What Language Does God Speak?

They didn’t believe it was possible. “God doesn’t speak our language,” they said.  “He only speaks English.”

The director of Faith Comes By Hearing was visiting a Konkomba village in Ghana. His organization partners with Bible translators to produce audio recordings of Scripture, and he asked the Konkomba leaders if they’d like to listen to God’s message in their language.

He had to insist, “But God does speak Konkomba!”He joyfully turned on an audio player, and the words of Matthew 1:1 filled the air in their language: “This is a record of the ancestors of Jesus the Messiah….” 

Amazed, these leaders called for villagers to assemble. Soon 300 people were listening to God speak Konkomba. As they listened, they entered into the story. They were walking and talking with Jesus.“Jesus is now one of us,”they said. “He speaks our language!”

When people receive the Word of God in their own language, they experience the living, breathing Jesus who became human and moved into their village (John 1:14). 

…What language does God speak? He speaks all of the 7,000+ languages in the world. People can talk to Him in any language and he understands.

But millions of people can’t understand Him when he speaks. The love letter remains a closed book. 

I thank God that you and I have been blessed to have the Love Letter unlocked for us. We have had access all our lives to His rich words and rich love. 

I thank God for each individual, couple, family, and church that has come alongside me to invest in ALL people having access to God's Love Letter. You are making a difference for eternity, and God is transforming lives through your giving!



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Adapted from the story as Bob Creson tells it, here.

A Sparrow's Update

The daylight is retracting on padded feet, exiting the yard with a hush, and I’m watching the woods fill up rapidly with layers of feathers in downy gusts of white. There’s a cathartic release as I watch the two transitions… All days and all years end for a new one, and oh how the Lord covers all things with refreshment, at just the right moment. 

We end this year as two weary kids, tucked in by our Father’s quilt of white, warm despite the cold, fed with unbelievable heavenly morsels, made a little braver each small day this year. We’ve lasted in a sort of blurry survival mode, and many days it felt like there was just enough adrenal-sputtering to shuffle to the next place, be it work or church or the next doctors’ appointment. Truth be told, there have been so many hours unwillingly relegated to a couch this year, ‘enough’ rest to even out this sickness never seemed retainable for more than a few days at a time. As I look back at this year, I actually cannot form a timeline, cannot recall all the portions of it—it sloped and swung into unexpected places—for us as a family, making medical decisions and treading water with immigration paperwork, but also just as two humans, watching a world go through a lot of pain and uncertainty and transition for one year. 

Many, many times in these last months, we have felt like the current journey looks a lot like this painting: plodding forward with all our strength, unable to move too far, but persistently hopeful, certain that we’re following Him, and filled with the knowledge that this following is what’s important, and that He will not let the waters overwhelm us. 

In these months, I have heard this in your stories too. You are exhausted students, you are steadfast and sometimes at-the-end-of-your-rope parents, you are caretakers, wives and mothers and husbands and friends, but your journey was one marked with exhaustion this year, it was dusty or busy, heavy, numbing or just “off” and a bit unclear. The loss of your job pricked through your identity, the loss of your child stole your breath, the whole political climate filled you with grief and fear or anger. 

We are reminded daily lately that we simply need a Savior. These things are too big, we cannot overcome them. But HE. But God. Every statement that could come after that is changed by those two words. And with His sovereign, overflowing love, all is made well. All is covered in Heaven’s down, made newly smooth and Peaceful in a way that people can never accomplish.

Jonathon and I have been reflecting this month on verses about waiting, JOY, health, community, hardship and plenty, and what trust (and the blindness that often precipitates it!) really look like. We’ve known for a while that with the ending of this December, we would be walking into financial blindness for the foreseeable future, bekoned to trust God for our provision as we serve in the callings He’s put before us, but walking out into a newly blatant sort of dependance on Him—a truly moment by moment kind. Where in the last two years, I’ve known that I had enough pledged financial partners to carry us through each month, we knew 2017 was going to begin with a huge shortfall and the reality that we cannot cover most of our needs has made us pray for eyes that ever seek Him—for hearts that will pant for Him and not lives that measure stability by provision. 

