TECHNOLOGY ADVANCES BIBLE TRANSLATION WORK BY DECADES BLAIR WARNED “NOT TO FAIL GOD” OVER WORLD POVERTY PROTESTANT TORTURED BY POLICE TRYING TO FORCE ABANDONMENT OF CHRISTIANITY SPECIAL LAW IN INDONESIA ISSUED TO MANAGE A NEVERENDING CONFLICT U.S. TEAMS ARE HELPING ETHIOPIANS REACH COMMUNITIES

Today’s top stories:

TECHNOLOGY ADVANCES BIBLE TRANSLATION WORK BY DECADES Technological advances have changed the pace of Bible translation work. JAARS is an organization that speeds Bible translation by providing quality services for Wycliffe Bible Translators and others. JAARS’ Judy Bokelman says their VSAT project is a partnership that allows their work to continue even when there is no electricity to power computers. “We use solar panels to get the power for those, and the VSAT bounces off the satellite so, both are easily accessible and you don’t need electricity or wires to do that. We can set up wireless networks and voiceover IP and things like that.” VSAT is an abbreviation that stands for Very Small Aperture Terminal. It is totally independent of existing infrastructure and uses small satellite dishes for sending information between two points, or from one point to several others. Bokelman says they’re also launching a new software program for their translators. The software cuts the translation process down by nearly a decade by creating a “rough draft” of a language based on a related-language. “So, we’re doing ‘adaptation,’ which allows us to start out ahead–years ahead, actually–in the translation because we have a rough draft that we can talk with the people about and see where the language differences are in a related language, so that we begin the translation faster.” (Mission Network News)

BLAIR WARNED “NOT TO FAIL GOD” OVER WORLD POVERTY Tony Blair was told by Britain’s religious leaders that a failure to act against world poverty at the G8 summit next week will be to fail God. In a rare joint letter, the leaders of the country’s main faiths will challenged the Prime Minister and the other government heads attending G8 to fulfill their Millennium goals of halving poverty by 2015. The initiative is being led by the Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, and the head of the Roman Catholic Church in England and Wales, Cardinal Cormac Murphy- O’Connor. Other signatories include Free Church leaders, the Chief Rabbi, Sir Jonathan Sacks, and senior Muslims. The move follows a recent announcement that Cardinal Murphy-O’Connor and his Scottish counterpart, Cardinal Keith O’Brien, will lead the march against poverty in Edinburgh on Saturday. (WWRN/The Telegraph)

PROTESTANT TORTURED BY POLICE TRYING TO FORCE ABANDONMENT OF CHRISTIANITY A Pentecostal Christian in the capital, Tashkent, has been tortured by police since being arrested on June 14, and other church members have been summoned and threatened, Forum 18 News Service reported. Kural Bekjanov, age 19, was tortured by both police officers and prisoners to try to force him to abandon Christianity. His mother, Gulya, saw him on June 26. She reported that he had lost weight, had difficulty walking and his fingers and legs were covered in blood. “His mother heard the cries of her own son and begged them to stop beating him,” Forum 18 was told. Bekjanov was then transferred to the main city police station where “the worst things of all began,” a church member told Forum 18. He was put in a cell with prisoners who “asked him if he was a Christian, and when he replied ‘Yes’, they beat him brutally,” a church member told Forum 18. Sources said police continued to brutally torture Bekjanov every night for the next twelve days. (Forum 18)

SPECIAL LAW IN INDONESIA ISSUED TO MANAGE A NEVERENDING CONFLICT The Indonesian House of Representatives (DPR) today called on Jakarta to issue a government decree intended to manage the interminable conflict in Poso in the Sulawesi archipelago. According to the special DPR committee on Poso, an extraordinary law is required because so far, the regional government’s standard laws have not succeeded in eliminating frequent violence which continues to plague Poso and outlying areas. More than 85-percent of Indonesia’s 220 million inhabitants are Muslim, but in zones like the Sulawesi and Moluccas provinces, the population is equally divided into Christians and Muslims. The war between the two communities in Sulawesi erupted in 1999. A peace agreement signed in 2001 sought to calm the situation – yet clashes and tensions have not ceased. (AsiaNews)

AMERICANS ARE HELPING ETHIOPIANS REACH MUSLIMS The national church in Ethiopia is working side-by-side with Global Missions Fellowship (GMF) to address the spiritual famine in Ethiopia. Dan Hitzhusen, GFM president, says a denomination in Ethiopia is taking a hands-on approach to church planting. “[GFA] is training and equipping national leaders to go out and train 30 of their churches each to start one new church over the next year, using the EvangeCube and some church planting material that we’ve given them.” Hitzhusen says U.S. teams are also helping with the Ethiopians’ desire to reach Ethiopian Muslims with the Gospel. “We’ve seen [U.S.] teams be used to be able to going into the Muslim villages where normally the Christians are beaten up and kicked out. The nationals kind of look at it like they’re the fishermen and we’re the bait on the hook and they use us as door openers.” The need for more workers is great, Hitzhusen says, “The Great Commission is to go. And, as an organization Global Mission Fellowship makes it easy. You can go and you can be the difference in the lives of people who would never hear the name of Jesus once.” (Mission Network News)

* * * * * * * * * * * * * Harold Goerzen HCJB World Radio E-mail: Phone: 1-719-590-9800 Fax: 1-719-590-9801 Web: http://www.hcjb.org http://www.beyondthecall.org * * * * * * * * * * * * *

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