Arlene Piepgrass served as an author for many of the Visualized Bible lessons. BVI founder, Helen Odenwelder, asked Arlene to write these knowing that Arlene would not only draw on her knowledge of the Bible but also on her years of experience teaching children in the missionfield of Haiti. That helped ensure the Bible lessons minimized American idioms and cultural concepts and, therefore, would be easier to translate into other languages.

That foundational principle has helped the series to be translated into multiple languages and currently printed in places like Mongolia, India and Papua New Guinea.

I was blessed to meet both Arlene and her husband, Charles, as they walked through their twilight years. Charles served several years on the Board of Review for BVI. After Charles death in 2015, Arlene moved into a small apartment at Calvary Homes in Lancaster. I loved our visits, for one, because Arlene always acted genuinely surprised and humbled when I shared stories of how her Bible lessons were being used around the world.

Arlene passed into the presence of her Savior on September 26th this year. The week of her funeral, my collegue Jeff Kilcup was in Michigan delivering a load of Bible lessons to Andy and Kathleen Girwanauth, missionaries to Guyana, South America. Kathleen shared that years back it had been Arlene who had introduced her to these resources. The Girwanauths were stocking up on seven complete sets to supply to churches in that country.

Arlene leaves a wonderful legacy of lessons that are still helping children see Jesus!

Tom Luttmann—Executive Director
Tomorrow is EXTRAGIVE all day. If you live in Lancaster County, there’s no doubt you know this already because BVI is one of many organizations participating in the event.

Simply put, ExtraGive is an opportunity to see your donation to BVI stretched a little further by a donation to BVI from the ExtraGive sponsors. How much they give to each organization is based on how much individual donors like you give to BVI in comparison to those giving to other organizations.

To count towards BVI’s ExtraGive total, the gifts have to be made tomorrow, Friday, November 19th and made through the link below. Thanks for considering this opportunity!
TOMORROW DURING EXTRAGIVE!
Watch for a special video tomorrow during ExtraGive as we’re joined by Elinor Young, the subject of our new story, Beautiful Feet Upon the Mountains. She’ll be joined by author, Katie Zappitella, and illustrator, Del Thompson!

If you are unfamiliar with Elinor’s story, watch “Bad Legs” here
BVI supporters and partners gathered in September for the Planting Seeds Ministry Banquet. It was an honor to have Dr. Steve Pettit and the BJUgrass team with us to help focus our attention on planting Gospel seeds in children’s hearts.

If you were unable to join us, you can watch an 8 minute highlight video or the full recording here!
We recently released our new Print-on-Demand format for some of our BVI materials. It seemed appropriate that at the same time we were conducting paper and size tests here at the office, I was preparing to share about William Tyndale in a Sunday School class at our church.

Tyndale is best known for translating the Bible from Greek and Hebrew to English and introducing the first mechanically printed English Bible in 1526 with his New Testament.

Tyndale, rightly so, placed great attention to the translation work itself. (It amazes me that he learned Hebrew while being hunted down for his illegal translations . . . makes me feel worse for my weak attempts to learn Spanish and French). But Tyndale, also gave attention to the formats of his Bible. He opted to have the New Testaments printed in octavo format which provided a smaller, more compact book that could be easily hidden. That was important since possessing an English Bible in that day might mean being used as a human firecracker.

We too have to give attention to both the content of our materials and to the formats. Some partners need print, some need digital. Some need large-sized flashcards. Our new Print-on-Demand format will provide us more flexibility for custom paper, sizes and languages.
The Tyndale Monument in North Nibley, UK overlooks the fields of the “plowboy” Tyndale labored so hard to provide with the Bible.
This Tyndale illustration from Exploring God’s Word seemed an apropos test illustration for our new Print on Demand format. 
Join us via Zoom any Tuesday
Every Tuesday at 9:00 am ET you have an opportunity to join our staff via Zoom to pray for the missionfield of children. We often have ministry partners join us to share about particular opportunities across the globe. This past week we heard from Russell Raymer at Oremundo Ministries. Our next meeting is 11-23