"That’s nothing new," you might think. But I am talking about a new booklet titled "The Middle East in Bible Prophecy."

Currently the booklet is published by the United Church of God in two languages: English and German. But thanks to the tireless efforts of UCG’s Peter Eddington (formerly the Media Services Operation Manager for the church) soon the booklet will be available in a third language: Arabic. A little over a year and a half ago I received an email from Peter. Peter reported that he had a letter from a fellow in Bonn who was offering to translate our UCG booklet "The Middle East in Bible Prophecy" into Arabic. Peter asked me to contact the man and determine whether his offer was genuine. The offer was genuine and our Iraqi friend (who does not want to be named in connection with the booklet) completed the translation in several months. That was only half the work, though. Now the Arabic text had to be typeset. First Peter had to get the necessary software with Arabic fonts to be able to import the text from the Word files that our translator had supplied. We had asked our translator to supply us a chapter at a time, with any sidebar articles highlighted so Peter would know where the text was supposed to go. Peter acquired the necessary skill to typeset the booklet in a language he could not even read. I typeset Dutch which I can read about 75%, and that is a challenge, but I cannot imagine typesetting a booklet in a language you cannot even read yourself, especially using a totally different script system. However, Peter got the job done, and our translator has now proofread the final draft of the typeset version of the booklet. When the final edits are entered, the United Church of God God will have its first publication in one of the world’s major languages: Arabic.

Comment from Jesmina Allaoua: Way to go, Peter! You are a courageous miracle worker!