Tag Archives: God at work.

Converting Psalm 136 to Speak of Your Family

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Converting Psalm 136 to Speak of Your Family
Many churches practice responsive readings of Psalm 136, where the pastor or worship leader reads the first line, and the group responds with His love endures forever. Here’s how Psalm 136 starts:

Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good.
      His love endures forever.
Give thanks to the God of gods.
      His love endures forever.
(After a few more lines urging thanksgiving to God, the theme swings into a line-by-line description of what God did for Israel:)
to Him who alone does great wonders,
      His love endures forever.
to Him who struck down the firstborn of Egypt
      His love endures forever.
to Him who led his people through the wilderness;
      His love endures forever.
to Him who struck down great kings,
      His love endures forever.
and gave their land as an inheritance to His people Israel
      His love endures forever.
This type of responsive reading was practiced in songs and chants for several thousand years by Jews and later by Christians as well.

After studying all 26 verses of Psalm 136, I thought of making up a responsive reading about the “great wonders” God did in our own family. Here it is. We plan to use it the next time some of our family members come together.

As you read of God’s Wonders in the Popjes Family History, I hope you will be inspired to make up something like this for your own family.

 Responsive Reading of the Popjes Family History
Give thanks to the Lord for He is good.
      His love endures forever.
To Him who preserved the Popjes Family during the 2nd World War
      His love endures forever.
And brought out the family to emigrate to Canada
      His love endures forever.
To Him who revealed Jesus to Jack as Saviour and Friend
      His love endures forever.
And led the family through three cities to settle in Red Deer
      His love endures forever.
To Him who called a girl to be Jack’s friend,
      His love endures forever.
And take Jack to an evangelical church
      His love endures forever.
And led Jack to attend a Bible College in Calgary
      His love endures forever.
To Him who brought Jack and Jo together and blessed their marriage.
      His love endures forever.
To Him who called Jack and Jo to become Bible translators
      His love endures forever.
And led them to live and work among Brazil’s Canela people
      His love endures forever.
To Him who helped Jack and Jo to translate His Word into Canela,
      His love endures forever.
To Him who made many Canela people from all the villages His children.
      His love endures forever.
Give thanks to the God of heaven,
      His love endures forever.

 

 

 

God’s Word in Every Language on Earth—Doing it His Way

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God’s Word in Every Language on Earth—Doing it His Way
When my wife, Jo, and I joined Wycliffe Bible Translators in 1965, we were influenced by a book that was published six years earlier. Two Thousand Tongues to Go which was the story of the beginning of Wycliffe Bible Translators.
At that time, the Bible had already been translated into most European languages and the major languages of Asia and Africa. This book, however, focused on the need for translation into the possibly two thousand languages spoken by indigenous people groups that were not fluent in the national language of the countries in which they lived.

What nobody knew back in the mid-1960s was that there were about 7,400 languages spoken in the world, of which only a few hundred were national languages. During the next thirty-five years, Wycliffe trained linguists, discovered and researched thousands of Indigenous languages, and began working in many hundreds of them as Bible translators.

VISION 2025
In 1999, Wycliffe and SIL International set a challenging goal for the worldwide Church and for themselves; VISION 2025, a twenty-five-year sprint to start a Bible translation program in every language that needs one by the year 2025.
Those of us Wycliffe translators who, during the 1960s, ‘70s and ‘80s, had worked for decades to complete a translation considered this over-the-top goal a fantasy that could not possibly be reached.
After all, just as all Bible translators before us, we worked with pencils and slips of paper to make our dictionaries. Every word of every first draft was written out by pen and ink, and after 1950, switched to more efficient ballpoint pens. Later drafts were pecked out on manual typewriters.

God’s Plan: From Ballpoints to Computers.
It was only in the 1980s that we started using a few computers. They were slow, primitive, clunky, and, although expensive, prone to frequent breakdowns. Even so, they were faster than whacking away on a typewriter and eventually became more useful.
But God was at work improving the electronic equipment industry. God also led highly trained and strongly motivated programmers to progress in their abilities to speed up and improve the work of translation of His Word.

God at Work
During the past few decades, Wycliffe Canada programmers working with partners in Wycliffe USA developed what is now known as The Bible Translator’s Assistant (TBTA). This software analyses a target language and produces a first draft template of translation. TBTA is constantly improving in accuracy and ease of use. The result is a vast decrease in both the time and cost of translating Scriptures.

