Why We Do What We Do

Here is part of a letter that Wycliffe US President Bob Creason recently sent out to Wycliffe members around the world. We think it summarizes pretty well why we're here supporting the work of Bible translation in Cameroon:

In a minority language group where people are not well acquainted with Jesus, a woman was hired to translate one of the gospels. Although she was fluent in Russian (the language from which she was translating), she discovered that the words in her own language were “so beautiful—brighter, more touching, deeper than Russian.”  No matter how often she read the book, it still spoke to her: “I start crying when I read about Jesus being lonely and praying during the night before His crucifixion. When I read those words in my language I can’t stop crying. The words are so alive, they pierce my soul.” When she read it to others, they also wept.

In another language group in the area, a mother tongue translator needed to find out if a new translation of Mark’s Gospel communicated clearly, so she read it to a group of teachers.  Because she was concentrating very hard, she did not look up until she heard a noise that sounded like laughter. Was something wrong with the text? Did her listeners think it inappropriate to read in the local language when they were all educated in Russian?

Then she realized that it was not laughter but crying!  She looked up to see a school principal with his head bowed and a pool of tears on the desk in front of him. The story in Mark 12 about the poor widow giving her offering had touched him deeply. When he heard it in his own language, he realized that Jesus' words carried a challenge—it is not enough just to hear the words; we must live accordingly.

If these people speak and teach in the language of wider communication, why do they still respond in this way to their mother tongue? A translator in West Asia put it this way:  “We can understand the Bible with our mind in the national language, but it’s the mother tongue that plants the Word in our hearts.” After giving 18 years of his life to translating the New Testament into his own language, this man turned his attention to the Old Testament. Now the full Bible is being typeset by a partner organization and is expected to be dedicated in 2012.

Keeping up with the Chiltons...

Some recent activities in our personal lives:

            Ever played the game Hungry, Hungry Hippo with children? We had an adventure looking for the local hungry hippo when we took a family canoe trip on a local river; he was spotted by our friends in kayaks the week previous to our trip. We enjoyed our day buy saw no hungry hippo. I suppose that's good because he is reported to be aggressive.

            In between lots of illnesses we had some fun playing games and watching old TV shows thanks to our home Internet connection that we acquired to communicate with Bradley. It sure was a cool summer here with mostly cloudy days and very little rain. We also enjoyed doing lots of yard work together. Daniel and Josiah especially enjoy trimming our tree branches with machetes!
            At RFIS, volleyball has become an important activity for us, in addition to the normal Running Club. Josiah and Daniel are both improving their skills on the court, and both are running to be in shape for climbing Mt. Cameroon in late February. Please pray for the extra money they need to enjoy that activity.
            Normally, the Drama performance is second semester and you get a report about that in late spring, but this year it's happening before Christmas. The play: Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night. The performers: Josiah Chilton, Daniel Chilton and about 12 other high school students.
            At our young school PRS we have a whole new staff! Praise God they arrived, and school is going smoothly. Pray that teachers, administrators and students would all thrive and God would be glorified throughout school.  

Here is an example of how God's word, through The Word Comes by Hearing, is affecting a community in Cameroon

This is a story told by a Cameroonian pastor:

I am a blind man and the leader of the Church of village S. When I became blind many years ago, I was discouraged and hopeless, but the Word of God continued to comfort me. The only problem I had was that I could not read though I had a Bible. It was not easy to get someone to be reading to me at home. On Sundays, someone reads while I preach. The other days of the week, I don’t have the opportunity to hear the Word of God as often as I would like. Sometimes I wanted to backslide, but I continued to pray for this situation until, one day, an Audio Bible was introduced to our church. After receiving the Proclaimer and the explanation to run the program, I was very happy because now I have the opportunity to hear more of the Word of God and understand it better as it is in my own language. Now, I have more hope in my life than ever before. The worries of getting someone to read for me and the idea of backsliding have disappeared. The time I spend in the Word has multiplied by ten. I can now preach better than before, and this has made some of our Christians who backslid to come back into the church. I am thankful to God for this marvelous tool!