Category Archives: Please Pray

Update on Ministry of Todd & Angela Owen

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Please Pray–March 4, 2014

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Friends,

You will notice on the Ministry News and Opportunities page (above) that we are starting a new partnership campaign we are calling the Spring Forward Campaign. The basic idea? Increase the pledges to PBT from the current 1/3 of our approved budget to 2/3 in the next two months. The Holy Spirit continues to impress deeply upon Angela and I that the time is at hand for our return to Papua New Guinea and the re-engagement of translation of the remaining 26 books of the Somau Garia New Testament.

Please pray earnestly today that God will raise up provision partners (churches, families, friends, missions enthusiasts, etc.) to make this vision possible. Pray that God will give Angela and I boldness, discernment, and clarity to do our part in raising awareness of this world-changing need: making the Word of God available to a people who have no access to it in their heart language. Pray for God to open door after door to see this through to completion.

Thank you for praying.

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Please Pray–28 February 2014

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Today is the last day of February. Our prayer, hope, and dream is to be back on the field in Papua New Guinea this year. Please pray with us today that God will open hearts, doors, windows, eyes, ears, networks, mailboxes–whatever it takes–to make that possible. Pray with us that we will be prepared for the opportunities ahead.

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Please Pray, January 21, 2014

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Posted next to my computer monitor is a gentle reminder that prayer is the primary strategy of our ministry. I need this reminder day by day. It is far easier, when I’m not being intentional, to formulate a strategy or initiate a campaign or write another email or letter. It is more humbling to admit that it is God who opens doors, enables connections to be made, who nourishes and protects and advances. Quiet prayer doesn’t stroke my ego so much as furious activity.

I’ve been writing today. I wrote a letter to include in receipts. I wrote an email circular to go out to those who have committed to pray for our ministry. I wrote an article on prayer that is elsewhere on this website. I’ve spent time in prayer over all these matters and I have found myself close to the end of my work day not having written this post. Just as I need a regular reminder to pray, I humbly submit this to you as a gentle reminder to pray . . .

As You Pray:

  • Ask God to grant wisdom and discernment each day. We need God’s gracious hand to be upon our ministry as we continue to build a prayer and provision team to under gird our ministry to the Body of Christ, to the Somau Garia people of Papua New Guinea (Bible translation), and to you.
  • Ask God to open doors that we might have divinely appointed opportunities to raise awareness about what God is doing around the world and that we might inspire some to become involved in missions. Pray also that God might use those appointments to provide financially for our ministry with Pioneer Bible Translators.
  • Ask God to continue to prepare us for a hoped-for return to Papua New Guinea in 2014.
  • Thank God for providing for our needs month-by-month.
  • Thank God for new prayer partners that have joined us recently.
  • Thank God for providing life-changing opportunities for our two oldest children, both sons.

Thank you for partnering with us in prayer! If you’d like to correspond with us you may do so by clicking here. Blessings!

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Please Pray — January 15, 2014

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What a privilege it is to be invited into the throne room of grace. We are taught by the writer of Hebrews that Jesus is able to “save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, since he always lives to make intercession for them.” (Hebrews 7:25, ESV)

I invite you to draw near to God, believing that God has both the power and the will to do what he promised, and to pray in alignment with his promises. I also invite you to follow Jesus’ lead and make intercession not only for our family, but for the Somau Garia people of Papua New Guinea, with whom we minister.

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As you pray:

  • Ask God to grant us boldness, courage, and wisdom as we make known the call God has placed upon us to return to Papua New Guinea to finish the translation of the Somau Garia New Testament.
  • Ask God to continue to open the eyes of our hearts more and more to who He is and who we are in Him, that we might reflect His character brightly and clearly.
  • Ask God to increase our financial support day by day as we make preparations to return to the field. We are setting July 2014 as a target date and have a long way to go before achieving that goal.
  • Ask God to protect our Somau Garia brothers and sisters from the attack of the enemy of our souls, to preserve them for ministry, to keep them for the task that lies ahead.
  • Thank God being a promise-keeper, for promising One who would reconcile us back to Him, even while we were still sinners and worthy only of death.
  • Thank God that He is using this time to purify, teach, and establish our hearts more firmly on the Rock of our Salvation.
  • Thank God for his ongoing faithfulness, especially in days when all seems . . . impossible.
  • Thank God for Somau Garia co-workers who have not given up, despite fierce opposition.

I’m thanking God for each of you who will join us in prayer today. Thank you for risking all for Jesus.

Promise and Prayer
By the way, for an article on Promise and Prayer, click here.
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Please Pray–January 7, 2014

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Happy New Year, Friends!

We find ourselves this week working on some of the finer details of getting back to Papua New Guinea: paperwork, planning, and pursuing resources. This is the inglorious side of mission life, I’m afraid and probably among the tasks I (Todd) least enjoy. Nonetheless, it all has to get done. I am thanking God today for my wife who is definitely helping me stay on task.

