Well, it appears that I have fallen back into my old habits of sending my prayer letters out two to three weeks late. Thank you for your patience with me and my often-sporadic ways. š
Bible Institute Update
I just reread my July prayer letter to give myself a sense of where I need to start this letter, and I was sincerely shocked by how much has happened since that letter! It is really hard to believe that is has only been 2Ā½ months since we relaunched our Bible institute. Our Bible institute is set up on a modular system, where each class is taught over 15 class hours in a single week. For those who are wondering, no, we do not have a class every week. I would literally die! At this point, my goal is to have 2 classes per month, but weāve already had to push classes back 2 or 3 times because of health issues. When you have only 9 students and 3 of them are too sick go to class, that makes for a real damper on your institute. In the future, I would love to have 3 to 4 classes per month, but that would require God giving me another teacher. At heart, I am a preacher, a linguist, and a project manager, but not a teacherāand I know it. So, until God shows me what exactly He has planned long-term for our institute, Iām just going to try to keep it at a semi-manageable pace. š
Thank you for your prayers for the institute. We were forced, against my will, to start with a heavy emphasis on English in order to help all of our students get the full benefit from future classes. While I am a huge proponent of missionaries learning the heart language of their people, the simple truth is that our class notes and almost all our books are still English, so if we want our students to reach their full potential, they really need to reach a certain level of English proficiency. Please pray that God would bless their efforts.
Ongoing Long-Term Projects
In the meantime, I am continuing to move forward on multiple linguistic projects. I donāt talk about them too much because I know that they are not the main thing people are interested in, but I believe that they are very important. For this prayer letter, I will only mention two. First, I would like to ask you to pray for our Cebuano songbook, Mga Kantahon sa Pagtoo. I thought we were going to finish it last year, but God just keeps on giving me new songs. Secondly, I would like to ask you to pray for our Glossary of the Cebuano Bible. We have an excellent Bible in Cebuano, but because it is an accurate translation, many of the words and sentence structures are unfamiliar to the younger generation. We need a glossary to give simple definitions to ādeepā Visayan words so that the Visayan people can understand and study their own Bible. Thank you so much for your prayers, friendship, and support.
Dividends on Your Investment
Several weeks ago, I decided to do something that I never thought I would do: I moved our Saturday soul-winning time to Friday afternoon, and it has proven to be a very good decision! However, things took a turn on Friday, September 6. All day long, there was sunshine . . . until 3:00 p.m. As we drove to the church for our 3:30 meeting, the clouds began to gather, but I still had hope that God would hold the rain off for us, as He has done many times in the past. Unfortunately, it was not Godās will. Just as we finished our meeting, the heavens opened, and rain came down in torrents! I was already frustrated about something (I honestly donāt remember what), and the rain just added to my slightly less-than-Christ-like attitude. As we drove our church jeepney through the pouring rain, I grumbled at God in my thoughts. I had been planning to take our soul winners to a popular city park, where just an hour before I had seen at least 50-75 people. As I drove, I knew that the park would be empty, but I didnāt know where else to take the soul winners in a torrential downpour. We pulled up to the park, and as I expected, it was empty; but I saw a few people scattered around the area, standing under whatever shelter they could find. So, I told our soul winners, āDiri ra taā (āThis is the placeā) and parked the jeepney. My soul-winning partner for the day was my son Michael. As we got out of the jeepney, I saw a group of guys taking shelter next to a public restroom a little ways up the road. So, we quickly started walking that way. As we walked, I saw a man standing across the street just inside the back entrance of a grocery store and immediately felt led to talk to him, so we changed course and crossed the street. I introduced myself and started a conversation. He turned out to be the head of security for the grocery store. He was friendly but not particularly interested in the Gospel, but for some reason, I felt like God wanted me to push a little extra, so I did. Besides, it was raining cats and dogs outside, so we had nowhere else to go. š The more we talked, the more uncomfortable he became, but God was clearly leading, so I continued. All of a sudden, I saw his eyes light up when he saw one of his guards look around the corner. He motioned for the man to come over and join us, and I immediately knew what was coming next. He was getting ready to pass off āthe crazy preacherā on his helpless subordinate. The good news was that the subordinate, whose name was Argie, really wanted to be saved! When I handed him a tract and explained what it was, his eyes instantly moistened with tears. After a couple of minutes, the head of security mumbled some excuse and quickly made his exit, and I was left to share the Gospel with the one whom God had prepared on a rainy Friday afternoon! About 20 minutes later as the rain continued to pour, Argie bowed his head and put his faith in Jesus Christ!
Yours for souls,
Mike Morrissey[/fusion_text][/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]