This month, as God has covered our woods with unexpected blankets of snow several times, we have been reminded especially by the swirling, wing´ed birds that even the winter is filled with LIFE—jubilant creatures have frolicked about in this harsh season—the Infamous Tailless Raccoon visits us and leaves cute, wobbly trails, Stellar Jays careen past our windows, leaving a streak of indigo in our vision momentarily! We have been praying for the Lord to “bring interesting and wonderful things to our window" (a prayer Johnny began whispering many years ago), and we’ve been BLESSED with the most remarkable creatures this snowy month! On Christmas Eve, even an enormous, elegant heron swooped into the woods and alighted upon the snow-capped cedar-stump in front of the stream. Johnny saw him first, and we both went to the window and watched him. He looked straight at us, majestically arched and spread his awesome wingspan, and flew through the trees straight towards us—growing in size, gliding as he reached the house, swooshing upwards over the porch awning!! It was breathtaking, and recalled to our hearts all the messages of Hope that God Himself has connected to egrets and herons in our minds over the last years. I felt known and especially-loved.

We can be tricked into thinking of winter as a barren season, but it is a mystical time of watching nature depend on its Lord for a wayward winter-fish in the stream, for a shelter, for crisp life and air. I am reminded of the many messages in nature of dependence and of how humility brings life, how unknowing makes us capable of really walking with Him.

In Hannah Hurnard’s book Hinds Feet on High Places, even the water sings an exultant song of the joy it has found in falling down, of being brought low:

Come, oh come! let us away--

Lower, lower every day, 

Oh, what joy it is to race

Down to find the lowest place. 

This the dearest law we know--

"It is happy to go low."

Sweetest urge and sweetest will,

"Let us go down lower still."

Hear the summons night and day

Calling us to come away.

From the heights we leap and flow

To the valleys down below.

Always answering to the call,

To the lowest place of all.

Sweetest urge and sweetest pain,

To go low and rise again.

Nature knows this message; it exults in rhythm, in cycle, in smallness, in honest need and outcry. It waits for its Lord to usher in the change, the meal, the light, the warmth. It even allows for natural disasters, and by His design, it is the Body that is meant to help when craziness breaks loose! It is in the HUGE, blatant, messy needs that God is given opportunity after opportunity to strip away our false realities and the false things we put our hopes in, and then, when things are good and raw and fascinatingly impossible, we get to watch Him provide, from inside His presence, from humble, on-our-knees nests, like kids in awe, dropped jaws and funny grins. It is when we are brought low and crumpled that we are able to see all of what comes next from our small place on the ground.

This last week of 2016, He has begun laying a groundwork of awe-inspiring things for us to watch! In this framework of need, impossibility, and exhaustion, we see Him urging help from far corners of mystery to provide for us in ways that leave us laughing, knowing His goodness, and having to SHOUT it! We have felt  g o b s m a c k e d !—The Lord has sent some of you, (we don’t even know who!)—that specifically asked to cover our rent for the month of January, and then, but a day later, we received notice of another mysterious donation, and then another from dear friends. The amounts cover the rest of the shortfall for the month of January and into the month of February! Body of Christ, thank you! We do not know who to thank, and in this anonymous generosity, it is made clear we must always thank Him! Dearones and dear Lord, we, like the winter sparrows feel so known and loved and watched over. May you, with us, remember piercingly how like the sparrows we all are. Not one will fall without His knowledge, without His deep compassion and available presence. And through the Body that compassion is fleshed out, and we prepare for one another His choicest care in the winter.

Recent things of note we’re CELEBRATING and things to PRAY for (THANK YOU, beloved friends!):

PRAISES!

-Mystery-person(s) paid our rent for January, and 2 other large gifts were given that will cover our shortfall for the 1st 2 months of the year! 

-We FINISHED our Spousal Sponsorship, Permanent Residency, and Work Permit immigration applications and sent off the almost-4lb., 300+ page packet yesterday!! This is a major victory after so many hold-ups! It is a three-years-in-the-making project and we are SO relieved and grateful!  

-I had a few really good health days! The fevers have stopped(!!) and we PRAISE God for these needed positively-plateaued days that help us get through the harder health days!

PRAYER REQUEST: 

-My doctor asked me to begin decreasing the steroid again, now the it seems the infusion medicine has begun to work. Unfortunately even just going down half a milligram caused bad flare-up symptoms to start Thursday.

October calls from behind the veil, come and be a person

Today I sat under the porch-awning that hangs over our suite door, on the splintery and wise old barn-wood bench my landlord made, and watched a sheet of rain wash over the cedars. That kind of weighty rain here is so truly rare, and even today it only poured for a few minutes and then returned to the more common spitting kind. But in those minutes I could breathe differently, deeper. 

Today it’s October. 

When I try to think of my “relationship with October” in simple terms, I just feel gratitude that “there is a month that understands me”, haha! But when I ask myself what that means?—it’s harder to parse out into words! 

