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.

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

Portrait of translation

This tapestry, it fills my heart now in a way more than ever before. I mentioned last week that many years ago, I didn't understand all the roles that were required for this task.. I didn't understand its vastness, I had no concept of two thousand languages spoken by 180 million people without the Bible in their language, so at that time, my mind had only two categories for this work: Bible translator, and sender.

With my interest came research though, and then the hunger for more research brought me on a trip to Ghana with Wycliffe Discovery in 2004! And adventure and knowledge were added to research, and with knowledge came fire. Through that experience and through getting to begin linguistic training, I learned of Language Survey, alphabet-writing, night literacy courses being taught in the jungle by the light of thunder-lamps. I learned about data programs being written by the tech-minded missionary that can accelerate the "code cracking" of language development and translation. And there are teachers that are needed for the families called to this life-long work. And none of it works without the rest of it.

And now, on the other side of some life-changing events for me, through health issues that, at least for now, change my ability to be a Language Surveyor in uncharted territory, I look through the prism at God's call on my life to be a part of Bible translation, and I understand this call now more than I did before. Just as He expanded my two categories of Bible translation into the more real tapestry-paradigm, replete with the many categories of roles that are needed, I now know with more certainty and trust that this is what I'm made for, and that this call will continue to surprise me, in all the many forms and roles that Abba places before me. I see a fuller picture now, and that each role is one of the exquisite colors needed to complete what He is creating, and that there is a call and a role for every believer in this commission to make disciples and bring the gospel.

ROAD TRIP! - Part II

As I left our party for Oma that evening, my heart pulsed with the voices of my family——voices of energetic children, the sweet singing of my Oma's voice, as she metered-out the beat of a hymn with her dancing pointer-finger, and the kind, quivering voices that lifted me up in prayer at the end of the night to a Father that hears every quiet syllable...

I   will   never   forget   it.

Lately, in a serene, steady way, Luke 2:19 swirls in my mind: "But Mary treasured up all these things, pondering them in her heart". I'm certainly not Mary, and not undertaking the weighty journey that she walked, but I find this progress towards the mission field is pregnant in it's own way; it is a season of waiting, planning, and dreaming, full of growth, growing pains, and a million little moments gathering up in my heart, and they are good.

The second leg of this trip was just as full of that... priceless togetherness, and my family members' intentionality, fleshed out in so many beautiful ways that will stick with me all the days of my life: my thoughtful Tante keeping me company on the route between Hamptonville and Garner, an impromptu Birthday party for Krissy and I, a Garner-Wondracek family dinner, blessed evening time with just Tante Eve and Onkel Mirvan, and a breakfast with my cousin Paul. I don't have words for these million moments, but hear me that they are so deeply, meticulously, lovingly stored up and treasured.

        

A spontaneous Birthday party thrown by my
thoughtful Tante for the 31 year old twins!

Cousins!

Passed by a street sign commemorating
one of my earliest missionary inspirations

When it was time to leave my family, I drove three hours to Charlotte for the last leg of my trip~

With the last destination, I got to meet a friend that I've known through Skype for almost a year! Diane is also a member of Wycliffe and worked with me through 2012 when I was in the membership application process. She interviewed me, answered my questions, and patiently walked me through narrowing down which country I would serve in.  It was delightful to meet for coffee, to talk face-to-face with my dear guide.

When I left the Starbucks, I got to meet up with precious nearly-family that I grew up with in NY for my last night in North Carolina. Pastor Prado is one of my spiritual fathers, and it was a keen joy to sit for a meal with the Prado family, chatting with grandchildren, and praying for one another. 

All of these moments gather with the others, a heart thrumming with a satchel of things to ponder.

A Picture-Peak into EQUIP!

What a few months it's been! The summer semester at CanIL transitioned swiftly into being back home, and then tumbling into the 6-week online portion of Wycliffe's orientation course—Equip. Two weeks ago then, I got to head down to the Wycliffe USA headquarters, along with 18 other new members for two weeks of onsite training...



                             Here's a glimpse:

Some of our loving leaders~

CanIL students, unite!

A tree in the Discovery Center—Each leaf represents a people group that is still
waiting for any portion of the Bible to be translated into their language.