Word Alive Magazine - Summer 2014

Wycliffe Bible Translators of Canada

Summer 2014

Kingdom Friendships A Canadian church pursues a more personal missions relationship to advance Bible translation and Scripture in Peru.

Quarter of All Languages Need Translation Started + Translating the Gospel + Meeting at the Crossroads

Summer 2014 • Volume 33• Number 2 Word Alive, which takes its name from Hebrews 4:12a, is the official publication of Wycliffe Bible Translators of Canada. Its mission is to inform, inspire and involve the Christian public as partners in the worldwide Bible translation movement.

Editor: Dwayne Janke Designer: Cindy Buckshon Senior Staff Writer: Doug Lockhart Staff Writer: Janet Seever Staff Photographers: Alan Hood, Natasha Schmale Word Alive is published four times annually by Wycliffe Bible Translators of Canada, 4316 10 St NE, Calgary AB T2E 6K3. Copyright 2014 by Wycliffe Bible Translators of Canada. Permission to reprint articles and other magazine contents may be obtained by written request to the editor. A donation of $20 annually is suggested to cover the cost of printing and mailing the magazine.

(Donate online or use the reply form in this issue.)

Printed in Canada by McCallum Printing Group, Edmonton.

Member: The Canadian Church Press, Evangelical Press Association.

For additional copies: media_resources@wycliffe.ca To contact the editor: editor_wam@wycliffe.ca For address updates: circulation@wycliffe.ca

Wycliffe serves minority language groups worldwide by fostering an understanding of God’s Word through Bible translation, while nurturing literacy, education and stronger communities.

Canadian Head Office: 4316 10 St NE, Calgary AB T2E 6K3. Phone: (403) 250-5411 or toll free 1-800-463-1143, 8:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m. mountain time. Fax: (403) 2502623. Email: info@wycliffe.ca. French speakers: Call toll free 1-877-747-2622 or email francophone@wycliffe.ca Cover: Travis Wesley from Chilliwack, B.C., visits with an Eastern Apurímac Quechua woman reading her New Testament. Seeing Scriptures used by the Quechua of Peru was a highlight for the Chilliwack Alliance Church group, including Travis, visiting a village in the Andes Mountains. (See story, pg. 6.)

Photo by Natasha Schmale.

In Others’ Words “The Bible stands, and it will forever When the world has passed away; By inspiration it has been given— All its precepts I will obey.”

—Lyrics from a song by Haldor Lillenas (1885-1959), important 20th-century gospel hymn writer and publisher 2

Word Alive • Summer 2014 • wycliffe.ca

Foreword Bored to a Realization Dwayne Janke

W

hile on assignment for Word Alive over the years, I have sat through my fair share of church gatherings in languages other than English.

What comes to mind? I remember colourfully dressed Jola-Bayote women dancing up the aisle in Guinea-Bissau; deaf congregations in Spain and Kenya “singing” with their hands in sign language; Sinte (gypsy) believers singing zestfully to vibrant music in Germany; an animated and pacing Tetun preacher exhorting fellow believers in Timor, Indonesia.

It is always encouraging to see other believers gathering for events that use their mother tongue. Admittedly, though, the novelty of these events wears off after an hour or two, because almost always I have no clue what is actually being said or sung. So it was this past September as I sat in a highaltitude village at an outdoor church gathering. It was conducted in Eastern Apurímac Quechua, spoken by 200,000-plus people in south-central Peru.

I was with 10 fellow Canadians from the Chilliwack Alliance Church in B.C. (see “Deeper Instead of Wider,” pg. 6). For about a day and a half, virtually every waking hour featured preaching, and Bible reading, and worship, and prayer, all in Eastern Apurímac Quechua. Some sermons lasted three hours!

Later, Chilliwackian Adrian Koppejan contrasted fellow Canadian Christians with these eager and patient Quechua believers he saw: “If the [church] service is an hour or an hour and 15 minutes, then we are done. They sit there for the whole day and evening.”

By the first afternoon, I was getting antsy, tired and—to be honest— bored. Though feeling a tad guilty for this, something finally dawned on me.

Though I could understand a few words here and there (“Amen?” from the preachers and “Amen!” from the hearers), I was an outsider at this church event. The language barrier kept me entirely cut off from comprehending almost everything. Truth was being shared and celebrated, but it meant absolutely nothing to me.