—October is the joy-struck month I became a Wycliffe member in 2012, after more than an aching decade of hoping to see the day! 

—It’s the month in 2013 when I got to meet my Johnny down in Dallas after we hadn’t seen each other in a breathless few weeks.  In several slow, perfectly ordinary hours, spread out over a week where I was attending a conference during the days and we only had the dinner hours to see each other, my heart could finally have the conversations with itself that it needed to hold.

—It’s when, with a candid pep-talk from my sister over the phone (still in Dallas), I first mustered up the courage to tell Jonathon I loved him; it’s when I first knew for certain that I wanted to marry him, even though we thought that meant he’d be waiting for three years while I went to Papua New Guinea first!

—That same October was when I first met the woman who would become my supervisor and friend in a department I didn't know I'd be working for later. It began the seeds of a story I would later know God had lovingly put together for me, when the work I'd hoped to do would become impossible for me and I would learn in November, through a surprise phone all on the very same day I was hospitalized, that my Lord had been preparing other work for me all along.

—It’s the same month in 2013 that I first started to be sick again, after 4 years of solid remission, with symptoms that seemed to double and re-double in a frenzy through that November until nothing looked as it had before, leaving me in the hospital with no possibility of Papua New Guinea, an almost-zero chance of ever working in a third world country, and no hopes of working in the very physical role of Surveyor that I’d longed for and trained for, and had only been two months away from beginning.

—It is the shining month in 2014 when I married the dearest Jonathon, before God and Heaven, our families, and the fiery oak trees.

So many achingly beautiful highs and chaotic low memories swirl within this month for me—hard seasons before these examples, and other vibrant ones—years of tromping around Berry in autumn months in our 20’s, hay rides and haunted barns with best friends, camping trips and apple orchards, loss and triumph, and now, in British Columbia, sometimes October means unending rain and trees that have stayed quite green, squawking stellar jays, and intermittent moonlit sitings of the tailless racoon…

I love the unkempt metronome of October. It’s a month bursting with visual drama, but also one that fills itself with the beauty of the ordinary—intense storms of gilded colors being transformed into each other, yellow to gold to bleeding red, but always with the calm side-by-side of things turning brown, of common decay.  Nature gets it! In its very fiber it knows that it was made for process; it doesn’t fight or need to endure the weight of grief or change or loss. It doesn’t drown in the sorrow of what we could call a declining beauty (gosh, if a person displayed such highs and lows in a short time we’d be inclined to call it a downward spiral!), but it just knows that this is its way—To buoy with what the year brings, to season in and out, to be seasoned by and through the cyclical song He has written and to know that it is good. And it is then, then that winter is lovely, and spring is awaited, and decay is normal, and all these things are seen and experienced for the good that they were designed to be.

I listened to my footsteps scuff-sideways on the gray pebbles under my canvas shoes this afternoon as I paced beneath our awning, and I could feel the cracking open. It’s been a tough few weeks again with health, and I hear small reminders tapped out in the heart’s morse code…how do you care for the soul when the body keeps trying to fall apart?… How do you connect with everyone on the outside of the health-cyclone when it just won’t stop, and leaves you too thinned and weary to run after them?…tap..tap..  And always the answer is to speak it out. Naming a shadowy thing takes the power out of it.  I am sad over survival mode—because it is not enough—because you can cease to feel like a real person, because it strips the life out of our outsides while our souls itch from the inside, and it tries to clobber you by turning all your time into “catch up” time. I am sad that illness means so much must be left undone, and that in the thick of it, there is only enough energy and ability for only some of the necessary things—which means needed things get left undone, unsaid, unsplendorized when I would long to do it all, to send all the words, to have sent all the cards finally expressing all of the gratitude I FEEL so fully, but have not said with the promptness and physical form that I would want, all the I-miss-yous, all the skype calls, and all the even everyday-normal things that go into making new friendships in the place God has brought the two of us to for now. I am sad that I am only small, and that maybe I am sometimes a thing withering early. I can be scared that things Jonathon and I hope for—like starting a family, finishing degrees, working on a language project together in the future—that these things will slip away from us before we ever get to really roll around in them. I can find worry lurking in my heart that illness will wrap its tentacles around these dream-stars and yank at them before we can choose and step, gleam and grow into them.