As you pray:

  • Ask God to continue to grant us His grace and mercy in the daily grind.
  • Ask God to continue to open our eyes, minds, and hearts to the things that He desires for us to be aware of, to deal with, and to prepare for.
  • Ask God to grant safe travel for our son, Samuel, who is returning to college this week.

Thank God:

  • For healing for our family. We were sick with whatever was going around over the holidays.
  • For fresh energy for us as we launch 2014 with enthusiasm and optimism.
  • For the opportunity to re-engage the Somau Garia translation of the New Testament.

Thank you for sharing in our lives and ministry. Blessings, All!

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Day 39: Please Pray, December 30, 2013

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I’ve been asking the Lord to give me direction for the coming year. What should 2014 look like? What should our goals be? What does the time line look like? I’ve been asking for very specific areas. Aside from a few personal “nudges”, the Holy Spirit has consistently pointed me back to basics and to some overarching principles to walk and work by:

  1. Our primary and foundational strategy for ministry is prayer. It is our desire for 2014 to be characterized by transformational prayer. This concerns not only our personal prayer practices but also how we train, organize, inform, and inspire our prayer partners. Pray with us that God will grant wisdom, discernment, strength, and power to overcome the enemy–that we might honor Jesus’ name by fulfilling the duties of our ministry wisely and with zeal.
  2. God is in charge of the calendar and the activity of ministry. We have placed July 2014 on the calendar to return to Papua New Guinea. I look at the months on the calendar, the $$ needed and all that must take place and, honestly, I cringe. That cringing is not a faith act, though, it is a fear or flesh act. Pray that we will have an increased awareness and sense of God’s timing in all that he has ahead for us. Pray that we will have willing and submitted hearts regardless of the specifics of the Call. Pray that we will enthusiastically put our hand on whatever plow the Lord holds out to us and to serve wholeheartedly. Pray that our faith in God’s provision and plan will survive the purifier’s fire.
  3. Our season of building a prayer and provision team will result in praise and glory for God–especially in the faith-stretching and impossible-to-see moments and events. Pray that we will have deep awareness of God’s work in life and ministry. Pray that we will be able to tell His story well, that we will be able, by the power of the Holy Spirit, encourage and inspire his people in their faith. Pray that this season will also be a powerful testimony to the Somau Garia people as they watch and wait for the Word to be made available in their heart language.

As I review what I’ve written here, I’m reminded of the famous words of Sherlock Holmes: “Elementary, my dear Watson.” All these are elementary to true faith and Biblical ministry. Yet it seems like the basics are often the battleground. Please pray with us that as we move toward Papua New Guinea, toward telling the story again and again and again, that we will do that which is most elementary in the Christian life: put a smile on God’s face.

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Day 37: Following Jesus into Rest

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Of all the mistakes I’ve made in ministry, I believe one of the most damaging is that of not being purposeful about rest. Rest is far more than a lack of activity, just as peace is far more than a lack of apparent conflict.

Hebrews chapter 4 associates rest with a tender heart which is obedient to the Word of God. That tender, obedient heart is responsive to the voice of God in faith:

Since therefore it remains for some to enter it, and those who formerly received the good news failed to enter because of disobedience, again he appoints a certain day, “Today,” saying through David so long afterward, in the words already quoted,

“Today, if you hear his voice,
do not harden your hearts.”

For if Joshua had given them rest, God would not have spoken of another day later on. So then, there remains a Sabbath rest for the people of God, for whoever has entered God’s rest has also rested from his works as God did from his.

Let us therefore strive to enter that rest, so that no one may fall by the same sort of disobedience. For the word of God is living and active, sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and of spirit, of joints and of marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. And no creature is hidden from his sight, but all are naked and exposed to the eyes of him to whom we must give account. Hebrews 4:6-13, ESV

Lack of purposeful rest drives me certain directions I dare not go–if I am wise. Lack of purposeful rest points me down the path of disobedience, cauterizing my heart making it scarred, hardened, and senseless. Lack of purposeful rest all to often is driven by a dysfunctional narcissism, a desire to be at the center of things, of somehow having the satisfaction of having accomplished something according to my work. Just as Eve was deceived when the serpent contradicted to clear words of God regarding eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, so too many of us are deceived by the notion that we will be “successful” in the Kingdom if we just work a little harder, put in more hours, get involved in everything, never let anything go by the wayside, never let it be said that we weren’t there.

I must strive to rest a godly rest–walking by faith, hearing and responding to his voice, remaining tender and obedient, resting from my work so that His work can be made complete in me. I must follow the example of Jesus.

