Wycliffe UK blog

Mother-tongue literacy gives an incredible boost to a language community – not just because they are able to read Scriptures once they are translated. Wycliffe International has a couple of testimonies from people involved in literacy work around the world.

Mariana Pacheco de Pinto and her husband Lucho work among the Tobas Maskoy of Paraguay. They are part of a team of South Americans working in Paraguay to bring the Word of God to minority language speakers who can read and write in Spanish but not in their own language. Mariana and her colleagues get the “big picture” of literacy—not just teaching reading, but seeing literacy as part of a larger context of language maintenance and promotion, evangelism, community development and a better life for whole communities.  read more

Once people are literate in their mother-tongue it is then much easier for them to become literate in a national language, from where they have access to education, health adivce and a whole host of other materials.

Margaret is working with the Rangi (or Langi) people of Tanzania, helping them to hold literacy classes to teach Rangi communities to read their language, which has only recently been written down. She describes an experience she had recently with an elderly lady who came to the literacy classes.

She was there on the first day, shuffling a little in her walk, due to age, and poor sight, but very happy to be there. Before long, our elderly participant was snoozing away as the workshop proceeded. What a waste, I thought, she has only come because she knows she will be given food at lunch time.

On the second Saturday there she was again. This time she seemed to listen, at least for some of the time, but I was sure she couldn’t see very well, so therefore she was not at all a suitable candidate for the class. During the writing session, I helped her by writing the sentence she spoke to me. How do I help the village chairman to understand that this woman was not suitable for the class? I thought to myself. read more

Maragaret goes on to report how this lady was able to bring a wealth of knowledge to the workshop, and together with her Grandson wrote down some old Rangi stories for the very first time.

Please lift up the work that God is doing worldwide, enabling communities to read and write in their heart language, often, as Margaret found out, in ways that we don’t expect!

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