Wednesday June 10th 1981 Yvonne was praying in her Quiet Time as per usual. She was going through the church directory and praying for people in order. She came to Ian and Tania Vail on the list and started praying for us. As she prayed the usual kind of things Yvonne looked at the magazine on the side table beside the bed which was advertising a book called “Bruchko”. She thought nothing about it until the thoughts came into her mind “show that page to Ian Vail”. The ones she was just praying for. She thought that’s silly, what would I want to do that for? What’s the point? But the thought came again and again. It was like she couldn’t shake it off or push it out of her mind, it kept coming back. So at the end of the day when cell group was finished she summoned up the courage and risked being thought a fool to tell me that God had said to give this to Ian Vail. And of course you already know what significance it had if you have read or have heard us tell our testimony of how God led us into work with Wycliffe.
There is another woman called Sherry Chapman who lives in Texas, USA. She is an intercessor and regularly sat on her lounge floor with a map of the world at her feet and laid her hands on the nations of the world and prayed for them. She told the Lord one day that it was too hard praying for the whole world, she knew too much about it and there was too much to pray for. She asked the Lord to give her one nation. “Indonesia” came at her from every quarter over a two-week period. She said “OK Lord, I will pray for Indonesia.” She prayed for Indonesia for two and half years and then said the same thing. “Lord I know too much about Indonesia now. There’s too much to pray. Give me one island.” She looked at her wall map of the nation of Indonesia at her feet and she thought, “Sulawesi looks a strange island right in the middle of the archipelago. I will pray for that island.” A number of years later she joined Wycliffe’s Bibleless People Prayer Project and asked them for a people group. She received the Rongkong of Sulawesi. She was over the moon because that was the island she was praying for. She poured her heart into praying for the Rongkong and the translators who would go to the Rongkong. One thing among many others that she prayed: “Lord you have given me a such vision for the mission field through the book Bruchko. Father I want to ask you to use the book Bruchko in the lives of the translators you will send to the Rongkong of Sulawesi as a part of their call. Will you do that Lord? Use that book so they may know that they know they are called to the Rongkong”.