Dear <<First Name>>,

Greetings from a warm UK, where we are enjoying higher temperatures at the close of our summer. Julia, Daniel and I returned from South Africa at the end of August where we attended the leaders conference of The Word for the World together with 70 other colleagues. We were also able to connect with several supporting churches in South Africa. More about that below and other news.

God bless, Barry Funnell

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Best conference so far!

Over 70 leaders from SE Asia, Africa, Slovakia, Poland, USA and UK gathered just north of Pretoria for a four day conference. Our theme was equipping leaders for the future. There was a wonderful sense of unity between all the different leaders from the different parts of the globe. We all learnt from one another "as iron sharpens iron", and also had two guest speakers to give input in principles of christian leadership.

Reports revealed that we now have 109 projects in total: Africa (50), SE Asia (58) and Slovakia (1). We were excited to learn that we are on target to reach our goal of translating the complete Bible in 500 languages by 2050 by the grace of God. Many of those who attended said, "It was the best TWFTW conference so far."

Twelve leaders stayed on for an extra three days to attend our Executive Management Team meetings, which also were fruitful. (See photo above) TWFTW is definitely an organisation on the move!

Vidunda NT unveiled

During my consultation visit in the last two weeks of July with the Yao and Ngoni teams, I (Barry) was able to witness a village launch of another New Testament in Tanzania. Attending the launch was a welcome break, as we had spent long hours in the translation office that week checking Galations, Ephesians, Colossians, Philippians, and 1 & 2 Thessalonians with the Yao and Ngoni teams. We still had 1 & 2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon, 1 - 3 John and Jude to check the following week.

The Vidunda people are one of the ten groups who have received a New Testament in the past year due to the efforts of TWFTW in partnership with Pioneer Bible translators. It is a 3 hour drive from Morogoro through a lovely game reserve into the beautiful Ruaha mountains where the 40,000 Vidunda live. There was great celebration, dancing and drumming as the New Testament was unwrapped and given to the people who gathered. Please click here to watch a video of the launch.

One of my personal delights was when a Mus1im man came up to me in the crowd and asked if he could also have a Bible. I said the Bible is for all, and handed him one. I briefly explained to him Jesus died to forgive our sins. He accepted Jesus as his saviour there and then (see photo below) and asked if we could go to his house as he wanted all of his family to hear this good news too!

Please join us in praise for:

The Maale Bible launched on the 10th of July was very successful with 9000 people attending. Praise God for the faithfulness of the translators and their families and the 15000 copies available.
The Ila NT of Zambia and the Vidunda NT of Tanzania were also launched in July. Praise God for His Word's transforming power now in their hands.
TWFTW's Diploma is gaining wider accreditation with recent success in North East 1ndia where 5 students were given Master's degrees. We have 350 students registered in our training programme this year.
The American Bible Society has recently decided to fund all TWFTW's translation programmes which are done in partnership with national Bible Societies. They have confidence in our approach and the quality of our translations.

Please visit our new website:

www.twftw.org.uk

9,000 at Maale launch

"What a brilliant experience!" says Daniel Davies of TWFTW UK. He was privileged to attend the Maale Bible launch in Ethiopia on the 10th of July. He was able to deliver 250 spectacles from the UK for those who needed them to be able to read their brand new Maale Bibles. Daniel says it was just so thrilling to see the 9000 people thronging the village paths and streets as they made their way to the launch venue. Please click here to watch a video clip of the launch.

Congratulations to the Van As family who started the project in Ethiopia in the late 90's. They lived among the Maale people for several years and trained up four mother tongue speakers to translate the Maale Bible. Their work soon grew into more and more projects through TWFTW's expanding training programme. There are currently 20 Bible translation projects all run by Ethiopians and ground work is being done to start a further ten in the next year or two.

Master's degree recognition

We have been seeking accreditation for TWFTW's Diploma in Bible Translation (DBT) from Academic Institutions in the countries where we work. We have already got accreditation from the South African Theological Seminary for our four year diploma. On successful completion a student can enrol in a Bachelor's degree in Theology (Honours) programme.

We were blown away when a university in North East 1ndia recently awarded five of our DBT students a Masters Degree, as they already had a Bachelors degree! His words to us were "there is no doubt in my mind that what these students have done is equivalent to a Masters, if not more." One must remember that these students have also already been part of a translation team that has completed a draft of the New Testament in their mother tongue.

We need an increasing number of national Bible translation consultants who are qualified to check the scriptures for publication, and the internationally accepted minimum requirement to do this is a Master's degree.

Please pray with us for:

Please pray for our leadership team in SE Asia. There has been a recent dismissal of one of our key people. Pray the work will continue unhindered in our current 58 projects and that the new management team that has been put in place will take the work forward even better. Pray also that the dismissed leader will be restored after a period of ministry and healing.
Barry will be travelling to SE Asia from 19 September to 1 October. He will be working with two teams to check 1 & 2 Corinthians. Please pray for accurate, natural and clear translations to be produced in these letters and also going forward in these languages.
Tesfaye, the National Director of TWFTW Ethiopia, will be coming to the UK in the last 2 weeks of October. We have arranged speaking engagements in several churches. Pray that he will be given a visa for the UK and that the churches will engage with this exciting growing work in Ethiopia.
Pray for Reuben Kabwe who has been appointed as Chief Operations Officer of TWFTW, and for Theodore, who has replaced Reuben as the National Director of Tanzania.

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