmer. “I realized that even though I did well with computers, I didn’t enjoy working with computers, and I was trying to use that for God’s glory for the rest of my life,” she said. “Whenever I tried to take one step forward in that direction, God blocked the doors.”

Read More »How God Uses the Diaspora to Reach Across Borders

One Matchstick – The Senga Fire

  • by FCBH

“When we work together with our different gifts, we can say, ‘God has accomplished this.'” 
Rev. Katete Jackson Jones, BiLTA, Zambia

One year ago, Faith Comes By Hearing‘s video team set out to capture an incredible story of community transformation through God’s Word in audio. Now, the organization is ready to share that story with the world.

One Matchstick: The Senga Fire, tells the incredible true story of the Senga of Zambia receiving the Bible in their language for the first time in the tribe’s 2,000- year history.

Prior to this monumental breakthrough, no written or oral translation of Scripture existed in the Senga’s mother tongue. For years, interaction with the Bible in any meaningful way required the Senga to learn the languages of neighboring tribes. Though they desired to know and understand the Bible, their tribe was deemed too small to receive a written translation.

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Healing From Trauma Through Scripture

“Nobody we know can really identify with all our trauma. I feel so alone,” my friend breathed, her words barely audible as she slumped in her chair. She was wearier than I’d ever seen her, weighed down by her family’s ongoing journey through a series of extreme crises and shocking losses.

I sat beside her in silence, considering all the devastation my friend and her family had experienced over the years. She was right. I could think of others who’d suffered intensely, but no one who’d walked a road similar to theirs. While many people loved my friend deeply and wept along with her, none of us could fully understand.

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Pencil Bible

Pencil Bible is a beautifully simple Bible app for journaling, crafting notes, and visually capturing scripture. ✎ It doesn’t matter if you’re a notetaker, artist, prayer warrior, journaler, or just a daily reader. Pencil Bible helps you experience the Bible on a whole new level.

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Sunday School Lesson Resources and Teaching Materials

Sunday School lesson plans based on the “Good News” and “Look, Listen and Live” series of audio-visual materials from Global Recordings. (https://globalrecordings.net/en/teaching)

The ‘Good News‘ and ‘Look Listen & Live‘ flipcharts, and the digital Bible Picture Pack, are invaluable aides to those working in children’s ministries. We have developed lesson plans to accompany the ‘Good News‘ and all eight of the ‘Look Listen & Live‘ books. These lesson plans, and the accompanying black & white outline drawings for colouring-in, are free to download.

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EMDC.guide – The Scripture Engagement Guide

EMDC.guide – The Scripture Engagement Guide

The Scripture Engagement Guide (SE Guide for short) is designed to help you understand your situation and decide how to encourage your people to use the Bible. It is a web-based tool for local communities to explore a variety of topics to consider their needs, then find the resources to help them get there. It empowers communities to make informed and sustainable decisions for their future. This is more about the process than the products that may be created or used along the way. We believe that working through the journey with others will benefit your community by helping you understand your situation better. Then, you will be able to choose wisely from the many scripture engagement resources on this site or design your own special SE activities. Your answers to the questions in the Journey and the list of resources here can be used again and again to find new ways to hear or read the Bible.

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BibleBooster

BibleBooster is an initiative by Bible Societies for Bible Societies. It provides a website and a mobile app which focus on optimising the experience of online Bible reading and supporting Bible engagement. It can serve the needs of those with little or no experience in Bible reading, as well as people with deep knowledge of Scripture.

“The digital landscape is changing very quickly, and so are user expectations. It can be a struggle for a single Bible Society to keep pace with it all. There are so many questions to consider, on number of levels… It can be overwhelming for one Bible Society to handle this all alone. The good news is: you don’t need to anymore! BibleBooster offers you products and services to help you to develop and implement your digital strategy.”

