Wycliffe UK blog

From Words for Life: Healing the Wounds of the Heart.

Astounding changes occurred in the lives of Nyaboa people at a trauma healing seminar in Ivory Coast during the uneasy peace after the civil war.

Four former rebel soldiers had killed several local people. They asked three others to go with them to beg the victims’ families for forgiveness.

Another ex-rebel soldier had killed a pastor’s two children with his machete, because he didn’t want his brother to become a Christian. He repented and committed his life to God. Since the pastor was absent from the seminar, he asked for forgiveness from the pastor’s wife and relatives. They forgave him and prayed with him.

A group of young men had stolen from several pastors, hoping that this would make them leave the area. They thought the pastors’ prayers would spoil their fun. But during the seminar, God moved them to return all the stolen property to the owners - mattresses, barrels, radios, tools, kitchen utensils, all in good condition.

Read more (pdf, 2.4MB)

Dustin has posted a very moving video that he and others have recently produced about the war in the Democratic Republic of Congo, and how mother-tongue scriptures are being used to heal the wounds of trauma.

The video is eye-opening, bearing witness to horrendous atrocities committed in an often forgotten part of the world. But it is also an amazing testimony of how God is working through his church even in the darkest places, and the power of translated scriptures in the language of the heart.

Healing the wounds of trauma through mother-tongue scripture was the theme of a recent edition of Words for Life. You might like to download the pdf (2.4MB) to find out more.

God has been reaching out to all nations since the beginning of time, and it is an honour that he calls each one of us to join in with his mission day by day. For some this will mean going to live overseas, but for many this means staying in the UK and building God’s kingdom here.

But wherever God has us at the moment, we can all join in with God’s mission to the ends of the earth through prayer. Though we can never fully comprehend why, God has chosen to work through his people, and through our prayers.

Here’s a great example from many years ago of how God worked through the faithful prayer of one man in Belfast, to bless a Bible translation project in a village in Brazil.

When it came to learning the language, it was like drinking from a fire hose. Teenagers crowded around us shouting out the Canela names for things faster than we could write them down. Once we began teaching people to read, there were so many potential students that, for the first year, we limited classes to fathers of families only. Those who didn’t make it into the reading classes stole the-learn-to read books and taught themselves. We had translation associates galore. At one time we had 17 men and women on the payroll as readers, translation checkers, and typists, etc.

Listening to the problems enumerated by our colleagues working in other language groups, we realized we were very fortunate. And for years we had no idea why.

Not until we received a letter from a Christian man in Belfast, Ireland that explained it all. The letter went something like this: read more

In the last few decades many of the strategies used in Bible translation may have changed to give more emphasis to training and equipping mother-tongue speakers, but the God who chooses to work through the faithful prayers of his people is still the same.

Find out more about how you can pray for the task of Bible translation.

When we first left for Africa, we spent ages saying goodbye to people, family, friends, people at church… the list went on and each goodbye was harder than the last. Little did I realise that this was only a prelude to a life in which I’d spend a lot of my time saying goodbye to good friends. People we grew to know and love in Ivory Coast would return to their home countries and eventually we had a whole new set of goodbyes to go through when we returned to England after twelve years.

Rob and Lois Baker have just been going through the same thing as they say Bye-Bye Benin after four years there.

Goodbye Benin friends

Goodbye zemidjans

Goodbye Fon speaking

Goodbye home of amazing polyrhythms

Goodbye Land Rover driving on dirt roads

Goodbye dramatic thunderstorms

Goodbye Fulani cheese and lush, juicy mangos

Goodbye bustling, colourful markets

Goodbye sunshine

Goodbye Cotonou

Goodbye Benin

It can get difficult, all this goodbye-saying. But, Jesus knew about it and already promised blessing to his followers who left family and friends to follow him (Mark 10:28-39)

Then Peter began to speak up. “We’ve given up everything to follow you,” he said.

“Yes,” Jesus replied, “and I assure you that everyone who has given up house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or property, for my sake and for the Good News, will receive now in return a hundred times as many houses, brothers, sisters, mothers, children, and property—along with persecution. And in the world to come that person will have eternal life”.

That’s worth a few goodbyes!

Following on from last week’s post about the dedication of the Solomon Islands Pijin Bibles, the Scripture Application and Leadership Training (SALT) blog has posted about a course they held recently to encourage pastors and church leaders to use the newly translated Bible.

A Pijin SALT (Scripture Application & Leadership Training) course was conducted at St. Barnabas Cathedral in Honiara. More than 45, 000 people speak Pijin as their mother tongue in the Solomon Islands. The goal of the Pijin SALT course is to make the Scriptures relevant in every aspect of life in the Solomon Islands, including intercession and worship, evangelism, discipleship, works of service and theological reflection. SALT encourages pastors and church leaders to use the new Pijin translation to develop a love, wonder and understanding of the Scriptures in their own heart language. read more

Often when scriptures are first translated into a language, the community can be so used to using a foreign-language Bible that they find it difficult to know how and when to use the mother-tongue scriptures. Scripture Use work, like the course described above, is often hugely beneficial to the local community, enabling them to “develop a love, wonder and understanding of the Scriptures in their own heart language.”

Take a look at the SALT blog post, which includes some great photos from the Pijin Bible dedication, and find out more about Scripture Use work with Wycliffe.

A short-term team from the Presbyterian Church in Ireland has recently left the UK to visit a translation project run by one of Wycliffe’s partners in Cameroon, the Cameroon Association for Bible Translation and Literacy (CABTAL).

They will be visiting the Oku Bible translation and literacy project in western Cameroon.