Knowing and naming even some of these thoughts and aches helps (and remembering that they are thoughts, and not truths). It doesn’t necessarily fix anything, as there are so many things with chronic illness that you’re just powerless to fix, but it hangs them out like a motley line of laundry, unravels the choked knots, the fabric of me, and helps wearied limbs stretch back out to truth, to hang there in the sun of it and be remade even as the fibers come apart.  Patient endurance is what you need now, Hebrews 10 meters out over my soul, like little hand-scrawled music notes ink-scratched over yellowed parchment, and I know the answer is just that we keep on. 

We breathe, and we inhale the rain, and claim a moment to tiptoe about, to photograph the life around us and to decidedly know that it’s inside too. 

We decide again each day to do as we can and not as we can’t but to do so with all that we’ve got, and to let the false shame of those limitations fall to the earth with the rest of the brown. And we let lovely people and moments remind us to do something small, speak something small, paint or write or shout something small to the feeding of our soul, to the shaking of the trees, and in His mercy we find that He’s written a story where the decay that falls to the ground in this gusty season is food for us all. We are all reborn by its percolation come spring. 

So in this florid season of rushing winds and tempestuous shift, I seek my trunk, my sturdy gnarled and knowing One. He is steadfast, and He is lovely, and illness and process and the forwardness that we were knitted with are all like autumn—where joy and ache are meant to intermingle, and it is the weaving together of the two that makes it what it’s supposed to be—brilliant, fleeting, and always leading into the next season. This mellow cello swoon song, this is what makes me feel understood by October, by my Lamb of a Lord, by my earthly beloved, and by the ones that know me best and plod-twirl through this pile-up crunchy fire-dance alongside me. 

Closing up #30daydietofpassion

What a month! I look back at these daily posts and feel overwhelming gratitude.

Gratitude that God saved us. That God speaks to us. That His plan for redemption is through the Church. 

Gratitude that God is growing an army, equipped with His Word, and passionate about translating themselves into other cultures and His holy Word into their tongues. Gratitude and hope that one day His voice might no longer be foreign to the millions of people still waiting to hear it speak to them.

I pray you have enjoyed these real stories, that they have tucked themselves away into your heart, irrevocably. 

And as I leave them with you, I want to ask you to pray. As members of our Lord's one holy Church, He gifts and uses each of us in different ways, but this one role of prayer is for each of us.  Speak to your local church, reach out to missionaries you know, find creative ways to know what God is up to in the world, and PRAY fiercely for this work! And if you're interested in knowing more on a regular basis, or on receiving a specific Bibleless People Group to pray for, please go to www.bibleless.org to further connect!

"..It's like finding a whole new Jesus"

We've been talking a lot about the Big Picture this month---About how one translator, traveling for one lifetime, to live among a people group and to help bring them the Word of God in their language is really just a tiny part of the story. This story that God is writing, is an intricate one, where WE get to be a part of mobilizing many parts of the Body to use many varied giftings and talents to bring Jesus and God's Kingdom to manypeople. 

Before we close this 30-day blog series tomorrow, I wanted to share one more poignant story about the vastness of God's translation-tapestry story! Jenny's story below, and the story of the Yazai people, gives a good glimpse at the prayer, human resources, food resources, community commitment, and fierce "irrational" faith that are needed for Bible translations to be completed in the almost 1,900 languages that are still left without it. I pray that we will catch these qualities from those that have gone before us, and that God would be glorified by our hungry, exuberant responses, as He invites us into this work.

In the 1930s, Jenny and her husband were planting a church among the Yazai* people of Southeast Asia. Understanding the need for Scripture in the mother tongue, they devised an alphabet and translated a catechism and the Gospel of Mark. But just three years into their ministry, her husband died of typhus, and Jenny was driven away by political unrest, never to return. Her prayers, however, did not cease. 

Jenny was 37 years old when she left the Yazai village. She was 93 years old and still praying for the Yazai and other language groups every morning from breakfast to lunch, when an SIL translator named Mark visited her. By then the church she faithfully watered with her prayers had grown to 10,000 believers...but they still did not have the Word in their mother tongue. Mark had the joy of telling her that he was working towards starting a translation project. He was studying the language with three Yazai speakers he’d met far from their homeland, and praying for an opportunity to meet church members interested in launching a translation project. 

The next year, 1997, Mark met two brothers who were Yazai church leaders. They told him they’d been praying for four years for someone to come help the Yazai do a Bible translation. “Four years?” said Mark. “I’ve been studying the language for four years and praying for a translation team related to the church!” The Yazai joyfully formed a translation committee and Mark became the translation advisor who checked the material! 

