Beloved Community

Mission Bites are great for helping your congregation engage more deeply in missions. Drop these into worship bulletins, newsletters and social media as you promote your church's impact around the world.   Bite 59: A Beloved Community of Believers "Beloved Community looks like a community of believers in Moldova working together on an oral translation project. Local Romany believer, Catea, learned and retold the story of Mary and Martha from Luke 10:38-42. A Dutch woman living in Romania, an American woman living in Romania, a Romanian-speaking Moldovan and myself, an American living in the Netherlands, all worked alongside Catea. The next day, the women's Bible study discussed the story. Thanks to the teamwork the day before, the women listened to the story in their own language and understood it much better." - Mary van Rheenen, CBF field personnel in the Netherlands Be sure to also sign up to receive fellowship! weekly e-newsletter, which includes updates on all the wonderful ministries of CBF and our partners.  Please let us know how else we can help your church engage more intentionally in missions near and far.     Grace and Peace,    Ryan Clark, D.Min.  Church Engagement Manager Cooperative Baptist Fellowship 160 Clairemont Ave., Suite 500 Decatur, GA 30030 770.220.1611  office 404.545.5003  mobile www.cbf.net

Roma and Sinti . . . Recording for Roma and Sinti

 How many languages can you sing in? These kids sing in at least three:  Calderash, Sinti, and German. They live in Germany. Calderash and Sinti are both Romani languages they speak at home.

They recorded songs in their home languages to put on a bilingual CD of Bible stories. Their songs split the Sinti version of the Bible stories from the Calderash version.

The tall girl in the middle is the one who inspired all of this. Her mom started reading her Bible stories at bedtime. In German. When she was about the age of the short girl, she asked her mom for a Bible stories in her own language.

Soon there will be a tuneful bilingual CD to go along with the colorful bilingual Bible story book.  Keith's little assistant will be able to hear herself singing those stories in her own language. Or maybe I should say her own languages?

MEDIA HARVEST

Recording the part of Jesus in London

Last Sunday we had a mini-harvest festival at our Dutch church. Several people told stories of thankfulness and harvest. This is the one Keith shared.


Sometimes we don't immediately see the fruit of our labor. Back in 2002 I went to London to record the JESUS film in a Romani language we call Western Kalderash.* This Romani language is spoken widely in Western Europe and in North America. 





All versions of the JESUS video are available on the Jesus film website. The website includes the four other Romani versions (one I also recorded), and 1500 other languages from around the world. But recently I discovered that 3 1/2 years ago someone also put the Romani versions on YouTube, where more people can find them. On YouTube we can also see exactly how many people watch a video. One Romani version had 1000 views, another 5000, and another 8000. The Western Kalderash version that I made in 2002 has had almost 30,000 views in 3 1/2 years. (It topped 30,000 this week.) That is more than 23 people per day harvesting a seed that I planted 15 years ago.


*I sometimes refer to it as  Russian Kalderash. Their ancestors sojourned through Russia and still have words of Russian origin in their language.