I realized something: this is how it is for millions of people worldwide who are barred from truly understanding the Bible. For a few days in that Quechua village, I was like one of those who do not have one verse of God’s Word in their heart language. I couldn’t engage with the life-giving message being shared there. If the Bible wasn’t available in my mother tongue, I thought, how and why would I take any interest in its message? The same is true for Bibleless peoples around the world. Unless God’s Word is translated into their mother tongues, they are outsiders to the greatest Book for mankind.

To change this, Wycliffe Canada—and Canadians praying, giving and going with us—are partnering with organizations such as AIDIA (the Spanish acronym for “Interdenominational Association for the Holistic Development of Apurímac”). As you can read in this issue, AIDIA Bible translators have finished the New Testament and are forging ahead with the Old. At the same time, their co-workers are dynamically promoting Quechua literacy and Scripture-use among their own people.

Praise God for that! No matter where life-changing Christian truth is being shared from the Bible, no one should have to be bored by tragically failing to understand, just because of a language barrier.

If the Bible wasn’t available in my mother tongue, I thought, how and why would I take any interest in its message?

Contents

6

Features 6

Deeper Instead of Wider A church in B.C. pursues a relationship-based missions partnership with AIDIA, to advance Bible translation and use in Peru.

18 A Different God Speaks AIDIA is working hard so that God’s Word in Eastern Apurímac Quechua effectively spreads to isolated villages in the Peruvian Andes.

30 Hugging the Book An Eastern Apurímac Quechua pastor knows full well the value of the New Testament for his church. After all, he helped translate it.

34 From Fingerprint to Signature A middle-aged Quechua woman journeys through the darkness of illiteracy to the light of literacy.

18

Departments 2

Foreword Bored to a Realization

By Dwayne Janke

4

Watchword Survey Results Coming on Canadians’ Bible Use

30

36 Beyond Words Translating the Gospel 38 A Thousand Words A Shadow of Their Former Selves 39 Last Word Meeting at the Crossroads

By Roy Eyre

34 Word Alive • Summer 2014 • wycliffe.ca

3

Watchword Survey Results Coming on Canadians’ Bible Use

Typhoon Spares Bible Translators in the Philippines

R

B

esults of a survey to discover Canadians’ attitudes towards the Bible and its use will soon be released.

The survey, sent to nearly 4,500 people, asked 80 questions to measure “Bible engagement” among Canadians. It was initiated by the Canadian Bible Forum (of which Wycliffe Canada is a member), with involvement by the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada and Stronger Together Grants.

Wycliffe Canada President Roy Eyre is eager to learn from the data and see Bible engagement improve in Canadian churches.

“If Canadians don’t value God’s Word themselves, they won’t see its value for other language groups,” he explains. “So we wanted to get a realistic assessment of where Canadians are in terms of reading the Bible and allowing it to touch their lives.”

To see the survey results, visit <news.wycliffe.ca>, at the end of April.

ible translators and other language workers were spared when super typhoon Haiyan/Yolanda hit the Central Philippines in November, causing extensive damage and thousands of deaths.

Wycliffe personnel were all accounted for after the disaster, but some colleagues on the edge of the typhoon’s path suffered property damage, and were without power and other basic services for weeks.

Taiwan

Philippine Sea Vietnam

Myanmar (Burma)

Philippines

Laos

Palau Thailand Cambodia

Quarter of World’s Languages Need Bible Translation

Andaman Sea

J

ust over a quarter of the world’s 6,900 language groups still need Bible translation to start for them, according to new statistics from Wycliffe Global Alliance (WGA).

No active translation program is underway for those 1,919 languages, spoken by nearly 180 million people. Of the total, 70 per cent are spoken in Africa and Asia (see map).

While considerable Bible translation work still needs to be done, the latest figures show a huge increase in Bible translation starts in the past decade. In 2000, languages needing translation totalled 3,000; 1,000 more than today’s total.

Bible translation and/or related language work is currently happening in 2,167 languages, spoken in 130-plus countries by 1.9 billion people. Nearly 80 per cent of this effort involves staff from the 100 organizations in the WGA, including Wycliffe Canada.

Slightly more than 2,800 languages have some Scripture: about 500 a complete Bible; 1,300 a New Testament, and 1,000 one or more books of the Bible, says WGA. Nearly 80 per cent of the world’s actual population have the Bible in their mother tongue.

For more details, visit <wycliffe.net> and click on “Statistics.”