Individuals and whole communities threw themselves enthusiastically into the project. The lead translator was so committed that when he married, he and his bride spent their honeymoon at a training event! The future chairman of the translation committee, a paralyzed man, read in the Gospels that Jesus healed paralytics, so in faith he stood up and walked...and then went to work leading the committee! Villages formed their own support committees. Though poor, villagers agreed to drop a handful of rice into a bag every day. As the bags filled up, they sewed them shut and sent them to the translation team. 

The translation committee prepared books, songbooks, audio materials, and the "JESUS Film", so that everyone, readers or not, could have access to the Word. The church held literacy workshops, eventually training 100 people to serve as volunteer teachers. Each time a Scripture portion was completed, the church published it, and people carried copies around in their shoulder bags, snatching moments to read them in the fields. 

Even non-Christians became interested. Fifteen animists attended one literacy workshop; during the week every one of them found Christ and was baptized. Entire villages of non-Christians asked for someone to come read the Scripture portions to them so they could understand who this God was. With breathtaking speed the church grew from 10,000 to between 30,000 and 40,000 believers—a quarter of the entire population. 

In 2009 the New Testament was printed and, in spite of opposition, imported and dedicated. One well educated woman, having read the national language Bible for many years, said, “Reading the Scriptures in Yazai is like finding a whole new Jesus. The national language went to my head; the Yazai goes into my heart.” 

Now the Yazai have their eyes set on the Old Testament. “The New Testament is like a shirt, but we need pants!” said one man. “The Old Testament is those pants. Please help us get a complete outfit so we can be fully dressed!” The main translator is now studying theology so he can translate the Yazai Old Testament and serve as consultant for other translations. 

Jenny passed away in 2003 just a few days short of her 100th birthday, her part in the Yazai story complete. I know that by faith she celebrated the completion of the New Testament and the rapid expansion of the Yazai church, but I wish she could have heard what one old man said: “Now the light of God has come to the Yazai people. Now the Yazai people will grow and be blessed.” 

Language by language, the light of God is coming to people He loves all over the world. Sooner rather than later, the last one will be blessed. Thank you for the role you play! 

*Name changed to protect work in a sensitive area 

From ConnectUS, August 2010, Bob Creson

One Little Vowel

This week we've been specifically looking at translation stories from the field, and today I wanted to share my favorite so far! This story was first told in 2012 by a missionary couple who worked in Cameroon, and there is an exciting update about this language below, so be sure to read all the way to the bottom!

Friends, this story encapsulates why I am on this journey in the first place, and why I long to take you with me! I love the concept that God has placed his footprint/fingerprint/blueprint into the history of all of His people, and that sometimes we can find the clues He left us that lead to Him right inside of language. 

We've spoken before about how closely tied to our identity language is, and I am astounded by the way that the process of translation makes us ask questions that lead to deep and lasting transformation.  

Dangwa Pierre, President of the Hdi Translation Committee,
with Lee Bramlett, translation advisor to the committee.

Translator Lee Bramlett was confident that God had left His mark on the Hdi culture somewhere, but though he searched, he could not find it. Where was the footprint of God in the history or daily life of these Cameroonian people?  What clue had He planted to let the Hdi know who He is and how He wants to relate to them?

Then one night in a dream, God prompted Lee to look again at the Hdi word for love. Lee and his wife, Tammi, had learned that verbs in Hdi consistently end in one of three vowels. For almost every verb, they could find forms ending in i, a, and u. But when it came to the word for love, they could only find i and a. Why no u?

Lee asked the Hdi translation committee, which included the most influential leaders in the community, “Could you ‘dvi’ your wife?”

“Yes,” they said. That would mean that the wife had been loved but the love was gone.

“Could you ‘dva’ your wife?” Lee asked.

“Yes,” they said. That kind of love depended on the wife’s actions. She would be loved as long as she remained faithful and cared for her husband well.

“Could you ‘dvu’ your wife?”  Lee asked. Everyone laughed.

 “Of course not!” they said. “If you said that, you would have to keep loving your wife no matter what she did, even if she never got you water, never made you meals. Even if she committed adultery, you would be compelled to just keep on loving her. No, we would never say ‘dvu.’ It just doesn’t exist.”

Lee sat quietly for a while, thinking about John 3:16, and then he asked, “Could God ‘dvu’ people?”

There was complete silence for three or four minutes; then tears started to trickle down the weathered faces of these elderly men. Finally they responded.

“Do you know what this would mean?” they asked. “This would mean that God kept loving us over and over, millennia after millennia, while all that time we rejected His great love. He is compelled to love us, even though we have sinned more than any people.”

