The refreshing air conditioning swept over us, bringing relief from the late August Texas heat, as our family stepped into the large office of The Seed Company. I (Pamala) was looking forward to seeing again some of the workers who had been in our Budapest home in March for meetings with Todd about the translation work. But in a couple of hours I would leave this Dallas office with much more than a renewed friendship; I would leave with a deep appreciation for the staff’s extensive vision and dependence on God.
They come to a normal office day by day but are really an integral part of the work that happens in many other time zones in houses made of who-knows-what (corrugated tin, cinder blocks, reeds and mud, etc.). That work of putting God’s Word verse-by-verse into an understandable and accurate translation is as diverse as it is strategic. The number of steps to get from A to Z is so much more than we generally assume. And the roles of generating funding and providing oversight of the specific projects worldwide are quite diverse. It takes an entire team of people diversified in their giftings to do a translation project well.
But the thing that impressed me most on our tour, even in the way the office functions, is the very same element that is most important in the actual process of translating: dependence on the Spirit of God. We met one lady who goes around to the different rooms of the office each morning to pray for all the meetings that will take place that day, whether via Skype to a different time zone or in person among team members who oversee a project. With her Bible open, she prays Scripture.
And the most exciting thing to me personally is having learned about the team who prays for each of the national translators. That means I can share with them in greater detail the challenges our specific translators face in their lives. Because translating the Scriptures invites spiritual battle, it is so strategic that these translators are protected through prayer. Here’s a team who prays, who makes it their work to pray, so that our translators will have success as they labor over each word, phase and nuance and as they personally encounter resistance from the enemy.
As we travel to speak each weekend to see you and others at supporting churches, we rejoice in being able to give you specific fuel for prayer. Likewise, we continue to desire to help you see the eternal impact you can make through the stewardship of your time, energy, money and creativity. May you be a person of vision, doing an eternal work, like those using their gifts at The Seed Company. May God continue to motivate you to make a difference in eternity, whether you are a daily prayer partner, a mother who instills a missions vision in her children, a man who works hard to spend less and give more, or the student who goes on a missions trip. As you invest in eternity in one way or another, you will be rewarded by an even more accurate value system, “for where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.”
Thank you for impacting eternity as you pray and give!
Pamala (& Todd) Price
Congratulations to Jonathan & Cindy La on their engagement (date TBD)
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