Wycliffe UK blog

We get to hear some incredible reports of joy, surprise and excitement when God’s word comes in the heart language of those who have waited for it. We’ve picked 12 quotes of the year to remind you of some of the amazing things that God has done.

1. Far and near
It is said that you, God, speak!
How do you do that?
Is it in their tongues?
If it is truly so,
God, when will you speak in my tongue?

From a poem by James Lokuuda Kadanya, a speaker of the Toposa language of South Sudan

2. I think if we call certain things as ‘basic needs’, I think that [God’s word in the mother tongue] should be the most basic need for every people.

Naphtaly Matah, working with BTL, Bible translation partners in Kenya

3. The Holy Ghost is as much the author of the Bible in the Hebrew, Greek, French, Dutch, and English, as in Latin.

Myles Coverdale

4. Did you bring us Bibles?

At the arrival of a small aircraft in a war-torn nation

5. Dide -Lagɔɔ. -Jejitapε, -mι na ‘paa fuo, -mι na ‘paa yuo…

Bita Tra Didier prays in his mother tongue

6. Language loss is often related to oppression and injustice. For these communities preservation of their language is about the restoration of their cultural identities, their values and their heritage.

From Google’s Endangered Language Project

7. Bible translation brings life transformation. Their worldview changes when they know God speaks their language. He’s no longer a foreign God.

Peter Munguti, the general secretary for Bible Translation and Literacy of East Africa

8. This is such a good story! We didn’t know the Bible had good stories in it!

Ikoma speakers, Tanzania

9. It means that Jesus is one of them, he is their brother, is their Lord. He can understand their language, he can speak it… It means that he understands their problems… When they talk to him, he is not a stranger.

Bishop Ndukuba, Nigeria

10. We have blazed a trail that no one in the 400-year history of our language has done. To suggest that certain languages are not worthy of the word of God is arrogant and ignorant.

Rev Courtney Stewart, general secretary of the Bible Society of the West Indies, on the publication of the Jamaican (also known as Jamaican Creole / Patois) New Testament

11. Jesus must have been a real man on this earth then. He’s not just white man’s magic.

Binumarien speakers, Papua New Guinea, on hearing Jesus’ genealogy in Matthew 1.

12. 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.

Hdi translation committee, Cameroon

Happy New Year from Wycliffe Bible Translators! We are full of thankfulness for the amazing thing God is doing through people like you to bring his word to the world.

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Tags: Languages, quotes

This entry was posted on Saturday, December 29th, 2012 at 8:00 am and is filed under Bible Translation. 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.