I was in my last year as president of Wycliffe Canada in 1999 when Wycliffe and SIL International cast Vision 2025. Wycliffe Canada joined with a special recruiting program called “Race to 2025.” God not only increased the Wycliffe Canada membership, but he also grew the number of translators to work with better-educated national translators. He vastly increased the number of donors and the size of their gifts. Many more prayer warriors are involved. With the growing experience in the new way of doing translation, God is receiving much praise and thanks for what He is doing.

Evidence of God’s Blessing
In 1999 when the Sprint to 2025 vision was cast, a new language Bible translation program was started every two weeks. But then God speeded up the task.
2019-’21, a new program started every five days.
In 2021-’23, a new program started every 30 hours.
This year, 2024, a new program starts every 17 hours!
Over 4,000 languages have translation programs currently in progress.

This weekend is Canadian Thanksgiving.
How appropriate to give thanks for what God is doing in world evangelization and especially in making sure that His prophetic Word will be fulfilled:
“After this, I looked, and there before me was a great multitude that no one could count, from every nation, tribe, people and language, standing before the throne and before the Lamb. They were wearing white robes and were holding palm branches in their hands.” (Rev. 7:9 NIV)

Why Jo and I Did Not Get Married a Year Earlier Than We Did

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Why Jo and I Did Not Get Married a Year Earlier Than We Did

 Grateful for Our Marriage
This week, we celebrated Valentine’s Day and Jo’s birthday. Next month, we’ll celebrate my 86th birthday and our 62nd wedding anniversary. No wonder we kept thinking about our life together and giving thanks to God for the wonderful life He has given and is still giving us.
“I keep kicking myself for not proposing to you in our last year of Bible School,” I said to Jo, “so we could get married right after graduation.”

A Memory Rather Forgotten
“Well, remember what happened in your first year,” she replied.
“Oh, right.”
I deservedly was expelled for one semester because I had broken more rules, than any other student in the school’s history. I graduated a year after Jo did and finally proposed.
“Yeah, if only I had not been such an idiot, we could have started our lives together a year earlier,” I confessed ruefully.

God Turned Negative into Positive
“True but  God turned something bad into something good.”
“How do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, don’t forget, while you were finishing school, I went to the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, (Biola) and studied Missionary Medicine and Dentistry. And that is why we had such an effective dental extraction ministry among the Canela.”
Right! “Thank you, Lord God, for turning my foolishness into such a positive and encouraging outcome!”

Dental Surgery (brown flecks in top left is fungus on the photo)

Jo Trained Me
Jo taught me about each tooth, how many roots it had, and whether to take it out towards the tongue or towards the cheek. And where to inject the anaesthetic and how to loosen the tooth before extracting it without breaking a root. And how to care for the patient afterwards. I started practicing dental surgery immediately, the first week we were in the Canela village. I kept on showing love to the Canelas in this way long before we could speak with any degree of fluency.

I Trained a Canela
After several years, we trained a young Canela man in these dental surgery skills, and he performed under my supervision for many months. He became so skilled and was so careful that the Canela people trusted him as they had been trusting me. I turned over all our dental tools to him, and Jo taught him how to clean and boil the instruments after each use and before the next patient. She gave him a pan to boil them in and our medical kit with a tight-fitting lid to keep the instruments clean. He continued these dental services during the following year when we were on furlough and through the years when political pressure exiled us from the village. More than thirty years after we had taught him, we visited the Canela village with our family and grandkids, and he was still serving the Canela villagers in this work!

God at Work! All Honour Goes to Him.
So, this week, we reminisced how God used my foolish behaviour to move Jo into getting that dental training which resulted in such a long-term blessing for the Canela people. Of all the dozen or so village teams that worked among indigenous people from the Belem missions centre, Jo and I didn’t know of any that had a dental extraction ministry among their people group.

Yes, looking back, that year of waiting to get married was certainly worth it, both for us and for the Canelas. What an amazing work of God!

Sow Generously and Reap Generously

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Sow Generously and Reap Generously.

Early Commitment
Sixty-two years ago, in our first year of marriage, Jo and I read an impactful passage in Corinthians. Jo is a gardener and clicked with Paul’s quote of God’s laws of gardening. “Whoever sows sparingly will also reap sparingly, and whoever sows generously will also reap generously.” (2 Cor. 9:6). We committed ourselves to asking God to lead us to sow generously so that we would also reap generously.

Immediate Sowing
No surprise that we accepted a pastoral position where God immediately plunged us into the deep end of the pool with a building program. God led us to sow generously. In those years the pastor did it all: Sunday services, adult Sunday School class, Sunday morning and evening messages, Wednesday night Bible study and prayer meeting, and the young people’s group on Friday night. God also called us to start a church library and a local ministerial association and to direct the Youth for Christ rallies in a nearby city. We certainly reaped generously: learned to organize, lead, study God’s Word, speak in public, and develop ministry-oriented relationships.