South China Sea

Gulf of Thailand Brunei

Sinte Romani New Testaments Almost Depleted

S

upplies of the New Testament for the Sinte Romani people of Europe, widely distributed since it was published in 2011, are nearly depleted already.

The Bible translation team in Germany has asked for prayer to decide whether to reprint the New Testament alone, or combine it in one volume with those Old Testament portions that have also been translated in recent years.

There are 12 million-plus Roma (Gypsies) worldwide, who speak more than 100 different dialects. The Sinte Romani language is used by more than 300,000 Roma, who live mainly in Germany, France, the Netherlands and the former Yugolosavia (see Word Alive, Summer 2012 and Fall 2006).

Word Count 200+ Languages used as a home language or mother tongue in Canada.

6 Number of Languages with Likely Need of Bible Translation with No Active Program

Canada’s largest metropolitan areas where 80% of immigrant language speakers live.

5.8 million Number of Canadians who speak at least two languages at home.

64% Increase in number of Canadians speaking Tagalog—one of two official languages in the Philippines—most often at home (compared to 2006).

Source: Wycliffe Global Alliance

4

Word Alive • Summer 2014 • wycliffe.ca

Source: Statistics Canada (2011 Census of Population)

SIL Helps Make School Work in a Multilingual World

Bigger Revival Expected

S

IL, Wycliffe’s key partner organization, has contributed to a new book to help school systems in developing nations work better in today’s multilingual world.

Closer to Home stresses that many children around the world find education impossible because they are taught in a language they don’t understand. “Some children,” says the book, “never to go school, knowing that their language and identity will not be welcome.”

The book provides direction on how to bring the languages that children understand and speak at home into school, using these as the basis for learning new and unfamiliar languages.

Dr. Catherine Young of SIL was part of the team of education specialists that co-authored the book, published

by Save the Children and the Council for British Teachers. SIL partnered with the two organizations to translate the book into French and Spanish.

SIL’s long history GUIDANCE of field work in Bible translation, literacy and vernacular education Closer to home: how to help schools in low- and middle-income countries has shown repeatedly respond to children’s language needs that students succeed at school when taught initially in their mother tongue, rather than in their country’s national language.

Raising the Participation Age

A

s translation of the New Testament into Igo winds down, the project team anticipates a deep impact among the Bogo people who speak the language in Togo, Africa.

“We are hoping that with completion of the New Testament, there will be a bigger revival and transformation among the Bogo people,” say the workers.

They have good reason to hope. Several years ago, two Bogo villages had a spiritual revival with the publication of the Gospel of Mark and Luke in Igo. A man who was a wizard accepted Christ as Lord and Saviour, and his conversion led to about 30 others. In about two weeks, the total stood at 80.

Two children were miraculously healed through the prayers of believers there. Today new churches are planted in the main villages of the Bogo people, a farming people who number about 6,000. Though a majority of the Bogo people attend churches, most also practise animism.

N i g e r Senegal C h a d

ambia GuineaBissau

Benin Nigeria

Sierra Leone Cote d'Ivoire

Ghana

Togo

Liberia Afric Cameroon Equatorial Guinea

Helen Pinnock Pamela Mackenzie Elizabeth Pearce Catherine Young

www.cfbt.com

Burkina Faso Guinea

Gabon Congo

1

Coffee Supports Bible Translation in PNG

W

orld-renowned coffee grown in Papua New Guinea (PNG) is helping to subsidize key Bible translation and related language work there.

Many villages throughout the Pacific nation have no access to highways, so the only way local coffee growers can transport their crops to the country’s seaports for world export is by air.

The small planes that carry Bible translators and other language workers to isolated villages also carry bags of coffee on their return trips to towns located along major roads.

Pilots can make eight or nine flights daily to remote airstrips where appreciative villagers are eager to pay to transport their coffee to market. Each time a delivery is made, it provides coffee-growing income for PNG families and helps airplanes keep flying language workers to distant areas of PNG. Wycliffe Canada

Word Alive • Summer 2014 • wycliffe.ca

5

DEEPER instead of

WIDER Articles by Dwayne Janke | Photographs by Natasha Schmale

A church in B.C. pursues a relationship-based missions partnership with AIDIA, to advance Bible translation and use in Peru.

Sheila Denis greets a welcoming Quechua woman while on a stroll through the village of Quillabamba (Key-a-BAHM-bah) in south-central Peru. With her husband Chris, Sheila has helped lead several groups from Chilliwack Alliance Church in B.C. on visits to the South American country. The encounters help deepen a direct partnership the church has with AIDIA, a local agency translating God’s Word and encouraging Scripture use among the 200,000-plus Eastern Apurímac Quechua people.

