Wycliffe UK blog

The national language of Benin is French, but  more than 50 other languages are spoken within the country. Of these, only 10 have a complete Bible; 8 more have the New Testament. In 2003, a group of churches and missions in Benin came together to help more people in their nation read the Bible in their own language. They became Wycliffe Benin.

Picture by Heather Pubols.

The aims of Wycliffe Benin are not just to do literacy and translation. They are raising awareness among churches in Benin about how Beninese Christians can be involved in seeing a Bible available in every language in their nation. Part of this involves recruiting Beninese men and women who want to be involved in God’s work through Bible translation: 11 workers and 6 volunteers are already involved.

Despite the initial challenges Wycliffe Benin faced – including the skepticism of local leaders and a lack of funding – there are exciting results already. Daniel Dedji, the director of Wycliffe Benin, is seeing some in his own family:

“The book of Luke was published as a portion [in my language].  Last holidays I visited my family in my village. When [one of my uncles] saw the book, he got excited and amazed and asked if he could have a copy of that book.” Read more about Wycliffe Benin.

Wycliffe Benin is one of many organisations around the world who come under the umbrella of Wycliffe Global Alliance. Working together, they aim to see a Bible translation project started in every language where one is needed. A different partner organisation is featured on their website wycliffe.net each week. You can also find more there about other organisations and the worldwide work of Bible translation.

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Tags: Benin, Wycliffe Global Alliance, Wycliffe Organisations

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 14th, 2011 at 9:00 am and is filed under Africa. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.