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The Word at Our Fingertips

  • by Joshy K

The Bible has the distinction of being translated and read in the largest number of languages across the world. Technology has come to the aid to present the Word to all people groups speaking diverse languages. The divine plan of God behind such developments can be understood when we examine the recent historical account. The technological advancements are making major contributions to the fulfillment of the last command and associated Bible translation activities. The relevance of technology in mission activities in the 21st century is highly significant. In order to share the gospel as well as for church activities, most churches and mission organizations are extensively using digital technology. In today’s digital world, social media serves as a powerful communication channel to reach out across the world with great speed. To present the Word to a larger group, digital media takes precedence in the present time. The emergence of the Apple store on 10 July 2008 and the Android market (Google Play store) on 22 October 2008 marked a paradigm shift in receiving the Word at our fingertips. Read More »The Word at Our Fingertips

Thinking Anthropologically about Media: Is Jesus Angry or Impassive?

Emotions are not simply emotions. Emotions are powerful, and there can be subtle but significant differences in how people around the world understand, express, and handle them. When we express our emotions, they can trigger further emotions in those around us, who may express empathy or react against us. Sometimes different social groups are expected to deal with emotions differently. There can be different expectations between children and adults or men and women. People with different religious backgrounds may also have specific ways of dealing with emotions.

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Deditos

EMDC webinar on what Deditos offers your project, Wednesday, 19 of October

Children fascinated and filled with hope as they come into contact with God’s Word.

Everything was geared for adults

Children need to know God from the time they are small, but it can be hard to share Bible stories with them in a way that is captivating AND true to Scripture.

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Creating printed or digital books with Bloom

  • by Peter B

We know that it takes a lot of reading material in a non-dominant language community to make reading worthwhile and give the practice needed to develop true literacy. We help language communities to create these reading materials using Bloom. The Bloom Library holds over 10,500 books that these language communities can download to translate into their own languages. Bloom is software that facilitates translating the book into their own language, recording an audio reading of the book and then publishing the books in various print and digital forms. Bloom Reader is a smartphone app that allows language communities to download the talking books that Bloom creates and it highlights the text as the reader listens to facilitate learning to read.

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Strange places to see scripture – would anywhere be wrong?

  • by Peter B

Since 1883, Abram Lyle & Sons Ltd have been using a picture of a dead lion accompanied by a quote from Judges 14:14 to sell syrup.

This might seem strange to some people but isn’t the only place you might come across unexpected Bible verses. Almost 30 years ago the city of Tagbilaran in the Philippines passed a local law requiring that a Scripture be painted on the back of all tricycles. Even when not officially required, Bible verses appear in a number of unexpected places.

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Designing for users with accessibility needs

  • by Peter B

“most churches don’t intentionally exclude people with disabilities. But because the world is, by default, a poor fit for people with disabilities, the church is also a poor fit, unless we intentionally include people of all abilities.” – Ryan Faulk joniandfriends.org/the-largest-unreached-people-group-youve-never-heard-of

We encourage church and mission leaders to think not only of mission among those with a disability, but to recognize, affirm and facilitate the missional calling of believers with disabilities themselves as part of the Body of Christ. The Cape Town Commitment II-B-4

Sadly we can end up excluding many people, unless we are intentional about doing more to include them. Read More »Designing for users with accessibility needs

Planting “Gospel Seeds” Through Business Cards

Over the last year or two, during my infrequent visits to southern California, I began to notice a change in the ethnic mix of the men that gather early each morning in the parking lot of the Home Depot near our mission agency’s home office hoping to get work for the day. Typically the men had all been Mexicans, but I noticed newcomers that I suspected were Haitians. 

Five years ago I tracked down the available Scripture resources in Haitian Creole and loaded them onto some “BibleBox” WiFi hotspot units for some Mexican believers reaching out among thousands of Haitians that ended up “stuck” in Tijuana, Mexico on their trek north. Now, for those with smartphones, directing Creole speakers to the Haitian Creole page* within the www.ScriptureEarth.org website seems to me to be the best option. They can have free access to 6 full-length Scripture movies**, the text of multiple translations of the New Testament, audio recordings of the NT in 3 different Creole translations, and a variety of audio recordings produced by the Global Recordings Network.

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