Paul and Bella Gervasi minister among the Sekadau people in Asia Pacific. “Another Christmas is gone, and the new year is here. Christmas time in the village is the busiest time of the year for Bella and me. This year, Bella decided to have the children here do a nativity play. That was a huge undertaking, since she had to make all the costumes and the backdrop and write many of the songs and all the scripts. In the end it went fairly well (considering it was grade school kids in … the jungle.) We had five meetings over Christmas weekend and another six on New Year’s weekend. It is good to be back to a more normal schedule. Since we have been back, it has been really encouraging to see the people in the church functioning on their own. One of the men told me that, while we were gone, they had been getting together to go over the lessons for Saturday night and Sunday morning. They have also been teaching in two outreach areas. There are now five men who teach in church and in the outreach areas. We have been able to work pretty steadily on the translation work. We are about finished with the book of Matthew. After that, we have only two more short epistles [to translate in order] to finish the New Testament. I have also been drafting the portions we want to add from the Old Testament. A huge answer to prayer is that we have a [translation] check scheduled. A translation checker who lives [in this country] … has graciously agreed to come in March for a three-week check. We hope to check around 2,000 verses at that time. That is around 25% of the New Testament. Pray that we will continue to make good progress and do a good job translating the Bible into Sekadau.”