Word Alive • Summer 2014 • wycliffe.ca

7

(Top) The Chilliwack Alliance team walks to a Sunday morning service at a church where AIDIA director Luis Cervantes serves as a pastor, in Abancay, Peru, home to AIDIA’s translation and training centre (see story on pg. 18).

(Right) Cervantes (standing, left) joins team members on a tour through AIDIA’s various departments, where they are impressed with the dynamic and multi-faceted ministries of the local church-based agency that Chilliwack Alliance supports to the tune of nearly $25,000 annually. In this case, the Chilliwackians see what audio/video specialist Cirilo Vásquez is working on to reach his people with biblical truth in their heart language. (Opposite page) Cervantes and team leader Chris Denis exchange notes, further building the crucial administrative side of the twoway, long-term AIDIA-Chilliwack Alliance relationship. Wycliffe Canada sees this Kingdom Friendship as the way forward for global-minded Canadian churches wanting more personal missions relationships with minority language groups around the world.

T

en members from Chilliwack Alliance Church in B.C. have finally arrived in the Apurímac region of south-central Peru. Tired and looking a bit disoriented, they are the only white faces emerging from a regional bus into the darkness of Abancay city on an early evening this past September.

The group has been winding their way for five hours with other local passengers along the switchback-laden highway from Cusco. One Chilliwackian is rubbing his stomach, trying to shake off motion sickness from the rocking and rolling bus trip. Warm rubber and hot brake odours wafting from the bus tires provide evidence of the mechanically taxing trip.

The bus ride was the group’s final stretch of travel, which got off to a rough start the previous day when their passenger van blew a tire en route to Vancouver International Airport. But that is literally thousands of kilometres behind the excited Canadians.

Across town they unload luggage and sit down for supper at the headquarters of AIDIA, the “Interdenominational Association for the Holistic Development of Apurímac ” (see “A Different God Speaks,” pg. 18).

Before praying for the meal prepared by the AIDIA cook, Rosa Zapana, team leader Chris Denis pulls a book from one of dozens of nearby boxes labelled, “APURIMAC QUECHUA NT (BLACK) 32 COPIES MADE IN KOREA.” He shows the New Testament, translated by AIDIA, to the church group.

“This is what it’s all about, guys,” he emphasizes to the group, consisting of men and women ranging from 20-somethings to retired couples.

These Eastern Apurímac Quechua Scriptures are a direct link to why the Chilliwack church team is here. The congregation is a key partner supporting, praying for and financially equipping AIDIA to do its multi-faceted ministry.

“God, I

Busy Schedule Craving a much-needed night’s sleep after being fed, the Chilliwack group heads to bed; women bunk in one large room, men in another. These Fraser Valley believers can use the rest. Over the next 10 days or so, the Chilliwack group members will be busy, meeting with dedicated AIDIA staff, doing maintenance work around the headquarters and participating in a New Testament dedication ceremony in a mountain village. (They will also re-connect with and encourage their brothers and sisters at the Abancay Alliance Church.)

Their visit is designed to deepen a type of partnership that Wycliffe Canada calls “Kingdom Friendships”—personal, two-way, long-term missions relationships it sees as the way forward for global-minded Canadian churches (see “Taking Steps Towards Kingdom Friendships,” pg. 14).

The Chilliwackians rise refreshed the next morning, despite the all-night choir of barking dogs and crowing roosters in the city. After the group eats breakfast and shares in the half-hour morning devotional time with AIDIA staff, Denis sits down to explain Chilliwack Alliance’s missions strategy.

believe, is

moving

in the

hearts of

what I call

‘normal’

people,

Personal Connection The multi-generational church of 900, with a sizable number of people serving in several dozen para-church agencies, has had a personal connection with Peru for several decades. The strongest link was forged through members Larry and Carol Sagert, a manager and nurse whom the church sent out as Wycliffe missionaries to the South American nation 32 years previously. During their last five years in Peru, the Sagerts mentored AIDIA staff in management, planning, training, funding, reporting and accountability.

“I first met Larry Sagert when I was a kid in Boys’ Brigade in Chilliwack Alliance Church,” says Denis, 51. “He is much more than just a fellow partner, a fellow worker; he’s been a spiritual mentor to me all my life.”

