Orlando adventure

The alligators are ferocious in Florida these days! Well, Ok, this one is pretty tame. He was a display at a restaurant/air boat ride place that I visited while with a group of missionaries last week. I was visiting with this group in order to understand better what they do. This group is particularly interested in getting youth excited about missions and specifically about translation work. Now I'm excited too! Did you know that there are still 4,000 languages (tongues) that still do not have the Bible in their language. Of those 4k, 2,000 of them have someone doing something. This may be as little as simply beginning to write their language down or having a missionary assigned to begin. That doesn't mean they have a Bible yet! To put it into perspective, there are only about 800 languages that have a written Bible. This organizaion has set a goal of seeing the Bible translated into all languages by 2025! In order to get that accomplished (and hopefully hasten Christ's return!) we must get our young people dedicated to getting it done too! We need this next generation. They are an essential ingredient to this giant task. They are the answer to the need for translators and translation helpers. So they began a department called Nex Gen. standing for Next Generation of course :-) . Within this group there are a variety of individuals who are involved in camping, online chat groups, and short term missions. I was able to meet this whole crew and begin to understand their passion for translation. I met a few missionaries last week, who themselves accomplished translating the Bible into a language and had come home having done that looking for new chances to be involved. Talk about walking with hero's!
There will be more news to come on this. Watch your mailbox's.
As to other things, it's freezing cold here. No, more than freezing. But I am actually enjoying the all white landscape and the promise of more snow to come.
Youth group has started up again, with some interesting new challenges. Please pray for me as I prepare some material to teach a Sunday school on leadership. We are beginning a leadership group and I believe it is critical to also expect them to be spiritual leaders. I am praying for help with this, since study prep is definately not my gift.
Thanks for checking in! Hope your winter is as beautiful as ours here in Wisconsin!
Dagney