GLOBAL VOICES
In My Heart Language for the Good of My Heart An Update from Dorothy Forsberg
Imagine what it would be like to hold a Bible in your language for the first time. This is what is happening for the Yom people in Benin, a country in West Africa. “The home of voodoo,” Benin is a former French colony, and French is the national language and the language used for schooling. According to Operation World, however, there are 60 ethnic groups that speak 56 different languages. The Yom people group is one such group and has an estimated 300,000 speakers. As of this past August, the Yom people now have the complete Bible in their heart language—the language they think in and understand best.
worked with the son of the first Christian to learn the Yom language. In 1977, College Church supported missionary Dorothy Forsberg arrived and quickly became immersed in the Yom New Testament translation. Computers arrived in 1983. Unfortunately, electricity had yet to arrive to the city of Tchaourou. Undaunted, the Beachams bought a generator. Dorothy, who was born with a congenital absence of her left hand, likes to say she, “single-handedly keyed in” about half of the Yom New Testament in three-hour sessions each afternoon. Joyce Beacham did the other half while on a home assignment in the U.S. At last—New and Old in the Works
A Look Back. . . This process didn’t happen overnight. In fact, the Bible translation project started in 1951, when SIM worker C. Gordon Beacham Jr. and his wife, Joyce, arrived in country. Beacham
Thirty-four years from when the translation project began, the Yom New Testament was published in 1985, arriving in Benin in 1986. A dedication ceremony celebrated both the New Testament and a new church building.
This year, Yom translators received Bibles. Pastor Issifou and his wife are on the left, Abel and his wife are on the right, the president of UEEB does the honors.
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