One simple vowel, and the meaning was changed from “I love you based on what you do and who you are,” to “I love you based on who I am. I love you because of Me and not because of you.”

God had encoded the story of His unconditional love right into their language. For centuries, the little word was there—unused but available, grammatically correct and quite understandable. When the word was finally spoken, it called into question their entire belief system. If God was like that, and not a mean and scary spirit, did they need the spirits of the ancestors to intercede for them? Did they need sorcery to relate to the spirits? Many decided the answer was no, and the number of Christ-followers quickly grew from a few hundred to several thousand.

The New Testament in Hdi is ready to be printed now, and twenty-nine thousand speakers will soon be able to feel the impact of passages like Ephesians 5:25,  “Husbands, ‘dvu’ your wives, just as Christ ‘dvu’-d the church.…”  I invite you to pray for them as they absorb and seek to model the amazing, unconditional love they have received.

As God’s Word is translated around the world, people are gaining access to this great love story about how God ‘dvu’-d us enough to sacrifice his unique Son for us, so that our relationship with Him can be ordered and oriented correctly. The cross changes everything!  Someday, the last word of the last bit of Scripture for the last community will be done, and everyone will be able to understand the story of God’s unconditional love.

Bible Translation Acceleration Update! : 

The YouVersion community has now reached a truly global milestone: The Bible App just added its 1,000th Bible version! With Bibles available in more than 700 languages, that means that millions of people are now reading God’s Word in the language of their hearts, together.

Version number 1,000 is Deftera Lfida Dzratawi (XEDNT), the first digital translation of the New Testament into Hdi (pronounced huh-DEE), a language spoken mostly in Cameroon and neighboring Nigeria. Generously provided to the YouVersion community by Wycliffe, this Bible’s translation is an incredible story of perseverance and love decades in the making!

It's the Mother Tongue that Plants the Word in Our Hearts

The Bible says, “...the word of God is alive and powerful. It is sharper than the sharpest two-edged sword, cutting between soul and spirit, between joint and marrow. It exposes our innermost thoughts and desires.” (Hebrews 4:12, NLT)

This truth is most deeply experienced when a person is able to read the Scriptures in his or her own heart language. Here is another real-life example of what the difference looks like! :

In a minority language group where people are not well acquainted with Jesus, a woman was hired to translate one of the gospels. Although she was fluent in Russian (the language from which she was translating), she discovered that the words in her own language were “so beautiful—brighter, more touching, deeper than Russian.” No matter how often she read the book, it still spoke to her: “I start crying when I read about Jesus being lonely and praying during the night before His crucifixion. When I read those words in my language I can’t stop crying. The words are so alive, they pierce my soul.” When she read it to others, they also wept.
 

In another language group in the area, a mother tongue translator needed to find out if a new translation of Mark’s Gospel communicated clearly, so she read it to a group of teachers. Because she was concentrating very hard, she did not look up until she heard a noise that sounded like laughter. Was something wrong with the text? Did her listeners think it inappropriate to read in the local language when they were all educated in Russian?

Then she realized that it was not laughter but crying! She looked up to see a school principal with his head bowed and a pool of tears on the desk in front of him. The story in Mark 12 about the poor widow giving her offering had touched him deeply. When he heard it in his own language, he realized that Jesus' words carried a challenge—it is not enough just to hear the words; we must live accordingly.

If these people speak and teach in the language of wider communication, why do they still respond in this way to their mother tongue? A translator in West Asia put it this way: “We can understand the Bible with our mind in the national language, but it’s the mother tongue that plants the Word in our hearts.” After giving 18 years of his life to translating the New Testament into his own language, this man turned his attention to the Old Testament (completed in his language now and dedicated in 2012).

Some—maybe most—of the people in these language groups are proficient in a language of wider communication. But the translation in that language doesn’t always resonate at the deepest level of their beings—the place where hurts are healed, decisions are made, and lives are changed.

Edited from a ConnectUS newsletter, November 2011, Bob Creson

Freedom is the visage of a laundry-chomping donkey

This is the last week of my #30daydietofpassion, and this week I would really love to focus on some stories from the field that highlight some interesting translation issues!  The more I learn about linguistics, Biblical exegesis, and  how the two must work together to "crack the code" of Bible translation in each individual culture, the more I understand what a sheer miracle it is each time a translation team completes the Scripture in a new language!

It used to take a missionary's lifetime to learn a people group's language, and to then begin and finish the long, hard work of discovering each best word and/or phrase to convey the meaning of each Bible passage. This time has been diminished a little in many places, due to the move of working with national translators and missionaries that I've mentioned before. However, this just means that teams of nationals and ex-pats are now working together to discover those words of life that impart the right theological meaning encapsulated in each verse.