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We frequently read of Jesus that he “went to a lonely place to pray” or “he took his disciples aside to rest.” He was purposeful about getting away, having uninterrupted seasons of prayer, of communing with His Father. He chose to rest when he could have been using that time to heal the sick, teach the ignorant, or proclaim the Kingdom of Heaven.

Part of our rest, friends, is that quiet worship where we voluntarily open ourselves to God and allow His word to penetrate, rearrange, and heal. We must be in His word and we must be in a receptive spiritual posture to find rest. All else is a frenetic chasing after the wind, trying to prove something to ourselves or others. All else hardens our hearts, tempting us to place our faith in ourselves and our work rather than in our heavenly Father.

Notice the role the Word of God has in providing genuine, life-transforming rest? I believe that part of the call has given Angela and me to return to Papua New Guinea is to be a catalyst for the heart transformation of many Somau Garia speaking people. Without the Word in their heart language, the possibility of that dwindles. Bible translation aids transformation.

Provide Rest for the Weary
Would you pray with us that I and Angela will learn to rest purposefully and properly? Would you pray with us that we will rest well with a view toward serving well that many Somau Garia will be transformed by the life-giving Word of God? Will you add provision to those prayers and partner with Pioneer Bible Translators in sending us out to Papua New Guinea to finish what was started? Click here to join us in praying. Click here to partner with us in providing for the needs of this ministry.

May the Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make his face shine upon you and give you peace.

Blessings!

 

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Day 35: A Call to Prayer

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December 26, 2013 Cape Coral, Florida —

Our youngest daughter hummed, sang, and listened to Christmas music from October until at least yesterday. Yesterday, the Christmas story was read, prayers were prayed, turkey eaten, presents opened, time shared with loved ones.

Today feels different. The Holy Spirit has been pressing on my soul for some time now to be really prepared for 2014 in a number of areas. I and Angela see both challenges and opportunities in the coming year and are vibrant with anticipation of what God has in store for these coming days. It is critical that as we prepare and anticipate God’s work in the days of 2014, that we call believers to pray with us. We need to live in the shadow of the Almighty. We need to call on his name. We need to experience ongoing answers to pray that all might behold His glory.

Would you pray with us in the coming days that:

  • We will recognize God’s leading and be able to know the difference between His plan and our desires (when they are not the same).
  • We will have God’s wisdom in planning and in executing the plan for developing ministry partnerships.
  • We will be equipped and ready in every way to depart for Papua New Guinea in July 2014.
  • Our Somau Garia co-workers will be protected from the attacks of the enemy as they continue to draft Acts, James, etc. in preparation for our return.
  • We will be fully submitted to Christ in all things as we proceed toward the goal of living and working, once again, in Papua New Guinea.
  • God will continue to grant grace and mercy as our family is dispersed to colleges, jobs, and callings.
  • God will grant us new financial partners even before the close of 2013.
  • God will raise up the prayer team He is designing for us.

Thank you for praying with us. Our heavenly Father is pleased beyond measure when we put our trust in Him in prayer.

What will our daughter be doing in the coming months? She will still be singing, humming, and being enthusiastic, but I think it will be praise songs from church, hymns played on the piano, and enthusiasm about making the trip across the big pond to Papua New Guinea. I hope, too, that of all her enthusiasms, she will also be praying.

Blessings, friends!

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Days 28 and 29: The Call, the Community, and the Crucible

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William Carey, the "Father of Modern Missions"

William Carey, the “Father of Modern Missions”

Perhaps you’ve heard of a missionary named William Carey. He was a poor cobbler in 18th century England, married to an illiterate woman older than he. While he was not cobbling (making or repairing shoes), he studied the Bible, engaged in service, and thought deeply. He lived in a time when the idea of going overseas for any reason other than colonialism was considered mad. Yet the more he studied, the more he became convinced that taking the gospel to the lost was the central call of the New Testament church. And to Carey, it meant taking the gospel to the lost among the rest of the world, away from rural England.

He sailed for India in the waning years of the 18th century and would discover the high price to be paid for following the call. The community within which he moved in India opposed his work greatly–not just the Hindus, Sikhs, and Muslims—but also the East India Trading Company who feared that his work would interfere with their profits. He moved to the interior to avoid being deported, into malarial areas where heat, fever, and sickness was as common as rain.

Over the years he established schools, translated the Bible into several languages, planted churches, wrote books, established a press, a mission, and taught Oriental languages at a university. He also lost three wives (his first went insane years prior to her death). He constantly endured sickness and opposition, watched his mission split and be rejected by his denominational mission board, and lost all of his manuscripts (including several Bible translations, polyglot dictionary (that he had authored), and books) in a warehouse fire while he was away from the mission station. Not surprisingly, his self-described spiritual gift was “plodding”.

