During November we’re focusing on finding our strength in God. Please see the Prayer page to read our strategic prayer request for this month and pray with us.

By Eunice Herchenroeder

We knew it was a God-sized request when we first wrote it down nearly three years ago: “Pray that we will be able to complete the EP and E1 curricula in 2014 and enable schools to use them in accordance with government guidelines.” God-sized for sure! But then, there’s no point in praying only man-sized prayers, is there?

When we first began asking you to pray for this ambitious goal, our Elementary Prep curriculum (the materials that teachers in language communities we serve can use to teach children to read and write in their own language) was being revised and upgraded and our Elementary 1 curriculum (a curriculum for building on the EP foundation and reinforcing budding literacy skills) was still being drafted. Teachers from four language groups were slated to help produce language-specific adaptations of our “shell” EP curriculum and receive training in how to use it. This year was to be its inaugural run. And the work of writing the E1 curriculum would continue, with the goal of producing language-specific versions for use in 2015 in schools using our EP materials in 2014.

We need you to continue praying! We have seen God’s answers as the 2014 school year opened with curriculum materials available for the teachers and schools that were expecting them. But for a variety of reasons, things didn’t happen as planned in some of those schools. And a sudden shift in national curriculum guidelines leaves us needing to revise parts of both the EP and E1 curricula.

Will you pray? Will you pray specifically for Divine guidance as we make decisions about our EP and E1 curricula? For strength and perseverance to implement them? For the teachers and schools that have our materials, that they will use them well for the remainder of this school year and in the new one that will begin in February? For national level decision makers, that they will once again encourage mother-tongue literacy?

And, most importantly, will you pray that our EP and E1 curricula will be tools for enabling generations of men, women, and children to read and be transformed by God’s Word?

Eunice provides administrative support services and assists in the development of mother-tongue literacy materials for children.