Lacking "Paul chosen by God ...sent out to preach God's Good News"

Prayer Update - January 14, 2016

Dear Friends,

The two recording technicians from Ghana sit with their earphones on, tuned to the protruding boom microphone of our reader’s headset. They can hear every breath he takes. Their table is a mess of wires connected to two laptops and an additional monitor for me (Doug), the reviewer.  There are four languages flying through the air as our technicians speak directions to each other in Ga (a language of Ghana), speak to me in English, and a smattering of French for the reader—if he understands any. I do most of the interacting with the readers in Fulfulde, to the best of my rusty language skills after having been gone for ten years. The readers, in turn, are reading in Fulfulde.

You may not be aware of the skill involved in reading, because it is something we all take for granted—assuming you’ve read this far. I’ve heard that if you learn to read after the age of five to seven years old, you will never read with complete fluency.  I can’t speak for the facts, but I can certainly testify to the difficulty people have who have only learned to read as adults.

As the narrator reads the book of Revelation line by line, I watch and jump in whenever a word is mis-read. Depending on the reader, that can happen often. Rarely does a verse go by where I don’t have to jump in and say one of the following:

• That was too choppy. It needs to flow like this, “……..”, try again.
• OK, that was good, but you added the word “e” which isn’t in the text. Go back to the comma and reread that phrase.
• The tone of your voice was level. This is a question. Try again and raise your tone to show it is a question.

But the software that catalogs all of the readers and the parts they play, also keeps track of our progress. Right now it shows 36% completed. Not bad for five days work, but we’ve made hardly any progress today. Contrary to our expectations, the reader we had selected for the apostle Paul didn’t have the voice or the reading ability to handle the part. We’re left with a huge gap in the line-up. But with all of you praying, we have confidence of finding a good replacement.

You can follow along with the daily progress of the audio recording by checking the front page of our website:  www.higbyfamily.com  

We covet your continued prayers.

Partners in the Gospel, (Phil 1:5)

Doug & Priscilla Higby