Ivy's story below shows one such example of a phrase that eluded a translator for a long while, until an incident with a donkey brought the right words to light! Enjoy:

Excerpt from Ivy Cheeseman's article, published in InFocus 2010, Issue 4

Sunday's PassionBite Video!

The Road to Transformation from Wycliffe USA on Vimeo.

Africa, the land of 2,146 living languages

The last region, rounding out this week's focus, is the continent of Africa. I love today's visual aids!--for me, it's so helpful to see the size-comparisons, putting things into perspective, and the facts about cell phone use are still surprising to me!

I also didn't know that Nigeria is the country with the third largest need for Bible translations still! Check out the facts and pictures, and check back beginning tomorrow for our last week of #30daydietofpassion!

Do you Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogerychwymdrobwllllantysiliogogogoch?

Today, I take a look at the needs in Europe, along with some fun facts about the longest city name in the world!)

This area is perhaps the one that people think of least when they think of Bible translation needs. But there are 127 separate languages still waiting for a completed Bible in this region. Many of these people groups fall into the category of believers without the Word in their heart language---they may attend church and hear God's Word preached, but it is in a standard, "Language of Wider Communication, often the national language, but it does not meet their comprehension needs.

For many of us, this might feel similar to if we only had access to discipleship, teaching, and reading the Word on our own in a language that we once took a brief class on in high school or middle school! We would never consider this an adequate way to know Jesus for ourselves, but this part of the world lives with this as their daily reality.

Take a look at all the fun facts, and please join me in praying for Europe and the remaining language groups there--that God would move hearts and send people there, raising up teams of people for each of these regions, "until every last tongue has heard". Amen.

The translation needs of the Americas!

Today, we look at the Americas! This is often the region that people assume is completely finished! In our North American paradigm, it is too easy to forget the true diversity all around us, and that there are more than a thousand languages spoken on these continents and their surrounding islands! Have a look below at the facts, and please pray for translators to rise up to work in each of these language groups. There is a need for people willing to give their lives to the cold, huddling up in Nunavut with First Nation languages, and  for translation teams to continue working in the balmy jungles of South America until every tongue has access to God's voice...

Asia Area Statistics!

Today's focus is on the region of Asia! With almost 60% of the world's population, this region and its 49 countries contain 2,303 living languages. Gobble up the info-spread below:

Translation needs in the Pacific

Through the rest of this week, I want to showcase some beautiful graphic-representations of the needs left in five major world-regions. Today we look at the Pacific, an area dear to my heart because of Papua New Guinea! Many of the Bibleless people groups are in this area of the world, with 1,311 living languages still spoken within this region! Language varieties were often kept separate and distinct in these areas (as opposed to the expansion and overlapping of many other languages, like how English spread) due to sharp geographical features, like mountains that historically made communication between people groups much more unlikely. Take a look at these language and world facts, focusing on the work that is left to be done. 

View a clickable, larger version at http://blog.wycliffe.org/2014/06/16/wycliffe-world-highlights-pacific/

In their own words..

“If you talk to a man in a language he understands, that goes to his head. If you talk to him in his language, that goes to his heart.” – Nelson Mandela 

“When God’s Word is translated into the language that speaks to people’s hearts, it transforms lives. “Swahili words aren’t deep words to us. They don’t go inside us like Zanaki words do!” – Pastor, Tanzania, East Africa

 “…Churches were for old people who only spoke English, and even they didn’t understand it all. Now they read the Bible verses in our language, and the church is growing so much they added a second service. They only have standing room at the first service!” – Jessica, an Aghem (Cameroon) literacy teacher.

“I feel a great satisfaction in Bible translation. I am encouraged and have energy to keep doing the translation because I know my people will be able to read the Word of God in their own mother tongue.” –Bernard Diatta, national translator. Photo by Zeke du Plessis

Why Bible Translation?

The ripple effect of Bible translation for families

The ripple effect of Bible translation in a community that has not had it before is remarkable. I remember sitting with a group of women in a mountain village of Ghana and hearing them discuss the effects their literacy class was having on their lives.

One woman spoke about how they were now creating a business co-op through micro-loans that were helping them all to utilize small-plot farms to provide for their families. Another spoke about how she suddenly felt empowered in the market place, that she could sign her signature mark now, knowing what she was signing for, and that no one took advantage of her anymore. A third mother spoke of all the knowledge she was newly attaining about the world around her, and that she had never had access to the health pamphlets given by the city and aid workers before! She cried as she gestured and explained examples of how to wash her baby, and that covering their food could make a difference in keeping things sanitary… simple but powerful things that had never been opened to them before. 

