“Lord, I need confirmation. Do You want us to take this detour away from our planned goals? We are already behind schedule for the year. Preparing the final PDF of The Great Controversy in the neighboring language took longer than anticipated. Creating the Thai audiobook of Thoughts from the Mount of Blessing also took longer than planned. This new initiative will take four months to complete. Please confirm that this is indeed Your will, or give me peace to say no. In Jesus name, Amen.”
The answer was a resounding “Yes!” Five Christian brothers, all heavily involved in printing ministries in Thailand, unanimously affirmed the need. While I was convinced, Duang needed confirmation in a different way. After earnest prayer, she reviewed the project’s goals and became immediately impressed that this was indeed God’s will.
The initiative involves printing at least 100,000 copies of Steps to Christ in Thai. This is a team effort. Our part is to retranslate, edit, review, proofread, typeset and be ready to print by September 1. Other ministries do the printing and distribution. Another facet of the initiative is to print 50,000 or more copies of our Thai translation of Thoughts from the Mount of Blessing and 50,000 copies of The Story of Jesus in Thai. While Thoughts from the Mount of Blessing is ready to print, The Story of Jesus needs updating. We will also be involved in updating this text, which comes with an even earlier deadline. Fortunately, it does not need to be retranslated.
The goal for the new translation of Steps to Christ is that each sentence not only reflects the wonderful truths of the original book but is also engaging and easy to understand. If the reader struggles, as they do with the current translation, they end up not reading more than one or two sentences. This is the challenge: how to make it clear without compromising the message.
We have prayed, “Lord, how can we make the most impact for you in the short time that remains?” God is leading us to use our language talents far beyond what we imagined. Duang and I thank each of you who are praying for us and supporting our project. The battles against insomnia, distractions, the world, the flesh and the devil are real. Your prayers will help place the wonderful truths in these books into the hands of thousands of Thai people.
