Asia (MNN) — 200 digital
Scripture players are on their way to a sensitive area where an isolated tribe has
expressed eagerness to hear God's Word.
"God has opened up some really
wonderful opportunities with a very isolated group of people who have shown
tremendous interest in listening to God's Word in their own language," said Tom
Dudenhofer of Audio Scripture Ministries. "God has graciously provided the opportunity to complete the recording
of Scripture, and that Scripture recording has now been placed on small
pocket-sized digital Scripture players."
The solar-powered Scripture players
have built-in speakers and can fit into a shirt pocket. Before the units reach the people, however,
they have to get through customs.
"There's a lot of unknowns that
we would really like people to pray about today," Dudenhofer said. "As the players go into this particular area,
it's very possible that they're going to get stopped by customs, and we have no
idea what the response is going to be. We
have never made shipments into this area before."
Concerns range from the
possibility of demands for unethical "under-the-counter" fees, to the possibility
of losing the players altogether. When customs
offices impound shipments, they often charge a fee for each day of
storage.
"It becomes financially
impossible to redeem the players," Dudenhofer explained. "So if this is impounded, it's possible we
could lose all the players and would have to start over from scratch."
If the team is able to keep
possession of the players, it will continue working to deliver them to the
tribe. They only have so much time,
however. They're scheduled to leave the
area on Friday or Saturday.
"It's a very narrow window,"
Dudenhofer said. "If it runs into a
problem and we miss our window of transporting these units to the people, we,
of course, are going to try again. And we
really need God's wisdom on how to do this in a way that will please Him. We need prayer to get these Scriptures into the hands of the people who have expressed
strong interest in learning about Jesus."
Dudenhofer explained that if the people
become Christians, they could very well face persecution for their faith.
"This is a very unevangelized
area," he said. "There are no local
churches. We are not even aware of any
consistent Christian testimony among the people, but there has been some
interest. There have been a couple of trips
made into this area by the team that we're working with, but right now this is
basically brand-new territory in some very, very isolated parts of our world."
Pray that God will make possible the
safe and efficient delivery of the Scripture players. You can also support ASM's ministry.
