India (MNN) — Recording technology has
come a long way since the founding of Audio Scripture Ministries in 1967. Many of the cassette tapes that first gave
illiterate people in India access to the Bible now need to be retouched,
reformatted, and in some cases rerecorded for use with digital technology.
"There's a real need to make sure that
the recordings we have available have the same sort of standards of
quality that a lot of people are coming to expect in some of the digital
materials that's available," explained ASM's Tom Dudenhofer. "Some of the conditions were really rough
when they made the early recordings, and so even though they've experienced
great blessing from God as they've been put into the hands of people that can't
read, there are times when they just need to be redone."
It takes time just for ASM's partner,
World Cassette Outreach-India, to process an old recording and make it
available digitally. It takes even more
time if the Bible in that language needs to be recorded all over again.
"The rerecording is most complicated because usually it requires
finding good readers and setting up a team, so that you can have a reader, a
checker, and a technician to at least go through the basic process, and then
check it again, and then do the editing and the processing," Dudenhofer said. Each step is a real labor of love.
WCOI has more projects in the works, in order to meet the growing
interest in studying the Old Testament. Increasingly,
Christians in India are realizing the significance of the biblical revelation
given before the time of Christ.
"This is really a very good thing because people are recognizing that
the New Testament is based upon the fulfillment of prophecies from the Old Testament,"
Dudenhofer said. "The standards for the
Redeemer are explained more fully in the Old Testament, and so as readers
become available, the project of recording the Old Testament is taking on some
real importance in the work there."
WCOI is working to satisfy this growing interest in the Old Testament as
well. All of this work is taking place
in the context of a major construction project, Dudenhofer reported.
"The ministry team in India basically has to be all crammed into a very
small area while some of the deconstruction and then reconstruction of the new
ministry center takes place. But we're
grateful to God that the growth that's taking place there is really requiring
such a move at this time."
Your support can help this work to continue. The digital players are too expensive for ASM's
partners to be able to afford on their own, since they sell the players to the people
for very low prices. The audio Bibles
contained in the players are crucial for the growth of the church in
communities with low literacy rates.
"We're making a tremendous impact in the country," Dudenhofer said. "And we're encouraging a national ministry to take
more and more responsibility for doing the job themselves, and even beginning
to raise support in country for their own work."
