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New Position

October brings new responsibilities with Lutheran Bible Translators for Rob. He will now be the Field Representative for Botswana, Namibia and South Africa. What does this mean (as any good Lutheran knows to ask)? He will be working closely with local partners in these three countries to develop and maintain LBT’s relationships. He will be in charge of orientating any new missionaries to the field, and managing LBT assets. In addition, he will be helping develop a new translation project for the

Chikuhane language, based in Kasane, Botswana. This all means he will be doing a lot of traveling!

Status of the Shekgalagari Project

Of course, we will continue our work with the Shekgalagari language! The great news is the release of the print and audio versions of Luke (see photo above)! In other news... (1) the translators, Pontsho and Tshwari, are soon heading to Zambia for one month, where they receive training towards degrees in Bible translation; (2) we have been blessed to receive funding to begin literacy work in Shekgalagari, which is a really exciting development for us; and

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(3) we are meeting our goals for the year and are looking forward to continuing the work next year.

Community Involvement

It is LBT’s goal that all decision making for our projects is steered by the local population. To make this process more efficient, we work with an advisory committee (AC) consisting of leading members from the Shekgalagari speaking community. They are the group that helps us to know the local church’s needs and how projects can make an impact. We work to ensure that the projects that we’ve mentioned are directed by the local church so that they fill a felt need.

Please Pray: … for the translators, Pontsho and Tshwari, as they will be away from their families studying in November

… that the end of the home school year will go well for Carsten and Annabelle (our school year ends in November)

… for a new missionary family to be placed in Botswana. The Bible Society of Botswana and the Chikuhane language community has been praying

that LBT would be able to send a new missionary to Kasane to identify, work with and train a new translation team. We are asking for your prayers too! Kasane is in the remote far north of Botswana, but has decent grocery stores and a small private school that we think would be perfect for a couple with young children. Please pray for this need to be met!

… for our ongoing transition to life in Botswana and those times when there’s no water, etc., etc.

We would love to hear from you, feel free to email us anytime! And if you have any prayer requests, we would like to pray for you.

Blessings, Rob & Mical, Carsten (5), Annabelle (4), Josephine (1)

P.S. Our household set-up fund is still slightly underfunded. Please consider a gift today by going to the following link and clicking Contribute Now:

http://us.lbt.org/project/rob-mical-hilbert/