Wycliffe UK blog

A Wycliffe missionary shares an unexpected outcome from his trip into a war-ravaged village. Due to the sensitive nature of this translation project, we cannot disclose the location or the missionary’s name.

As we circled the grass airstrip, I was anxious that we were going to disappoint the people waiting to greet us. These dear people had been living in a war zone for many years. For the past eighteen months their town had been occupied by government troops while being simultaneously under siege by the rebel forces. They had lost three successive crops to the fighting forces, and hunger was their main diet. There had been no medical supplies in the town for several years. Even normal commerce had ceased, and peoples’ clothing was literally wearing out. It would be very understandable for the welcoming party to expect us to be flying in food, medicines, or clothing.

Seven years earlier we had three translation teams and a group of literacy trainers and specialists living there. But with the escalation of the war, all our staff had left for other towns and countries. In the intervening seven years, the Bible translations had continued with displaced refugee communities from those three languages. Portions of Scripture had been completed and published. Scripture songs were composed by the refugee communities and had been published in song books. There were alphabet books, primers [an introductory literacy textbook], and story books in all three languages.

One of the translators and I had hatched a plan to make the first visit to the town in seven years. Since it was still technically a war zone, we would hire a single-engine charter plane, fly along the border to the closest point to the town, and then make a brief low-altitude flight across the border. There the pilot would land, drop us off, and then return for us three days later.

As the translator and I put together the load of goods we would take with us, we were limited to a total cargo weight of less than two hundred pounds. We wanted to take the Scripture portions, the songbooks, and the reading materials with us, but two small footlockers of those filled our entire cargo allowance. We knew people were hungry, sick, and naked. Did we dare to not take food, medicines, and clothing? Finally we decided that while others might bring in those goods, only we could bring in the newly published sections of God’s Word.

So there we were circling the airstrip, and I was worried about letting our friends down by not bringing things for their physical needs. As we disembarked from the plane, the welcoming party came forward, shook our hands, and greeted us effusively. Then they asked us, “Did you bring us Bibles?”

I have often reflected on that moment. If I were hungry and ill and naked, would I seek my physical needs more than my spiritual needs? The war had stripped our friends of all their worldly possessions, but somehow they managed to keep their priorities straight.

This post was originally posted on the blog of Wycliffe USA. Read the original here.

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