As we go into the Autumn years of our life, it sure is nice to be beside my best friend! It started out great when we got married over 43 years ago, but it just keeps on getting better and better. I have certainly seen that the biblical adage is true: “He who finds a wife finds a good thing.” I certainly am grateful that the Lord has spared Raynan and that I could enjoy being with her through all these years! We were able to take a Fall Foliage Tour of the Branson area and Table Rock Lake yesterday. It was a beautiful day, sunny and around 74° F. Nathalie talked us into taking the drive, and we certainly are glad she did. Although we live only 30 minutes away, it is the first time we have seen the lake and this beautiful part of the Ozarks. What a great time to be alive!
More Evangelical Christians in Mongolia than in France?
Assemblies of God World Missions has been working in Mongolia for less than 20 years. God has blessed the work there. We are very happy for the people of that remote and needy country. However, when I first saw the statistics, I was shocked to realize that percentage-wise there are more Evangelical Christians in Mongolia than in modern day France where there are fewer than ½ of 1 percent Evangelical Christians. To be clear, I will add that the number I quote does not refer to the French who claim a Christian heritage (social Christians) or who attend a recognized Christian church (traditional Christians). It refers to men and women who have accepted Jesus Christ into their lives as their personal Savior and made him Lord of their lives. Once a person has had that experience, the difference becomes obvious.
FROM BUDDHISM TO THE BIBLE
What edition of the course Life of Christ are they using in Mongolia? Keith Heerman, called me to ask the question. Keith is the Executive Vice President of Global University (GU) and a fellow-missionary with the Assemblies of God World Missions. The Bible School in Mongolia invited him to come and teach this course in their ministerial training program. However, he had to have the teaching materials that went with the edition that had been translated into the Mongolian language. As director of Language Services for GU, I was able to help Keith gather the right materials for his trip. When I step back and think of it, I am awestruck. We are helping give Bible training to the leaders of the Church in the most remote parts of the world! What a day to be living and working in the Kingdom of God!
ROBERTINE RASOAMIARAMANANA
I was grading the course Paul’s Letters to Pastors from a French-language student. As soon as I saw the student’s name, I knew she had to be from the island of Madagascar. The size and style of the name took me back to our France-ICI office in Paris in 1979. We had the first computer purchased with Speed-the-Light funds given by the youth in the Assemblies of God Churches in South Texas. We had to customize the “NAME” field in the student data base program to accommodate the long names of our students from Madagascar. Now, many years later, Robertine RASOAMIARAMANANA is one of our Malagasy students studying in our Bachelor of Arts in Bible and Theology program in French. She is the wife of the pastor of a church with over 2000 adherents in Antananarivo, the capital of Madagascar. She is one of twelve students in a study group in the church, being trained for leadership through our Global University French Program. What a privilege to be training students half way around the world for the ministry to which God has called them!
Fall 2011 Newsletter Now Available
I have just uploaded our Fall 2011 newsletter, on the Newsletter page. . Please read it and give your comments.
Amharic? Are you serious?
What if I tell you that the Amharic language is spoken by 27 million people, and is the second largest semitic language group next to Arabic? Abate Bitew was the pastor of a prominent church in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. He is now working with us at Global University in charge of the translation of our GU courses into his native tongue, Amharic. He has received a special grant to do this work and has been with us for several years, working on the project. As director of Language Services for GU I am his supervisor. In my office today we discussed the whole process of translation, content edit, language edit, technical edit, desktopping, proofing, and publishing. These may be purely technical terms for many, but what it means to us is that Ethiopians will have the tools to train their Christian leaders and that will benefit the 27 million souls who speak Amharic. That is many times more than the thousands who called Abate pastor in his church in Ethiopia.
Global University Courses in Chinese
We are excited about what is happening in the country with the largest population in the world! For quite some time now Global University has had the eighteen courses of the Chritian Life series and the eighteen courses of the Christian Service series available in simplified and traditional Mandarin Chinese. That is in addition to the Evangelism courses. We also have about 10 of the Berean School of the Bible courses and 13 of the Undergraduate School of Bible and Theology (UG) courses available in that language. We were thrilled this last week to grant translation and printing rights for some more of our Global Univesity UG courses in Chinese. We are a part of training new believers, Christians, and spiritual leaders across that great nation and all around the world where Chinese is spoken!
New Ministry Center in Haiti
Stephen Aldrich called me from Haiti today. He is our Global University (GU) director in that country. Stephen is working to get the Haiti Bible School back in operation. It is called the Ministry Training Center. He wants to use our Global University materials in French and offer our GU degree. They need the courses for the French Bachelor of Arts in Bible/Theology (Licence en théology). I was pleased to be able to use an Internet File Transfer web site from our Language Services department here at GU headquarters to send him electronic copies of all the courses he will need. He can print them locally and start using them in just several weeks when their semester begins. You can get more information about this project at www.aldrichfamilyinhaiti.com. What a great opportunity to help train leaders for the devastated country of Haiti!
Papiamentu is our 125th Language
I had never heard of the Papiamentu language before. But we received a request in our Language Services department at Global University from the Caribbean office of Curaçao. They wanted to translate and publish the Personal Evangelism course in Papiamentu, the language of their island.
The problem was that they did not have anyone to do the formatting necessary to prepare the course for printing. Since that is one of the tasks that I perform for the French materials, I offered to help them.
So they translated their first course into Papiamentu in Curaçao, then sent electronically to a printer in India. When it was printed, a businessman from the island who gets materials in India and ships them back to Curaçao offered to bring them back in a shipping container for free!
Thanks to you and your support the first Global course in the Papiamentu language is in print and available to train Christians in the Caribbean Islands.
A New Day
We are really excited about our renovated web site with its broadened possibilities. Our partners in mission have been praying for us and supporting us financially for years. We are now entering a new phase of our partnership. We are praying and trusting that the new communication tools that the Lord has made available to us will help all of our friends and partners keep up-to-date on news of our family and our ministry. We are looking forward to communicating with you and receiving your comments and feedback!





