Prayer Focus Stories

Daily Prayer: the Manta people of India

The Manta people live in a part of India that is generally hostile to missionary activity. Their 40 villages are scattered throughout a forested region with unpaved roads and with no access to electricity. Education is rarely available to the Manta, and less than 10 percent are literate. The Manta practice a traditional animistic religion, attributing power to the spirits of ancestors, trees and other objects that they believe control their lives. Their beliefs also incorporate many elements from the majority religion. Christian missionaries arrived in the late 1800s but were not very successful in their efforts to establish churches. Less than 1 percent of the Manta people have accepted Christ. In general, the Manta people remain very reluctant to become Christians. Other than Bible translation, no denomination or Christian group is currently making a concerted effort to reach them. A well educated and qualified couple are dedicated to translating for the Mantas. and provide them with the NT and portions of the OT in the language they know best.

  • The mother-tongue translators have been reaching their translation goals. They recently translated 1 and 2 Thessalonians and Philemon in third draft. Later they tested these epistles with Manta people in an interior village to gauge if the translation was idiomatic and spoke dynamically to local speakers. The team has also reviewed Mark’s Gospel together as a team
  • One of the mother-tongue translators is feeling a great deal of stress. His wife has been ill for two months—she’s still nursing and not able to take the medicine. On top of this, the translator’s father has been having seizures and sometimes falls into the fire. Pray that the Lord will heal this translator’s wife and father.
  • Praise God for the mother-tongue translators. The key translation couple have mentored these faithful servants in their Christian walk, helped them develop their leadership skills and trained them in computer use, translation principles and literacy supervision.

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