God's word for all Indians!
Jacob George
Word For All
Hyderabad, India
13 January 2006
Today is the most exciting day in my life! Five New Testaments will be launched, so now 1.5 million people in Andhra Pradesh, Maharashtra and Gujarat can have God's word!
These are the first fruits of a training programme for Indians we set up in 1980 near Mumbai. With the help of Wycliffe members including Edna Johnson from the UK, it has been running ever since. Now there are 55 translation teams working all over India. They belong to different churches and missions but we help them from the start to the completion of their project. We work with many organisations irrespective of differences. What unites us is the cause of Bible translation, giving God's word to people who do not have it in their mother tongue. This is our commitment together!
After offering training to other missions for 25 years, we saw the need to become an equipping and sending organisation promoting Bible translation across India. So in 2005 we set up Word For All-God's word for all Indians in their own language. That's our passion; that's our vision-1.1 billion Indians able to know God and glorify him!
At the current rate of training and sending Bible translators, it will be 40 - 50 years before work has started on every language. We want to do what God is asking us to do much more quickly! That means sharing the vision with churches, Bible colleges and universities, so that others will stand with us-especially people in the four southern states where there is a good proportion of Christians. In the next 10 years we want to raise up the personnel to start work in the 150 - 200 communities that still do not have the Scriptures in their language. So we need people to share the vision, people to train the recruits, and funds from the church in India and elsewhere to support them all.
Our commitment is to see this happen. We will not fail in our commitment! I believe with all my heart that God will do this for India. That will be a glorious day!
transformation!
One of the five New Testaments launched in January was the Konda. My wife and I worked with the Konda people in Andhra Pradesh for 25 years.
Before then, in the late 1960s, a Wycliffe couple moved into a Konda village and started learning the language. It was the fulfillment of their dreams. However, in two years that dream came to an end, when all expatriates had to leave the country. They could not understand why this happened. Word went round the world, "Pray! The Konda people need God's word!" and two women in their church started praying for someone to continue the work. Nearly ten years passed before the answer came...
In my teens I read a fascinating book about five missionaries who were killed by the Waorani in Ecuador-Through Gates Of Splendour. I can still see the five bodies floating in the river. That book created a lasting impression on me. I was convinced that I should give my life to help people groups like them, although I was not yet a true Christian.
In my final year at college I gave the control of my life to God. Instead of taking up a regular career, I made the difficult choice of going to Bible seminary. In my final year my call to Bible translation was confirmed, when someone from Wycliffe told us about hundreds of languages in India without God's word. I knew the path I had to go and I have never turned back!
In 1976 Peter Grainger, a Wycliffe member from the UK, organised one of the first training courses for Indian translators near Bangalore. Susan and I were among the first students. After this we continued our training at the Wycliffe Centre in the UK, where Jenny Hepburn and others were our teachers.
On our return to India, we moved to a Konda village. Our language teacher, Devadas, loved God and the Konda people, so we encouraged him to visit other villages. Eventually, a small group of people accepted God's love!
The Konda people were animists. Drinking and witchcraft were widespread. Malnutrition was a fact of life, and also malaria, infant mortality, poverty, and illiteracy. Subsistence farming and cattle rearing did not provide much food. They were fatalistic about natural and supernatural dangers. But the Christians were transformed; they could buy clothes and sandals, because they did not spend money on drink or appeasing the spirits. Their zeal was infectious and soon others wanted to try this new way.
With Devadas's help we translated Mark, James and Acts but soon realised that few people could read them. Two young women, Delani and Minie, who joined us in 1995, started literacy classes and Sunday school classes.
Delani married another translator, Markose, and Minie married Viji, a computer specialist. So now the Konda team had three couples, all with different skills. Dayanidhi, a high school graduate, taught them the language, learned the principles of translation and worked with them. We divided the New Testament between us. Men from different villages checked the translations for comprehension and Wycliffe consultants checked the final drafts before printing.
We were involved in other activities too. We organised fortnightly medical clinics with a doctor friend; training courses for literacy teachers and writers; workshops for developing and printing books on malaria, diarrhoea, pneumonia and scabies; vacation Bible schools for all ages; Bible teaching for evangelists; the production of a song book and audio cassette with Konda words and music.
Hundreds of Konda people celebrated the New Testament launch with singing and dancing. "Our God is a great good God, a true God, a real God," the loudspeakers blared. Truly, the true word of this true God will bring total transformation!
Today there are better medical facilities, schools, roads and self-help schemes. Yet the Konda people need more than this. The renewing of their minds will show them that they are created for eternal life-starting now. Will they find it? They will! That is our prayer.
Father, open the hearts of the Konda people to receive
the word of life, love, joy, peace, purity and power.