The Chilliwack church, says Denis, has been happy to send and support people around the globe like the Sagerts, driven by the strong missions heritage of its denomination, the Christian and Missionary Alliance. But the Chilliwack congregation is in a transition, from just sending professional missionaries to engaging persons in the pew more directly in global outreach.

“God, I believe, is moving in the hearts of what I call ‘normal’ people, ordinary people, like myself,” explains Denis. “I’m the vice-president of a construction-development company, so I’m not what you’d call your typical theological missionary.”

ordinary

people, like

myself . . .

I’m not

what you’d

call your

typical

theological

missionary.”

Word Alive • Summer 2014 • wycliffe.ca

9

“If it’s going to

In 2005, the church began to look at how it could move beyond financially supporting missionaries and sending groups for short-term, one-off missions trips of a few weeks at a time, he says. “People were asking, ‘How can we get involved?’ ”

be sustainable,

Plan and Pathway

and multi-

generationally

sustainable,

you’ve got to

connect their

In 2009, after more thought, the church adopted what it called a “vision tree,” says Denis. “It is a strategic plan, the soil being the healthy church and the tree growing out of that having various branches.”

The branches are the wide-ranging ministries of the church, including missions, which has four limbs. They are the denominational missions program plus other projects in three places: Poland, Quebec, and Peru with AIDIA and Abancay Alliance.

Denis reads aloud the church’s mission statement for Peru: “Chilliwack Alliance Church in partnership with Abancay Alliance [Church] and AIDIA, working in concert to build up and strengthen and grow the local church, promoting the use of the Quechua Scriptures and biblically solid leadership for effectual advancement of God’s Kingdom in Eastern Apurímac, Peru.” To make it happen, the congregation has “a sustainable partnership plan and pathway” from 2011 to 2016.

“Really what we’re trying to do is go deeper instead of wider,” explains Denis, who directs the Peru mission.

Chilliwack Alliance and AIDIA have a formal agreement, with built-in reporting and accountability. The congregation has specifically chosen to fund the agency’s pastoral/leadership development and Sunday school/children’s ministries to the tune of nearly $25,000 annually.

More than Cheques hearts. So

we are really

trying to create

a relationship.”

10 Word Alive • Summer 2014 • wycliffe.ca

But the partnership is not about Chilliwack Alliance just sending cheques to AIDIA; it’s about relationships between actual people on both sides.

“If it’s going to be sustainable, and multi-generationally sustainable, you’ve got to connect their hearts,” Denis stresses.

“So we are really trying to create a relationship. Everything we are doing in this program is trying to connect Chilliwack Alliance Church members with AIDIA and Abancay Alliance Church.”

To that end, Chilliwack More on the Web: church sends groups of Wouldn’t it be better stewardship to give different people to Peru all the money spent on trips by church (this past September members to AIDIA’s ministries? Chris Denis was the third trip) to gives his answer (and a challenge to other churches) at <exclusives.wycliffe.ca>. experience firsthand what AIDIA does and help serve where possible. Logistics are handled on this trip by Kelly Edgeley, international communications and team leader for Hungry for Life International. The Christian organization comes alongside churches, directly engaging them in projects that help alleviate suffering throughout the world (www.hungryforlife.org).

Over the course of three decades, about 45 Chilliwack Alliance members have travelled to Peru, and so far, 21 different members have visited AIDIA in Peru on three actual AIDIA project trips.

Also on these trips, the groups interact with the Abancay Alliance Church, connecting its pastors with AIDIA, since they

(Above) Eastern Apurímac Quechua speakers at a church gathering in Quillabamba purchase copies of the New Testament in their language after it is dedicated. Their eagerness for God’s Word impresses the Chilliwack Alliance team attending the event (below). In the case of missions pastor Holly Duke, the scene overwhelms her to tears: “It’s so great for these people, but it’s so great for me as an individual—that He [God] would want me to . . . know that that love He has for these people is the same love that He has for me.”

both have the vision to get God’s Word to the people to whom they are ministering, just as Wycliffe does.

In turn, local leaders in Peru visit the church in Chilliwack.

They preach in Sunday services, attend Sunday school classes, visit small groups and meet church leaders. This May, AIDIA director Luis Cervantes travelled to B.C. to spend time and interact with the Chilliwack Alliance church-goers.

With visits going both ways, Denis says upwards of 400 people in Chilliwack Alliance have connected directly with their Peruvian partners. “We really want to try and get as many people meeting with each other as possible.”

Moreover, regular reports come to the church several times a year so people can be praying knowledgeably for their partners, he says. “Because this is an ongoing project and longer term, it’s talked about a lot.”

Those who actually visit Peru go back to the congregation truly understanding the work and impact of AIDIA, and enthusiastically chatting up its ministries to fellow churchgoers, says Denis. “Until you’ve been here, it’s just another place on the map and names, right?”

Opening Eyes

(Top) In Quillabamba village, retired teacher Erma Vietorisz leads a children’s lesson in the local church while adults meet outside.

(Above) Back in Abancay, church team leaders sit down for lunch with AIDIA director Luis Cervantes and the pastor of Abancay Alliance Church, which is also part of the relationship Chilliwack Alliance has with brethren in Peru. (Opposite) Chris Denis examines the progress that hammer-swinging David Clow is making, as several of the men create an opening in an outside wall of AIDIA headquarters for a new, more accessible bathroom door.

12 Word Alive • Summer 2014 • wycliffe.ca

Awareness in the group begins to build quickly in the first days of this past fall’s visit.

Denis starts meeting with the AIDIA director, sorting out a whole range of ongoing administrative issues related to the AIDIA-Chilliwack Alliance partnership. Justin Hettinga, Wycliffe Canada’s vice-president of engagement and strategy, also attends to translate and provide his insights from previous years serving AIDIA in Peru.

The rest of the team, including Chris’ wife Sheila, take a daylong tour through the ministries housed in AIDIA’s headquarters.

In the literacy department, they hear of eight-hour bus trips and multi-hour hikes by AIDIA facilitators before they even reach an isolated Quechua village to train literacy volunteer teachers.

In the children’s ministry area, the group is told about trying to meet the huge need to promote usually overlooked ministry to youngsters by area churches.

Eyes open even wider in the room where five local pastors are translating the Old Testament into Eastern Apurímac Quechua.

The complexity of the task becomes apparent as the team does a careful review of their draft translation in Numbers, via Skype with Wycliffe’s David Coombs, the project’s translation consultant working in California.

“What these people do here is unimaginable,” Adrian Koppjan, a retired musical organ builder, says after the tour. “I had no idea.

I am really impressed when I see the work they do.

“I’m excited to be on the trip to see God’s grace and His work continuing wherever it is in the world—and we are just part of it.”

Big Things for the Kingdom Holly Duke, the church’s missions pastor, is delighted that the AIDIA staff dream and want big things for God’s kingdom.

“These people are . . . being missional to their own people, because they recognize the need in their people,” she says. “It’s an (continued on pg. 15)

â&#x20AC;&#x153;What these

people do

here is

unimaginable.

I had no idea.

I am really

impressed

when I see the

work they do.â&#x20AC;?

Taking Steps Toward Kingdom Friendships

J

ustin Hettinga, Wycliffe Canada’s vice-president of engagement and strategy, is encouraged by partnerships like the one Chilliwack Alliance Church has with AIDIA in Peru.

It is just the kind of thing that Wycliffe Canada wants to facilitate in “Kingdom Friendships”: a more personal, long-term way to link the Canadian Church with minority language groups around the world that need Bible translation and related ministries.

“This seems like such a great example of what could be, what can be, and what God is doing,” says Hettinga.

“I really believe this is what a lot of churches in Canada are longing for, but haven’t yet been able to find.”

Hettinga says most churches struggle with finding focus in their global mission efforts. They want to be connected directly and personally with overseas people groups, but they mistakenly opt for short-term, one-off missions trips to a series of different countries.

“There’s no focus and it doesn’t build towards something,” explains Hettinga. “There’s no continuity in the relationship.”

What Chilliwack Alliance has succeeded in doing is using a relationship-based approach, touching hundreds of people in its congregation, with an impact on a project over time. “This is exciting to me because they seemed to have found the sweet spot of long-term, focused mission while being involved with short-term trips.

“The other thing is it’s not just a patronizing sponsorship kind of top-down approach,” says Hettinga.

“They really want to get into relationship, friendship.

The key to a friendship compared to a top-down relationship is there’s give and take. One receives blessing from another.”

Wycliffe Canada’s Justin Hettinga (right) leads Kingdom Friendship Exploration Trips so church leaders can see and consider Bible translation field projects with which they might partner.