Long-Term Reaping
 Two of our three daughters were born in those three years, and God led us to spend two summers studying linguistics to follow His calling into a Bible translation career with Wycliffe. God led us to sow and to reap generously during the two decades we worked among the Canela people of Brazil.

When we left, the Canelas reaped the benefits of what God had led us to sow and reap: a written language, trained literacy teachers, a partial Bible in the Canela language, numerous believers no longer oppressed by the fear of evil spirits, and a thriving church. God, however, wasn’t done with us but guided us into a position filled with numerous opportunities to sow and reap generously during nine years of leadership in Wycliffe Bible Translators.

About that time, we read a newly published booklet called The Prayer of Jabez. We prayed his prayer, “Oh, that You would bless me and enlarge my territory!” Within months of starting to pray this prayer, God continued to increase our already substantial speaking ministry territory. We spent nearly twenty years constantly travelling to speaking events, many of them on Wycliffe Associate banquet fundraising and recruiting tours. What a harvest God produced!

During those years, we also  wrote and published eight books and celebrated the arrival of eight grandchildren. All this to say, “Pray that God will lead you to sow generously in many areas. Then prepare to be overwhelmed with an abundant harvest.

 

God’s Secret Weapon

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God’s Secret Weapon

The Problem
Each time Jo or I told a story to the Canela people about Jesus performing a miracle, they told us a story of the great exploit of some Canela culture hero from their legends and myths. We tried to tell them that the stories we told them were special, true, real, and unique. Our stories were about the Great Father’s Son. They didn’t understand the difference. We prayed that someday they would.

Then it got worse. The Brazilian government changed, and the new officials would not allow any missionaries to live and work among any indigenous peoples. We felt like we lived in exile away from our home and friends in the Canela village. We prayed that God would intervene.

 The Permit
We kept on working at the mission centre in the city, completing seven easy-reading booklets and the books of Luke, Acts, and 1&2 Thessalonians. When the newly printed books arrived, we made a formal request to the government to visit the Canela village to deliver these ten books.
We praised God when we received a notice that permission had been granted but with exceptions. I had to fly to Sao Luis to see the government official. He gave me the permit and asked me to read it, paying careful attention to the last sentence. “The books of sacred Scripture are not  included in this permit.”
“Sign this permit,” the official said, “to promise you will not leave the Scripture books in the village.” I shot up a prayer and signed the document. At the centre, we all prayed for God’s solution.

The Excitement
The next day, John, a fellow missionary, and I loaded a steel drum with seventy-five sets of books packed in plastic bags onto his pickup truck and left for the Canela. They received us with great joy and excitement especially when they saw the seventy-five parcels of ten books in their language. The chief and elders immediately ordered me to the central plaza to report.
I showed them each of the seven reading books. The elders were pleased to see several of their favourite legends in print. When I finished, the chief pointed to the three remaining books, the Scripture books. “What about those books?” he asked.
“Oh, those are different. I can’t leave them here, even though we made them for you to read.”
“Why not? What are they about?”
“One is about Jesus, the Son of the Great Father, when He lived on earth long ago. And the other is about what the followers of Jesus did, the thin one is the counsel of Paul, one of the elders of the Jesus group.”
“Well, you can at least tell us what is in those books,” the chief said.

The Explanation
So, for the next hour, I read excerpts from each of the Scripture books.
“We really want those books!” the chief exclaimed, “Why can’t you leave them?”
“I promised not to leave them. But I’ll leave them with my friend Sr. Duca in Barra town,” I said, “You can go there and pick them up and bring them in yourselves.”
The Canela elders complained, “It’s seventy kilometres to town. That’s four days of walking!”
“Do those government people have these stories in their language?” the chief asked.
“Yes, they have. All the stories about Jesus were translated into Portuguese long ago. Brazilians have been reading them for many generations.”
“Then, why can’t we read those books and choose whether we want them or not? They did!” the chief exclaimed.
“Just leave them here,” one of the elders advised, “We won’t tell anyone you did.”
“No, I’m sorry, I can’t do that,” I said, showing them my copy of the document, “I promised the government chief that I would not leave them in the village and signed this paper.”

The Chief’s Anger
Suddenly, the chief sprang up, pulling his machete from its sheath. He laid the sharp edge on his forearm, and, with his face inches from mine, shouted, “If I cut my arm what comes out? Blue stuff? No! Red blood. We Canelas are human beings just like those city people! Why do they treat us as if we aren’t people? Why can’t we have what they have had for a long time?”
I couldn’t answer, and we sat quietly for a while. Then the chief said, “The elders’ council will talk about this some more, and in the morning, we’ll tell you what we have decided.”

