Queen honours
Bible translation
Mary Steele from Northern Ireland received an MBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours 2005 ‘for services to Bible translation, literacy and community development in Ghana.’ This included training and assisting Ghanaian people to translate the whole Bible into two languages that had never been written down before.
Mary joined Wycliffe in 1959 and first lived among the Konkomba people in northern Ghana. At that time there were three or four struggling churches with a handful of Christians. The Bible was published in 1998 and now there are hundreds of churches with thousands of Christians. Mary also worked with the Bimoba translators until they completed their Bible too.
After the Bimoba Bible was launched in November 2004, you might have thought Mary would retire, but she was already working as a translation consultant, using her years of experience to help Ghanaian translators working on other languages. The longer you serve overseas, the more valuable your contribution.
“I can’t think of a better way to spend your life,” Mary says. “If I had my time again, I would do exactly the same thing. I very much appreciate this honour from the Queen, but God really deserves the honour. He provided all I needed, and in addition he has given me the wonderful reward of seeing lives transformed through his word.”
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