Short-term trips are often an encouragment for the host team, and an opportunity for the visitors to see more of what God is doing overseas. Please pray that the team would be inspired as they see the impact of the Bible in people’s heart language, and that they would know the part they can play in the Bible translation team.

Here are some prayer requests for the team from the CABTAL website:

Pray for a seven man team from the Presbyterian Church in Ireland visiting the OKU project from July 7 to 22. Pray for safe travels and for adaptation to the new environment. Pray that each of them will be fullfilled and for this trip to have an impact on the Oku project and community. Pray against any demonic attack against them during their stay. The luggage of one of them had not yet arrived in Yaounde. Pray that this will come before they leave for Oku next week. Pray for stamina and good health for all of them and that God will reveal more to them about Bible Translation Ministry.

Find out more from CABTAL about the Oku project and its history.

The team preparing to leave from Belfast

Following on from the discussions about the Jamaican Patois Bible, another creole Bible translation that has received less media attention is that of Solomon Islands Pijin which has recently been dedicated.

From Wycliffe International:

The government of the Solomon Islands included the launch of the Pijin Bible in its 30th anniversary of independence celebrations July 6-7, 2008, affirming the importance of both Pijin — a widely spoken creole — and the Bible to the small island nation.

The Most Rev. Sir Ellison Pogo, vice chairman of the Solomon Islands Christian Association (SICA), presented Prime Minister Dr. Derek Sikua with a copy of the Pijin Bible during the national independence day program July 7.

Dr. Sikua’s government had provided half the printing costs for the Pijin Bible and declared 2008 the Year of the Bible in the Solomon Islands.

“The Word of God is the best foundation on which government can lead people,” said Dr. Sikua, who chose to deliver his address to the nation in Pijin, rather than in English, which is the official language. “The Pijin Bible is something that can really make all of us come together as one people in one nation.” read more

Take a look at some more photos from the dedication.

Lisa is working with translation projects into various languages in Papua New Guinea. Lately she has been involved in a workshop for seven languages where mother-tongue translators had drafted the book of Mark.

The seven language groups finished translating the book of Mark in the February module and took copies back to their villages for checking between modules. They returned in June with a list of corrections that needed to be made to create a nearly final copy that will be checked by a trained consultant hopefully in the next few months.

So this module has been spent making those final corrections, double checking spelling and key terms and finishing up a “back translation” (translation done from the language into English by someone that didn’t work on the original translation—this is a tool used by the consultants to make sure that meaning is being correctly conveyed). read more

The idea of mother-tongue speakers translating portions of scripture and then meeting up for multi-language checking sessions with linguistics and translation consultants is something that is becoming more and more common throughout the world. Mother-tongue speakers are obviously in the best position to translate into their own language, with the translation consultants then able to use their experience and training in biblical languages to ensure (through the medium of a “back translation” into a language they know) that the translated scriptures accurately reflect the original meaning.

Fierce debate has raged over the past few days about a Bible translation project into Jamaican Patois - mother-tongue of millions of Jamaicans (see here and here for coverage in the UK press). Should God’s word be translated into Patois? Should we be encouraging people to use “lesser forms” of English?

Interestingly the same debate happens all over the world in hundreds of translation projects, just without the media spotlight that has fallen on Jamaica due to the fact that the language involved is one that has developed from English.

One of the issues highlighted by the press - the fact that the scriptures could be diluted - is a common opinion when the target language is seen by some to be of lower prestige than the existing language of the Bible. When God has been speaking a foreign language your whole life, to hear him speaking as a close friend or a next-door neighbour can be a disconcerting and even shocking experience.

But to reject translation on these grounds is to misunderstand what Jesus did in coming to earth. He took on the form of a man, and became one of us. As Christians we believe that Jesus was God, and the fact that he was born in human form didn’t make him any less divine. He was God in human form, in a way that we as humans can relate to and understand.

Which is surely what Bible translation is all about - God presenting himself in a form that we can relate to and understand, in a medium that is used in every day life. The very heart of Christianity is that God became one of us, and is calling all people to himself, regardless of nation, language, social status or education.

Another objection is that Jamaicans should be encouraged to speak standard English and not a “modified version”. But this underestimates the tendency of languages to constantly evolve with new languages being born and others dying, and is especially ironic given the fact that English itself developed from other dominant languages of the time and was considered a low-prestige variety when it was first written down.

In many parts of the world governments push education in the official national language, often to the detriment of minority local languages, many of which are facing extinction. Although these language policies are often with good motives - to preserve national unity and facilitate higher education and business - the end effect of suppressing minority languages is the loss of rich cultural diversity and the loss of identity of minority peoples.

Those of us who have the Bible in our language know of a God who became one of us, who wants to relate to us on a personal level, who has created us with incredible diversity, and who longs to lift up the poor and marginalised. In light of God’s character, Bible translation is not just necessary for the church, but reflects the very heart of God’s mission.

For more information and opinions about the project, take a look at the blog of Bertram Gayle (one of the translators), and a post by Eddie Arthur looking at some of the issues involved.

We mentioned on Wednesday that the Wycliffe Transform team to Mali has arrived safely in the country, and showed you some things that you can pray for them.

You may also have seen on the Wycliffe UK front page that we have a WYnet team of teenagers who are in Togo for 3 weeks. They too have a page where we’ll be posting latest updates.

Those using Twitter can follow the teams’ feeds and receive updates immediately - here are the links for the Mali Transform team and the Togo WYnet team. The feeds will also be diplayed on the teams’ prayer pages, and on the Wycliffe UK front page if you’re not a twitterer!

The WYnet team getting ready to leave the UK