The Chronicles of Meng

For those who have been praying since my last post, I want to say a huge thanks! What I initially thought might turn into long arduous process actually only took an afternoon to sort out. We visited just two locations and found our new recording space. A local church (Tuine Gemeente for the Rustenburgers following), has generously offered us space in their sanctuary building to use for the rest of our project. What's great is not only will it allow us to get back to Monday-Friday and two sessions per day, but we tested the sound quality this morning and we are getting the same or better quality that what we have had at Lebone these past few months! Praise the Lord! With this move we should be able to finish now by the end of October or early November at the latest whereas if we had to continue with Lebone we would be finishing more likely December or January due to the limited availability of the rooms. It is exciting to think that we could be less than 8 wks from completion now!...

Well after a little over a month of recording alongside the classes here at Lebone I have been asked by Davar Partners Intl.(The overseeing ministry for the Tswana Bible Project) to locate a new venue for the recordings. In large part it is due to the continued interruptions and distractions that we have been enduring with the classes that run in the rooms next door to the studio. Unfortunately the studio was not designed to be totally sound proof and this has caused us to be greatly hindered in our daily production. While the individual narrators have done well in spite of the interruptions, there have been many days where we could have easily finished significantly more chapters. Moreover we might be getting even less time to record as the school has a number of recording projects of their own that they have informed me may start taking sessions away from us. All that said I will be looking into other potential venues this weekend and next week, hopefully we will be able to find an...

So last week ended up being very hectic, but also very good in terms of what we were able to complete. At the end of the week Levy was able to complete 88 chapters between Joshua, Psalms, and Proverbs! This puts us just short of 50% of the Bible! Today it is Pastor Joseph working through the Gospel of Mark. So far it has been a struggle largely because of interruptions. Please pray that we would be able to get on track and that the disruptions would be eliminated.

We have officially started our third month of recording. This week we have Pastor Levy for the entire week by himself. Yesterday he finished off Joshua and today is working his way through Proverbs. If all goes well he should be able to complete Proverbs today and hopefully then move on to finishing Psalms by weeks end. This should also put us over 550 chapters and very close to 50% of the entire Bible! Actually if you look at it from books completed we will be at 40 books of the 66 in the Bible! So close to being done! Please keep praying for myself and the team as we work to finish strong and that our team will not be hindered by distractions. Pray also for protection from illness as one of the techs and a couple proof listeners have fallen ill in the past week with colds. Please pray that the Lord would bring healing to those who are sick and keep the rest of the team in health so that the work can carry on!

Yesterday saw Pastor Samuel finish his portion of the project and pushed us over 400 chapters complete! We have completed roughly 63% of the NT and 35% of the whole Bible! This also means that we now only have two narrators remaining. When you consider that our goal has been to complete the project within 16-22 wks and we have now progressed this far in only 7 and a half wks I am very excited. For those interceding for the project please pray for health for the team. I missed most all of last week due to a cold and one of our techs has had continuous health issues causing him to miss a lot of time over that past few weeks. One of our remaining narrators also lives out of the area and has to travel travel through each week, please pray that he would be able to work out to come through more regularly so that we will not be delayed in finishing up the project!