At one of the evening board meetings with MAFLT partner ProMETA, Judy Musselman gave Mauricio a box of Spanish versions of the Bible in cassette format, some cassette players and some cranks to power the players in places with no electricity nor available batteries.

Mauricio and his wife Rosalia were invited to the small rural village of Abangaritos, Puntarenas, Costa Rica, to attend a short weekend mission trip with their local church youth group. Mauricio had to preach that Sunday in San Jose, but decided to be in Abangaritos from Friday night to Saturday afternoon. Very short trip.

Because of MAFLT's involvement in Orality, Mauricio had learned that almost 70% of the worldwide population are oral learners. Mauricio decided to bring some of those Bible cassettes and devices with him, as maybe the Lord had people in that area needing access to the Word but without the possibility of reading the Bible.

His van was already full with his kids and their luggage, plus one more invitee; 6 people total. However, they made room for some of those kits.

They had a great opportunity to share the Gospel, pray, and spend time with some of the families in the area, as well as share some groceries with them. Mauricio preached on Friday night even though electricity was gone for most of the message (fortunately, his flashlight worked well).

We set out to accomplish four things. But as an added blessing, we find God's people enjoy the fellowship of one Spirit whether from megapolis slum or sun-blasted wilderness. Our four tasks:

• Mumbai (Bombay): Determine if we can help the pastor of a 25,000+ member house church network with leadership training
• Jaipur: Participate in an SIU (Scriptures In Use) church planter story workshop
• Bengaluru (Bangalore): Conduct an STS Bible story-telling workshop
• Mysore: Evaluate progress of a three-year relationship with the leader of a rural house church group

At just over a third of the way through our trip, I had to share these sample sightings... (more pictures)

The Lesotho STS workshop has just wrapped up. There have been surprises. Most of the “excited to attend the conference” responders from a few months ago have not shown up. Is it because we did not offer this for free? Perhaps.. But “free attendance with lunches provided” would make it impossible for nationals to duplicate the workshop. Is it because of schedule conflicts? Perhaps. One thing is certain, the 16 faithful attenders will get extra attention, extra training and be better prepared to pass the method along.

Pray for all of them! They include nationals working in ministries with orphans, with Mission Aviation Fellowship and planting churches. They also include missionaries who are working with shepherd boys (Lesotho boys in the mountains must work from a young age and do not attend school), missionaries training church planters, working in accounting and as wives supporting their families here. more pics follow...

Did you know that you can get access to seminary level courses from your home for free! There are now many different resources available online to aid you in growing in your knowledge of  the Bible and how it applies to your Christian life. As MAF-Learning Technologies looks for resources to share with ministries overseas, we also want to let you know about those available to you. Here is a list of resources that will aid anyone from a new believer to a seasoned Christian. Enjoy!
http://doc.maflt.org/Reviews-Comparisons/Free_Bible_Courses
 
(If you find more, share them with us.)

Christians all around the world need access Bibles in order to learn and study God's Word. These Bibles may be in print, digital, or audio formats. Bible study software that enables one to search the Bible, to find relevant commentaries, to look up the meaning of words, and to compare various versions, allows users of such software to better understand what they are reading. MAF-Learning Technologies has been actively developing and distributing digital Bibles and Bible study software since before 2001. One of our first projects was a software CD that included Russian Bibles and Bible study tools that we freely gave away.
 
Since that time many free and open-source Bible study programs have been created and MAF-LT no longer needs to develop our own product. We reviewed most of the free programs and are making this information available at
http://doc.maflt.org/Reviews-Comparisons/Comparison_of_Bible_Study_Software.
 
This website contains

• a review of free Bible Study software,
• Bibles for Mobile phones,
• links to many Bibles and Bible resources in multiple languages,
• and finally a draft plan for how MAF-LT will continue to be involved in digital Bibles.

MAF-LT will focus on aiding the development of others' efforts, on helping to obtain digital Bibles in many languages, on encouraging the local Christian leaders to develop commentaries, notes, and dictionaries for their own languages, and in distributing the resulting products to Christian leaders around the world.