good news, prayer points, & pics

Hey guys,

thank you for all your prayers and thanks for taking time to read these posts and updates. Great news – on Friday morning I finished entering all of book 1 into the computer, printed it out, and sent it off for 250 “pilot” copies to be printed. Now, I’m working on entering all of the lessons for book 2 into the computer (10 down, 32 to go :-). Hopefully this will be complete by Monday/Tuesday at the latest. Wed. I leave and Thursday I’ll arrive back home (Lord willing).

Other great news. We finished the literacy ministry leadership training on Friday and everyone is psyched to go back to their churches and communities and start classes. Suday we’ll have a big graduation ceremony where the participants’ friends and family will come. We’ll be giving them certificates, praying for them, and commissioning them into the ministry. I’ll be “leading” them in one song that I taught them from the black churches back home (Oh give thanks unto the Lord) . . . apart from that, I’ll be speaking and encouraging the pastors that will be coming to really catch the vision for literacy and evangelism.

All around, things are going very well and I'm really enjoying being with this group of people . . . i can see so much potential in each one. We've had super worship, eaten good food together, worked together, and lived together. I'm going to miss them a lot and am praying that the Lord will help me to remember to pray for them in the future and not forget (b/c I'm prone to forgetting things :-)

Funny Things:

• one of the guys from the training was staring at my laptop when he turned to me and asked me if i could send one to him once I got back to America. I told him that money didn't actually grow on trees there, to which he replied "yes, that would be a great blessing brother!"
  
• one 5 year old korean kid came up to me and started studying my forearm and stroking the hair on it. Then, as if conducting his own scientific experiment, he went to his dad and felt his arm (no hair worth mentioning) . . . then he went over to a Gambian guy and felt his arm (no hair either). So he came back to me and started tugging on my arm hair and laughing uncontrollably. Then he turned to his mom and said in Korean, "ma, he has grass on his arms! . . . he should cut it."
  
• everybody here talks like Jimmy :-) . . . i'll explain later.
  

Prayer Requests:

• Pray for Fadil Sesar, He and I have been working close together to edit the whole primer, staying up late and waking up early in the morning. He’s been sacrificially giving his time for this endeavor. Please pray for his family. Since he became a believer, there has been much tension and he is not able to stay with them for any good chunk of time b/c they begin to fight with him about converting to Islam again. It’s a sad situation and his heart is hurting for his family. Currently he’s translating a revised version of the Mandinka Bible so you can pray for that too.
  

• pray that we’ll be able to complete everything that we need to

• pray for meaningful conversations with these great friends that I’ve made over the past 3 weeks and words that will “water” the seeds that have been planted in them during this training.

thanks (Abaraka),

tedd

here are some pictures from the training: