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Wycliffe Bible Translators

Engage - Charis's Story, Mali 2008

You can't translate Jesus with just words

Charis George, co-leader Mali 2008, writes...

CharisSo, Mali. I don’t know where to start, how to begin writing an article like this. Mali was one of the best experiences of my life, and now I’m back home, it’s been over a month and already I feel like it was all just a dream. There are things that I can’t remember already, and the grief in my spirit because of this is so overwhelming I almost don’t want to engage with it.

But I think often the most important thing about short-term mission is the impact it has on you once you get home – now that the mountain-top experience is over, whether you let it change your life radically and allow the LORD to keep using the experience to shape you, or whether you just box it up into that-month-you-spent-in-Africa-with-some-organisation once. I choose the radical change.

team members dressed in blue

The people that we met in Mali and the things that we saw taught me so many things. I realised, for the millionth time, that the simple life is the most fulfilling. No mirrors, no gadgets, no DVDs to distract you from being what God intended you to be: a people who communicate, fellowship, and love one another.

Working as a missionary means taking a step of faith with Jesus beside you, before and around you, and building a community with strangers, supporting one another and drawing the needy into the life that you share in Christ. It means talking with people. It means dropping everything to drive miles to a hospital to get someone the treatment they need for snakebite, without a second thought for how much it costs. It means going it alone in a remote village, eating strange food and stumbling your way through learning a language and customs so entirely different from your own, and trying not to give up when you offend someone, yet again, by using your left hand.

It means letting a Transform team(!) invade your house for 2 weeks and going all-out to welcome them. It means leaving your family for a month to escort the Transform team around Mali! It means overcoming daily, lifting your eyes to the One who sustains you and asking Him for strength and grace, when all you want is for the heat to disappear and to be allowed to wear trousers again. It means discovering a whole new part of God’s creation, another people group that Jesus loves enough to have died for.

It means laughing when you find yourself loving your bucket shower in the open air more than any bubble bath. It means the privilege of sitting with a Malian mother for an afternoon, cooking and chatting, and being surprised by a blessing from those you came to bless. It means rejoicing in the LORD when you find yourself overwhelmed, again and again, by His faithfulness.

girls at well

Jesus truly met my every need, all month long. He provided the friendship and support I needed through members of the team who understood me more than I thought possible in the space of a month, and He looked after the family I worried about at home. He answered every question I had – whenever I stopped to listen, He was speaking. The problems you face are different, but the faithful God you trust in remains the same. And suddenly 8-hour bus rides and toilets bearing uncanny resemblance to a bush become normal, and you see that raising a family overseas really is possible, and the strangers on your team have become close friends that you’ll never forget.

Bible translation is a long process, and is frustrating at times, but I understand now that it’s more than words on a page. It’s life into a community, bringing belonging into their faith, and walking together with them in the hope of Jesus and His kingdom, and it’s having an open door and being willing to stop what you’re doing in order to serve someone else.

You can’t translate Jesus with just words; you have to translate Jesus with your whole life. Jesus came that we may have life, and have it abundantly, so that’s how we share. I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me, and I feel incredibly alive.