More from Ethiopia

Praise: My niece Christina has enjoyed caring for the Smiths' boys,
and my colleagues have been very thoughtful to arrange for her to visit
several Ethiopian homes and see how they make their food, etc. One of
the guards has taught her to play two local instruments. Maybe next
week she will get to visit the countryside since both boys will be in school.

Prayer Needed: Evangelist Matthew has returned with is wife and
daughter to their home area. A neuro-surgeon is due back in Addis
Ababa in early October, and they will return when they are able to
get an appointment with him. Please continue to pray for the whole
family. The daughter cries with pain a good part of the time.

Please also continue to pray for former Aari translators Fikadu and
Duba as they minister in the churches in their area. Pray for the new
translators Degu and Leon as they get into the work.

Progress: Donna, Getu, Ayke and I finished our revision of Luke's
Gospel in Banna September 12th. We had hoped it would only take
a week, and it took two weeks. That's okay. We are more committed
to doing it right than to doing it quickly. We have now revised the first
13 chapters of 1 Corinthians. We have also been able to update the
program we use for our lexicon, and the one we use to convert from
Latin (English) script to the Ethiopic script (which looks something like
Hebrew). Praise God for His enabling in all of this.

More Praise: We met with Kobus, the man who has taken over the
Aari translation and literacy work, on September 16th. He is
introducing a different spelling system for the Aari language. He gave
us some good advice as to how we may go about explaining the options
to the Banna church leaders so that they can make an informed decision
as to how they want to spell the Banna language. He also expressed
willingness to help us train reviewers for the Banna Scripture translation.
This takes a very heavy burden off of me, and I am grateful.