In December, Rahmat made a trip to Borneo. He traveled there with another HeartCry missionary Ucu. They spent about four hours one day teaching on the purpose of the church. Rahmat also had time to talk more in depth about expository preaching. From the brief survey he took, it doesn’t appear that any of the pastors there preach expositional sermons. They’ve heard of the terminology before, but know very little about preaching verse by verse through books of the Bible. In order to show them the first steps in preparing an expositional sermon, Rahmat took about an hour and a half to show the pastors how to do a clause analysis of a Bible passage. They analyzed 2 Timothy 4:1-5. Rahmat and Ucu were also able to give each person at the seminar a copy of the booklet 9 Marks of a Healthy Church by Mark Dever, that they had translated. Rahmat and Ucu also preached several other times during their visit at different locations to various churches. They each spoke once to a group of youth, another time at a small church plant in the middle of a palm plantation, and a couple of times at two different Christmas services at local Baptist churches.
Rahmat is praying about being more involved in the future in this area of Borneo. There’s a great need to train leaders. There are hundreds of them scattered throughout the interior who’ve never had any training for the ministry. They’re hungry to learn God’s word better and be more equipped for the ministries that have been entrusted to them. Please pray that God would give direction for how to best serve these Gospel workers. Another trip is tentatively planned for April this year.
There’s also a great need for Bible translation in this area. One language group is the Mualang people. They don’t have any of the scriptures in their language, and are very interested in being trained in translation. There are about 70,000 people in this ethnic group. Many of them live in more urban areas and speak the national language well, but in the rural areas (where most Mualang live) their primary language is Mualang. There is a group of men in the interior who’ve already started to translate the Bible, but they’ve become discouraged because of the difficulty. They initially started the translation because they feel that their people are in great need of God’s word in their own language. Nominalism is widespread among the Christians in their ethnic group, and they feel that it’s partly the result of not having a Bible that speaks to them directly in their heart language.
In the same area, there’s also a school teacher and a couple others who’ve started to translate the Bible into the Dayak Mali language. They also have no Bible translation training, nor do they have anyone helping them. Like the other team, they’ve also become very discouraged with the difficulty of translation. Please pray for these two Bible translation teams. Pray that God would help them receive more training in how to translate the Bible. Rahmat has already contacted some people with a Bible translation organization about coming to do training with them. Pray that God would open this door.