God’s Reveals His Weapon
At sunrise, the chief ordered, “Put all those books back into that steel drum on your truck. Then, drive back up the road through the gate where the Indian land ends. My son will follow you on the government tractor and will bring the drum back and distribute the books. You will have kept your promise, and we will have all the books.”

We heard later that the first books everyone wanted to read were, of course, the special books, the forbidden ones. It was a clear example of Psalm 76:10, “Human defiance only enhances your glory, for you use it as a weapon.” (NLT). God used the government’s angry prohibition to draw attention to the uniqueness of His Word. From then on, the Canelas considered the Bible stories as special, true, and unique.

When, over ten years later, the Scriptures were published the book was called, Pahpam Jarkwa Cupahti Jo Kahhoc. God’s Highly Respected Word.

(This is an excerpt from the memoir of the Canela Decades we are currently completing, From Adventure to Spiritual Battle.)

Jungle Adventure? No, a Spiritual Battle!

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       At Last! The End of the Summer Blogging Break!

Jungle Adventure? No, a Spiritual Battle!

The Plan
“The SIL plane needs to fly to Brasilia for maintenance on Saturday.” The shortwave operator told us one morning. “It will stop in Barra do Corda to refuel and take on up to 400 kilos of cargo to drop off for you in the Canela village on the way.”
What an opportunity to bring in kerosene for lamps and bags of salt for the Canela, as well as fresh veggies, fruits, eggs, and meat for us.

Jo Teaching the Girls

On Tuesday I left Jo and our three small daughters in the village and rode the Tote Goat, an old motorcycle, seventy kilometres into Barra. There I bought trade goods and groceries and arranged to have them taken to the plane. But Wednesday morning the old motorcycle broke down and would not be repaired for several weeks. I had to wait until Saturday.

The Problem
There was neither phone nor short-wave radio in Barra at that time, I could not tell Belem centre so they could tell Jo of the delay. In the meantime, she was worried.

“Jack was supposed to be back on Wednesday,” Jo told the Belem radio operator. “Please pray that he is all right. I worry about him lying on the trail somewhere with a broken leg or worse.”

Satan’s Plan
Friends in Belem prayed that I would be okay. I was fine, but Jo was not. She was suffering with fever and severe pains in her belly. Our colleagues on the centre were alerted to pray for Jo as well.

Finally, on Saturday, the SIL plane overflew the school campus where I was staying to let them know to bring aviation gas to the airport. The pilot saw me standing out in the open, waving. Immediately he radioed Belem and Jo. “I see Jack; he’s okay.”

After refuelling and loading most of the cargo, we landed safely at the village. Jo and I hugged each other, right in front of the watching Canelas; she was so relieved after all those days of anxiety. Unloading quickly Paul continued on course to Brasilia.

“Besides my concerns about you,” Jo told me, “I had strong pains just to the right of my navel, had a fever and felt nauseous. So, I took massive doses of ampicillin antibiotic, and I am already feeling okay.”

The Rest of the Story
A year and a half later, just before Leanne’s birthday, we were in Belem, and Jo was preparing to bake a cake when she said,

“Jack, I am having those same pains again that I had that time in the village.” She went back to bed while I ran to get a colleague who was a nurse. She checked Jo thoroughly, turned to me, and ordered, “Get her to a hospital right now; she has appendicitis!”

“No, I can’t go to the hospital,” Jo argued, “I need to make a cake for Leanne’s birthday party tomorrow.”

We ignored her pleas and loaded her into the VW van. I sped to a small hospital about twenty-five minutes away. Within thirty minutes of our arrival, Jo was on the operating table, and the surgeons did an appendectomy.

“We found a lot of scar tissue when we took out her appendix,” the doctor told me after it was all over. “She must have had an attack earlier.”

“Yes, she did,” I said, “Nearly two years ago, she had these same symptoms when she was alone in an Indian village out in the jungle. She treated herself with massive doses of ampicillin antibiotics.”

“Good thing she did,” the doctor said, “your wife would surely have died in much pain without that treatment.”

God’s Plans
“Thank you, Loving Father in heaven,” I prayed as I walked back to the van, “for looking after my wife and the mother of our three little daughters back then. We so often ran out of antibiotics in those early years. But this time you guided Jo to take the right medication. No wonder I love you!”

It was also more evidence that we were involved in a spiritual battle. Satan tried to kill Jo, which would have stopped the Canela translation program. But God had other plans!

The above post is an excerpt from our next Memoir: From Adventure to Spiritual Warfare. (The Canela Decades)