They spoke from the heart, blatantly choked up and moved by the impact of these practical lessons. These mega life-changes all followed the introduction of a Bible translation project into their community, and the establishment of literacy courses alongside it, so that once the Word became fully available in their variety's heart language, they would be able to read it.

My experience of these stories is not isolated, and today's PassionBite video beautifully reiterates some of the socioeconomic ripple effects that have shown communities Jesus' love for them through practical means.

Empowering Families for Lasting Change from Wycliffe USA on Vimeo.

The Boogi Waqa

Today's PassionBite contains a story from Kenya (as told by Bob Creson), involving a wily and misbehaving cow, a dream bearing a vision from Heaven, and the fulfilment of God's promise to the Borana people to provide His Word to them in their language once again… 

The hot desert day was over and a small group of Borana people—nomadic cattle herders in Kenya—sat down under the stars to share news and stories. As SIL workers Jim and Dorothea Lander joined them, an elder began to speak.

“Long, long ago,” he said, “the Borana people had a Book of God. We called it our Boogi Waqa and everyone had a copy. We read it often to learn how to please God. But as the years passed, our books began to wear out until eventually only one remained—the prized possession of an old, old grandfather.

“Those were years of drought, and our people relentlessly battled for survival. Day after day the old man and his family took their cattle out on long searches for grass and water. One day they left behind a cow too weak to keep up with them. Nosing around for food while no one watched, she came upon the last Boogi Waqa…and devoured it! When the old man came home that night, he found only a few pieces of leather binding scattered on the ground. Great sadness filled the camp.

“That night the old man slept fitfully and dreamt that an angel appeared to him. The angel promised that after many years God would send their book back to them. ‘Watch for a strange man from a faraway country,’ said the angel. ‘When he comes, treat him well, for he will bring back your Boogi Waqa.’

“Many years later, the first missionaries came into Borana land. Some of you remember them. They tried to learn our language, and one of them actually wrote a book he said came from God, but we could not read it.” The elder paused, and then with a long sigh, he concluded: “Now, my children, we still wait for the Boogi Waqa.”

Jim and Dorothea were still learning the Borana language, but they understood enough to marvel at the story. A few weeks later, they entertained some Borana men in their home. After dinner and several cups of sweet, creamy tea, a man named Galgalo picked up the Lander children’s English Picture Bible. Galgalo could read it because he’d served in the Kenyan Air Force. He read the story of the Tower of Babel in English, and then told the Borana men what it said in their own language.

Together they looked at the pictures in the Bible and exclaimed, “Look, these men dress just like we do, with flowing clothes and turbans! They pack their camels like we do! And this desert looks just like ours!”

Galgalo turned to Jim and asked, “Is this a Borana book? Is it…could it be…the Boogi Waqa?”

“Yes,” said Jim. “This is the Boogi Waqa.”

Silently the men stared at Jim and Dorothea. Slowly they turned their gaze back to the book. Long into the night they explored the book, examining the pictures and listening to Galgalo read. Eventually they came to a picture of the Israelites sacrificing a lamb, as God had instructed them to do in the Old Testament.

The men told Jim, “Our fathers taught us that the Boogi Waqa told how to sacrifice a lamb, so that God would forgive our sins. And sure enough here it is in this Boogi Waqa! We still do our animal sacrifices, but some of the missionaries say we should stop. Why is that?”

His heart pounding, Jim took the Bible and turned to the tenth chapter of Hebrews. With Galgalo’s help, he explained that God sent his Son, Jesus, to be the perfect sacrifice for sin. They no longer needed to sacrifice lambs each year because now they could find forgiveness of sin and eternal life by putting their trust in Jesus, who died for their sins once for all!

Health concerns later sent the Landers back home, but a Borana man, David Diida, drew on their linguistic research to spearhead a revision of the Bible and a very successful literacy program. Many groups of believers can now read their own Book of God all across Northern Kenya.

Dorothea says, “I believe God placed the Boogi Waqa story in Borana history and preserved it in their oral culture so that many years after the original book disappeared, men would seek after God and find in Him eternal life by reading their new Boogi Waqa.”

God left His footprint in the desert sands of Northern Kenya, and He’s left it in many other cultures around the world. Missionaries often think they are “taking God to the people” they are called to serve. But the truth is, He has already been there, preparing the way.