Growing Trend Hettinga says the Chilliwack church is an example of a growing trend that Wycliffe Canada is seeing: churches today want to have more input and greater participation in God’s mission globally—and rightly so. God’s people, the Church, have been given the gift of participating in His mission, at His invitation and command. God’s mission in the world is to build His Church, and do it through His Church. Bible translation plays a key role because translated Scriptures help create and grow Christian communities that live out the reality of God’s kingdom, drawing in others.

Wycliffe Canada is bringing together the Canadian Church and minority language groups overseas who need God’s Word in their mother tongues, in Kingdom Friendships that can dynamically advance God’s Kingdom in a personal, hands-on way.

In Kingdom Friendships, Hettinga says Wycliffe Canada is the catalyst, coach and service provider, drawing on its deep experience and expertise to help the Church accomplish what God wants it to do globally.

“We help churches see what God is doing around the world and how Bible translation fits into His mission. We serve to broker multiple avenues of involvement and interaction in these relationships. These are characterized by mutual friendship, sharing and reaching out.”

“I can’t

believe it—

it’s amazing!

The work,

the effort

Common Features The practical outworking and possibilities for involvement in Kingdom Friendships are almost endless, but they share some common features and results. Canadian churches and overseas congregations are connected in a sensitive and kingdom-building way. People on the other side of the globe become real and personal. Prayer for each other becomes specific, informed and intimate. The hopes, struggles and faith of fellow believers in Christ are shared and experienced across cultures. Financial support is unleashed for Bible translation, literacy and related ministries, and field projects are more tangible and meaningful. Churches can see and touch what their financial support is doing on the ground.

Hettinga says Wycliffe Canada is ready to serve Canadian churches to develop relationships with language groups around the world. For starters, it is organizing exploratory trips for church leaders to see Bible translation projects among groups to which they could partner in Kingdom Friendships.

“Our Kingdom Friendship Exploration trips are designed to allow pastors and church-mission leaders to get to know one of our exceptional field partners,” says Hettinga.

“During the trip, visitors will begin to build relationships that will form the basis for a Kingdom Friendship between their church and a Bibleless people group.”

Trips to Peru are planned for May 29-June 4 and June 4-12 to visit the ATEK and AIDIA projects, respectively.

For details, visit <friendship.wycliffe.ca> or email <church_connections@wycliffe.ca>.

and the

insight they

have in what

they do—it’s

fabulous.”

Chilliwack Alliance team members join AIDIA staff for a five-hour mini-bus drive on roads that cling to towering Andes mountain slopes. Their destination is Quillabamba, a Quechua village, to attend an outdoor church gathering and dedication ceremony for the Eastern Apurímac Quechua New Testament, which has been available since April 2013.

overwhelming project and their dedication is just so humbling.”

AIDIA staff dedication is a common characteristic noticed by the church group members, including 69-year-old retired engineer, Dennis Vietorisz, visiting with his wife Erma.

“I can’t believe it—it’s amazing!” he says, with a voice rising with emphasis. “The work, the effort and the insight they have in what they do—it’s fabulous.”

Erma, a 63-year-old retired school teacher, expresses surprise at the low literacy rate among the Quechuas and amazement at the children’s ministries effort led by AIDIA’s Roció Villegas.

“Of course, because I’m a teacher, my heart goes to the kids.

What Roció is doing is mind-boggling to me. My heart goes out to her,” says Erma, struggling with emotion. “Sorry, I’m going to get teared up.”

While Chilliwack Alliance’s trips aren’t work projects per se—one year, for example, the visiting group served by leading a biblical marriage seminar for 50 Quechuas—on this trip, team members roll up sleeves to tackle maintenance tasks listed by AIDIA director Cervantes. “Whatever gaps need to be filled,” says Denis, “we’re willing to do it.”

For several days at the AIDIA headquarters, the Chilliwackians trim the lawn, work in plant beds, reorganize the tool shed, paint exterior walls and fix a leaky bathtub. Several men led by sledge hammer-swinging David Clow, who is here without his wife, knock out an exterior wall to make space for a door to a bathroom.

Into the Andes Several days later, the group joins AIDIA staff in two Toyota mini-buses for the highlight of their stay: a visit to a Quechua village for an outdoor church gathering and New Testament dedication ceremony. The buses bounce along for five hours to the community of Quillabamba (Key-a-BAHM-bah), navigating through heavy construction on a road that clings to steep Andes mountain slopes.

