A young boy smiles for the photographer in the market in Bori, South Sudan (Wycliffe Bible Translators; related story below). Today’s edition features stories about breakthroughs and barriers in scripture translation and distribution. Read and pray.
Missions Catalyst News Briefs 05.02.18
Source: Wycliffe Bible Translators, April 25, 2018
The people of South Sudan have rarely known peace. The decades since Sudan’s independence from Britain and then South Sudan’s independence from Sudan have been marked by turmoil and war.
Despite the turbulence, Bible translation has been taking place. The Baka translation began in 1980 in southern Sudan. The team endured civil war, violence, having to flee as refugees, and a kidnapping. Through it all, translation continued, and in March 2017, the Baka community celebrated the launch of the New Testament.
Now that the Baka have God’s Word, “God is not a foreigner anymore. Jesus is one of us. He can talk [our] dialect,” says Pastor Bennett Marona, the translation project manager.
» Read full story or watch a video about the Baka translation.
» See also The Bible in Uzbek, the story of the 22-year process of completing the translation of the Bible into this Central Asian language. In a surprising turn, it was publically launched in the capital with official approval by the country’s government (United Bible Societies).
Source: Frontiers USA, April 4, 2016
I hustled our children into the back seat of the taxi as Kevin climbed in the front seat. “Where are you from?” the driver asked.
“America,” Kevin said. “How about you?”
“I’m from Syria,” the driver responded.
“Oh. I prayed for your country this morning!” Kevin blurted out.
I cringed a little in the back seat at Kevin’s response. What was that emotion in me? Embarrassment? Shame? What did it matter if this taxi driver knew Kevin prayed? Why did I feel like hiding?
It was true after all. Kevin had spent a couple hours that morning, as he often did, in our team’s prayer room. And he had prayed for Syria.
Although I felt sheepish and not very brave about sharing our spiritual lives with this taxi driver, I look back and see that all it took was Kevin’s casual comment, and Tarek, the taxi driver, was hooked. We didn’t know it at the time, but that was the day Tarek’s pursuit of Jesus shifted into high gear…
» Full story is worth reading. Here’s my favorite line: “That first night with his new Bible, Tarek devoured a hundred pages of the Gospels.”
» See also another story about a taxi driver, Listener in Mongolia Becomes Volunteer Broadcaster (FEBC). And don’t forget to pray for the work of God in the Muslim world during Ramadan this year. It begins May 15. Check out resources from Frontiers, Prayercast, and of course 30 Days of Prayer.
Source: Mission Network News, April 26, 2018
The Tewe people in central Mozambique have had missionaries come to them for years. Today, about 40 percent of the Tewe people are Christian. However, the Tewe people have no Bible and less than one hour of scripture in audio [form]. Because of their limited access to God’s Word, it is easy for Tewe Christians to mix biblical teachings with the local ethnic religions.
Joshua Harrison with Audio Scripture Ministries says the Tewe people group “is still considered a least-reached people group because there are still some significant cultural strongholds with witchcraft and syncretism. So our team looks at that and says, well, clearly there are some missing tools and access to God’s Word in a form that people can use on a daily basis. That’s why we want to bring that connection to God’s Word in audio [form].”
“We are excited to report that we have over 10 hours of scripture recordings and songs and Bible-engagement materials that we’ve recorded [in the Tewe language] and the community response has been fantastic.”
The process has contained some challenges. The Tewe language is not a written language, which has made it difficult for the team working with local Tewe speakers to translate scripture before they can record.
But God has blessed ASM’s scripture recording efforts in Mozambique. Together with Tewe speakers and musicians, they have completed 18 songs and 50 Bible stories so far.
“The excitement for this is palpable as people hear God’s Word in their heart language. It is really wonderful to see. There is great hunger for the Lord.”
» Read full story. You might also appreciate another MNN story, this one about God’s Word going forth against impossible odds in colonial India.
Source: World Watch Monitor, April 16, 2018
China’s Christians may not be surprised by recent tighter government control of religious affairs, including a ban on online Bible sales. But they are unsure what comes next.
Following [last] month’s announcement that Bibles could no longer be made available online, large websites like Taobao, Jingdong, Weidian, Dangdang, and Amazon China have now stopped selling them. The Catholic news website UCAN reported that “books about Christianity have also been blocked and the business licenses of some shops have been canceled,” and that, according to social media users, websites had started to stop the sale of Bibles as early as March 30.
» Full story provides more context and links to other sources.
Source: Pioneers, April 4, 2018
In 2004, Greg and Alex, a father-son team working in Bolivia, came across a man on the road who was holding a little, broken radio. He pleaded with them, “Fix it, it’s my life!” They helped him get the radio repaired and realized it was tuned to a radio station broadcasting in his native language, Quechua.
Greg and Alex had been searching for a way to share the gospel with the people of isolated villages cut off from the rest of civilization during the rainy season. They were amazed to find the radios were made in their native Canada. Since then, they raised funds to purchase and distribute radios that include a Quechua audio translation of the Bible. In the last 10+ years Greg and Alex, along with many short-term workers, have distributed more than 50,000 little red radios.
» Full story includes a photo essay. The video above is actually part 2 in a series. Watch part 1.