Getting the Word Out Somau Garia Style

Getting the Word Out Somau Garia Style

There are a group of Somau Garia men scattered throughout the foothills of the Finisterre Mountain foothills who face three furies in their lives: the call to translate the Scripture into their heart language, the alternate support and opposition of their community, and the crucible of spiritual, social, and physical pressure to cease and desist. One of the leaders spent an extended period in the hospital with tuberculosis in his bones–resulting in a somewhat debilitating physical condition that he now lives with constantly. He went from being a vigorous, energetic man to being comparatively frail. Yet he continues to draft, to ask for help in checking the translation; to keep it moving forward. When I talked with him in September, he said, “We need to hurry and get the translation done. Who knows how long either of us will live? We must finish.” Need I say more? The translators’ resolve to continue the work has caused societal discord as old ways and new clash.

Please pray. God is at work. Angela and I live morning, noon, and night with the call pressing in on our hearts. Our dreams are populated by visions of the Somau Garia celebrating the coming of the Word in their heart language. These visions meld with the vision painted in Revelation 7:9, filled with faces from every nation, tribe, people, and language gathered around the throne and in front of the Lamb, on their faces, worshiping. We are in the throng alongside our Somau Garia brothers and sisters.

Please pray. Pray that God will continue to build a supportive community around us, supporting and sending us to Papua New Guinea, in order that we might be with our friends daily, working diligently toward getting this work done as soon as possible. Please pray that the larger Somau Garia community will stand behind the translators, the literacy workers, the teachers, the families who give themselves to this work. Please ask God to catalyze the community to support these folks.

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Please pray. Pray that as we endure the crucible, we can, like Carey, plod. Pray that as we endure spiritual opposition here and now, that our Father will empower us to overcome and stand in the evil day. Pray that as we get our boots on the ground in Papua New Guinea, we will withstand the pressure and squeeze of the crucible. Please pray for our Somau Garia co-workers, that they will be able to withstand the crucible, as well, to overcome the enormous pressure that they live and work under.

Prayerfully Consider Partnership
Please pray, asking God what part you might have in this call, this community, even this crucible. He does not ask his people to go without supplying the goers with senders. Anyone engaging in high impact ministry can expect diabolical opposition. It is a given. Pray that God might help you count the cost. If, in your prayers, you feel that God is asking you to join the prayer team, click here to drop us an email so that we can plug you into the prayer team. If you feel that the Holy Spirit is leading you to partner with Pioneer Bible Translators financially in sending us out, clicking here will send you to our donate page where you will find how PBT handles donations.

Thank you for prayerfully considering your part in this vital ministry.

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Please Pray: December 17, 2013

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It has been a full week since last posting in Please Pray. Yesterday, our oldest daughter, Abigail, turned 16 years old. (How is this possible?) Also yesterday Angela, Josie, and I got up early and drove to Tampa to pick up Samuel, who rode down from Missouri with a friend for Christmas break. For the first time in several months all of our kids slept under one roof (their mother was very happy). And as I read our prayer requests from December 10, I understand my restlessness in the middle of the night last night, and the things that God brought to mind in those quiet hours of early morning.

During this season (40 Days to Getting the Word Out, concluding on New Year’s Eve, 2013) we have been asking you to pray for many, many things. Our idea was to recruit 40 new monthly financial partners, 40 new prayer partners, and 40 one-time donors to help provide for one time expenses. The results have been lackluster, but not without merit.

First, we have seen several new prayer partners join the team. This is important and foundational to transformational ministry. We have added a few financial partners, which is also encouraging. One of the profoundly impactful results, though, stems from prayers offered in response to the requests given last Tuesday, December 10.

  • Ask God for victory over the deceiver who desires only to kill, steal, and destroy.
  • Ask God to empower and thoroughly equip us spiritually to stand in the evil day and to overcome the enemy by our testimony and by the blood of Jesus.
  • Ask God to give us wisdom and boldness to invest ourselves in activities and strategies that will accomplish God’s purposes for this ministry.


This week our heavenly Father has dealt very graciously with us in answering these prayers. At the foundational level, the diabolical kingdom has sought to remove us from the battle by means of deception, discouragement, and diversion from the goal at hand. We have experienced a lot of victory these week on all fronts, being equipped and empowered by the Holy Spirit to stand against the onslaught. We also believe that God has given us wisdom on next steps and strategies to accomplishing completion of this phase of ministry and getting on the field again. Please continue to pray.

As you pray:

  • Ask God to grant wisdom and clarity in planning the next steps.
  • Ask God to grant influence and voice in telling the story and inspiring others to highly impact an entire people.
  • Ask God to continue to stand us up in the evil day and to prevail.
  • Ask God to protect our Somau Garia co-workers from harm, both physically and spiritually.
  • Thank God for gracious gifts of wisdom and energy.
  • Thank God for allowing our family to be together again for a time.
  • Thank God for providing new prayer partners this week.