Bible Translators Make It Possible | 11th Mar 2010

Almost 40 years ago, a British missionary canoed into a remote area of Panama with a proposal for the local chief. Could he and his family live among the tribe to learn their language and tell them about someone called Jesus? The answer, however, was “No!” “I just sat in our canoe that was tied up at the river bank and wept before the Lord,” recalled Wycliffe translator Keith Forster. “I mean, I bawled my heart out. Imagine that I’d given up my home, my country, my career, everything.”
After years of training, and obstacles, Forster’s mission had abruptly ended – or had it? As a parting gift, Forster offered a picture of his family and told the chief they were on a mission with a purpose. “We were sent by God to take His letter and translate it for you so you, too, could understand,” Forster said. “So in the future, when your children ask, ‘What is God like?’ You will have to say to them, ‘I don’t know.” This made the chief change his mind, and Forster and his wife settled among the Kunas, learned the language, and more than twenty years later, gave the tribe their own New Testament.
As the Word of God was translated into their own language, many Kunas decided to follow Jesus. And although, as Panamanians, most of them also speak Spanish, it’s the Kuna Bible that speaks to their hearts. Kuna missionary John Kennedy Morales says, “I use the Kuna Bible, because that’s the way they understand better.” Today, the translation team is revising the Old Testament translation, completing one more project in the task of giving every tribe and nation, God’s word in their own language.

Source: CBN News

BIBLE STUDY: Psalm 42:1-2

PRAISE: God for the extraordinary work of Wycliffe and other Bible translators