Some Southeast Asian Villagers are Reading the Bible in their Native Tongue for First Time Since Missionaries Shared the Gospel with them in 1834.
The work was done by the Bible-translation organization Wycliffe Associates.
Bruce Smith, the ministry’s president and CEO says of the villagers, “They’ve endured persecution. They’ve struggled to teach the Scriptures to their young people in other languages. They’ve been told for generations they have to keep waiting until Westerners can translate the Bible for them.”
Smith did not reveal which Southeast Asian group in particular the Bible translators managed to help. He said, “This is a place of terror, oppression, violence, death, and heartache. To be a Christian is to be a target. Yet the few Christians living there are pleading for Bibles to share secretly with the many, many people around them who are hungry for the truth.”
Wycliffe Associates suffered a terror attack on one of its offices in the Middle East earlier this year, where four workers were killed
The translators used the Mobilized Assistance Supporting Translation program to translate the New Testament for the language group, explaining that it allows for significant portions of the Bible to be translated in months, rather than years, as is usually the case.
The mother-tongue translators are hoping that they will be able to translate the entire Bible by the end of 2016, using a process where they draft verses in the mornings, and use a five-step process to check the verses in the afternoons and evenings.