Vietnam

Engaging Ethnic Minorities

Overview

This project aims to reach out to ethnic minority groups in Vietnam who have a small percentage of believers, by distributing illustrated stories of Jesus, the book of Mark with new vocabulary and Bible study guide for pre-believers and new believers in their own languages.

The Need

Christians from ethnic minorities are often subjected to severe persecution. These marginalised Christians need encouragement, as they face daily challenges imposed by their circumstances.

The people speak their indigenous languages but are not familiar with reading the Bible printed in their own language; the education system only teaches Vietnamese, and there are no books in the minority languages. Now that Scripture translation is underway in these ethnic minority languages, there is a great need to meet the peoples’ immediate need: to help them engage with God’s word in their own language.

9.15m people in Vietnam.

9.2% of the population are Christians.

No.19 on Open Door’s 2022 World Watch List for Christian persecution (ranking just after Iraq, Syria, China and Qatar, for example, with Afghanistan and North Korea at numbers 1 and 2).

Goals

This project aims to give ethnic minorities immediate access to God’s word in their own languages. It will do so by developing, printing and distributing books in the languages of four tribes: ‘Stories of Jesus’, the ‘Gospel of Mark’, as well as Bible study guides.

Sharing translations in these four languages will provide opportunities for those who have not heard the Gospel to get to know the stories of Jesus.

It will enable both believers and non-believers to engage with the Bible by participating in Bible Study groups, following a simple Bible study method.

Testimonies

In 2023, the goal is to impact a total of 9,000 people, after reaching a total of 10,000 people in 2022. 1,000 sets of Jesus story books, Gospels of Mark and Bible study guides will be distributed among four new ethnic minority tribes. Audio books of Mark’s Gospel will also be produced in these four languages.

These resources will impact both long term believers from ethnic minorities whose levels of Bible engagement have been very low, as well as new believers and those who have not yet come to faith. People will be able to read God’s word and apply it in their daily lives, which will in turn impact their communities.

Impact Prayer Needs

“The stories are more interested in [my language]!”, says Susan. This project aims to impact young people like Susan, who lives in a remote area.

As a small child, Susan enjoyed regularly reading the Bible, but never had access to Scripture in the ethnic minority language of her family. Her fluency had started to diminish when she connected with this Bible Engagement project, hosted by Bible Society Vietnam.

Susan, along with 650 other families in her province, received translations of Mark’s gospel and the stories of Jesus in their minority language, allowing them to experience God’s Word in their heart language and preserve the use of it in their community.

• Pray that Christians would be empowered as they learn to read God’s word.

• Pray that non-believers would come to know the Lord through this program.

• Pray that there would be fruitful collaboration with local churches, ensuring the success and sustainability of the project.

• Pray for the distribution of Bible stories and the Gospel of Mark to people from the different tribes, that they would get to know about Jesus in their own languages, and put their faith in him.

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