Father Mike
I pray this update from me finds you doing well!  If you have time I would love to hear from you.  Please send me a quick hello and let me know if you have any prayer needs. And do you have any questions you want to ask me about the Ministry?   julia.schatz@e3partners.org 

I really love hearing from you.  I get many great updates from people at Christmas but rarely any other time of the year. You matter to me and I am interested in hearing from you. Thank you for partnering with me. Thank you for your faithful and generous support and prayers. I love reading in the Bible about the disciples of Jesus, serving alongside each other and helping each other with needs and support. I feel the same amazing gratitude!  Thank you!!  

I love to pray this prayer - "Lord may we serve you with gladness and fullness of heart, and then stand back in awe  and say, Look, what God has done! God, You have done the things only God can do! Wow!  We serve a mighty God.  Thank you Lord! "

This year has been full of many open doors of opportunity to touch the lives of hurting people with God's love, care and compassion. I hope you are blessed and encouraged to know we do that together! ... Because of your support you are with me every time I GO... into the world and preach the gospel!  We obey the Lord together!  I know when I'm giving an update I say "thank you" a lot. I wish I had words that would adequately express the gratitude in my heart.  

Iraq in February - equipping the saints for the work of service for the building up of the body of Christ. Ephesians 4:12 We trained and equipped long term workers with the ministry of Trauma Healing. 

Turkey in March - Conference where we networked with, learned from and served NGOs and other organizations about what God is doing in Central Asia. How can we help one another reach those living in spiritual darkness.  It was a rich time!  

From Turkey we traveled to Kyrgyzstan - LORD thank you for using us to train and equip believers, your church, to reach the lost and to learn how to do that using Trauma Healing ministry. ​

Update and Prayer Requests: June 2022 
Valerie and Nicasio Martinez
Translating God's Word with and for the people who speak Quiatoni Zapotec

Nicasio and Beto have checking the translation of the Book of Acts in Zapotec as well as the back translation, to see what parts the back translator didn’t understand. This is in preparation for the consultant to check it. We want it to be the best it can be so all this checking is worth it!

Beto has finished a first draft of the book of Proverbs. He has been revising it for a three week workshop in September on translating Proverbs. Beto also recently dubbed a evangelistic video. You can see it here: https://www.facebook.com/AnsbertoGonlz/videos/1171192090327368 and the English version is here: http://www.freecartoontract.com/animation/

While Nicasio stayed home, doing all his regular things of working on the translation, his doctoral thesis, coordinating the translation class for the Translation and Interpretation Master’s Degree program, teaching the young people, etc., I went to the US for two and a half weeks!

I was to fly on May 31st to Fort Wayne to attend a memorial service for two very dear friends, spend time with our kids and do some visiting. My flight from Oaxaca to Mexico City was cancelled the night before, we assume because of the hurricane heading towards Oaxaca. Within two hours, Nicasio had taken me to Oaxaca and I had bought a bus ticket for Mexico City. I got to the airport in plenty of time for my 1 pm flight.

I had a great time with Mike, Tara and Royan for ten days. It was so fun to see Royan (a year and a half old!) investigate things at the Children’s Museum of Indianapolis and the Children’s Zoo in Fort Wayne. Celebrating Tara’s birthday with her family and Rusty was another highlight.

We (mostly Mike and his truck) helped Rusty move into his new apartment with no apartment mates! Rusty says he was glad to be able to host me while I was in Indiana. He is also learning lots about algae, watersheds, and lakes at his new job at the Lilly Center for Lakes & Streams!

A highlight of my time with Rusty was his accompanying me to my home church, the Federated Church of Grass Lake, MI, to give an update there on our ministry of Bible transla­tion. Then we visited two of my cousins and then we went to visit the Feder­ated Church’s retired pastor and his wife.

Another fun thing was to make a presentation to Rusty’s Bible study group on the Sunday morning that I flew home. (One of the perks of a 1 pm flight!) It was a delightful group with lots of interest and good questions. I just wish we didn’t have to rush off to the airport!

I’m so thankful that I was able to visit quite a few people in the area since I/we hadn’t been able to visit during the covid restrictions. It was a lot of driving (and oh! the gas prices!) but I was encouraged and blessed by every visit. (For those of you in the northern Ohio area, Nicasio and I will be visiting there in late September and early October; dates to be confirmed.)

Please pray for Nicasio’s dad. He hasn’t been feeling well for a while and some blood tests show that he might have prostate cancer. (He’d had prostate surgery more than 10 years ago.) We appreciate your prayers for both his parents. They are quite content living pretty independently next door to us.

Would you pray, too, for Pastor Delfino and the other Quiatoni pastors to see the benefits of having God’s Word in their own language? Thank you.

Thank you for standing with us in so many ways as we work towards God’s Word in Quiatoni Zapotec and the people being able to read and listen to it in their own language.

love, Valerie and Nicasio
www.cten.org/NicasioMartinez​