I urge you, brothers and sisters, by our Lord Jesus Christ and by the love of the Spirit, to join me in my struggle by praying to God for me. Romans 15:30
I thought to echo these words of Paul when I wrote a recent newsletter. Paul’s epistles often expressed his appreciation for his readers’ prayer support. Remy and I feel the same towards our supporters.
Struggles at work:
We have taken on high levels of responsibility for Wycliffe Bible Translators Australia. John is in the role of managing the Information and Communications Technology (ICT) team. He never seems to run out of things to think about and to work on. John works to troubleshoot technical problems. He analyses data and documents procedures. He considers how ICT systems help the communications, finance and personnel teams to do their work in our era of new regulations. Implied within Remy’s job in handling the finances for Wycliffe is also the maintenance of relationships that Wycliffe has with our supporters. Remy needs to do a good job in order to keep the friendships going. We enjoy our work even though we find it difficult sometimes.
Spiritual struggles:
We get tired and discouraged at times. Miscommunications hurt. The devil uses things like these to discourage us and pull us further down. But we know we should rise above this.
Time struggles:
We juggle our time between our roles with family, work, school, church, friends and supporters. We sometimes struggle to write to our supporters and express our thanks to them even though we find this to be a joy.
Other struggles:
We have physical struggles such as sickness, injury and fitness. We also have financial needs as we pay bills in the light of rising costs. Our co-workers at Wycliffe have similar struggles as we do. Some also face issues such as applying for visas and working with new people in new languages, and dealing with many transitions in life.
You can probably relate to most of these struggles, as they are similar to those that you face yourself. Please pray for us, even so, as we support the work of bringing the love of God to the world in its many languages with the team at Wycliffe.
By John & Remy Tan