Welcomed by local Christians under blue tarps—blocking a glaring sun at an altitude of 2,900 metres—the visitors are served a late 10:30 a.m. breakfast of sweetened, watery lima bean porridge and bread. They then settle into nearly two days of sermons and worship, much of which is broadcast live over a nearby FM radio station run by the church. As more Quechuas arrive from their farm work, they greet the Canadians as is customary by shaking with one hand and tapping a shoulder with the other.

After some vibrant singing, it is time for the Chilliwack group to be introduced. Translation is done by Eastern Apurímac Quechua-speaker Irma Phelps, who has for several decades served various Quechua groups in Peru through Wycliffe with her American husband, Conrad.

“We are very excited . . . that you are going to receive God’s Word in your own language,” says Denis, through Irma. “It is a light to our path and God wants us to know it personally.”

Sitting through sermons in Quechua that last up to three

Word Alive • Summer 2014 • wycliffe.ca 15

hours, the Chilliwack team members participate occasionally by giving devotionals. Travis Wesley, a 28-year-old bank manager, shares about his personal pursuit of godliness. Erma and Dennis Vietorisz act out a scenario of finding someone else’s lost wallet, reminding the believers that they must respond using Bible principles of honesty to return the item to its owner, instead of keeping it. Adrian and his wife Coby talk about faithfulness, as some Quechuas take notes. “God has been faithful to you Quechua,” she says. “The Bible is in your own language, which is wonderful.”

When the Quechua believers are separated into groups to dramatize the teaching of submission between husbands and wives taught in Eph. 5:21-25, the Canadians join right in with their own groups. They act out examples of couples interacting successfully and unsuccessfully, their animated antics drawing laughter and applause from the Quechua audience.

It’s So Good When it comes time for the Scripture dedication, Cervantes first gives an overview of the effort by the AIDIA translation team. “It’s not a work we can do in a month,” he stresses to the assembled Quechuas, some of whom are already asking for the Old Testament. “We have to think well, and with much fear we do this work because it’s a big responsibility to do a good job.”

An open copy of the New Testament, surrounded by flowers, is brought forward on a wooden platter. Cervantes explains that the flowers are symbols of what bees need to make honey.

“God’s Word is sweet to our hearts like the honey . . . because it’s in our own words. When we are a church in heaven from all nations, from all languages, from all kinds of people, we Quechua speakers will also be in that big gathering.”

After the ceremonial New Testament is given to local pastor, Jacob Huaman, he prays: “Dear Lord, you gave wisdom and knowledge to your children so they can translate this. Bless this Bible. Help us use it. . . . May it be like good food for our souls.

Thank you that you are giving us your Word for every day to nourish our souls.”

Within minutes, 65 copies are sold to Quechua men and women eagerly buying their copies at the front.

Pastor Holly from Chilliwack is overwhelmed by the scene and bursts into tears. “It’s so good,” she assures team members concerned about her reaction. “It’s good.

“It was really a beautiful moment,” she explains later, “seeing people excited and passionate about having the ability to have the Word of God themselves. I remember when somebody gave me my first Bible . . . so to see people being able to have their own Bible was very moving.”

Beyond usual culture More on the Web: shocks—hair-raising travel, Hear Holly Duke, missions pastor, share country squat toilets, more of her impressions in an interview constantly changing schedules, excerpt at <exclusives.wycliffe.ca>. adobe dirt-walled sleeping quarters—all the team members carry their own personal impressions from the village.

On three trips to Peru helping her husband lead the church groups, Sheila Denis says she has been touched by the same thing: the desire that Quechuas have for Christian teaching. “It was definitely presented to us with the three-hour sermon. They will sit there,” she explains. “The hunger is there . . . they will go back time and time again.”

For Travis, a highlight was his devotional translated into Quechua. “I started to get an actual emotional connection just realizing that I was sharing the Word with them and getting to speak to them in a language which they understand, and just actually how powerful that was.”

Coby says it will be difficult to convey to people back home all that she has experienced, but she was deeply impressed by how hard the Quechuas work in fields high up mountain slopes. “With just a pick to work the ground. They are old before their time, and that’s really hard [to see].”

David was impacted by the breadth of what AIDIA does. “I thought it was just a Bible translation organization. And here they’re teaching people how to read and write in their own language. They’re teaching people about abuse and how wrong it is, and how to raise a family. . . .

That, to me, is really good to see.”

“I started to

A New Type of Partnership

realizing that I

Whatever their personal memories, everyone on the trip is convinced that the type of relationship their church has with its Peru partners is the way to go, reinforcing their team leader’s excitement.

“It’s really about God bringing a new type of partnership together,” says Denis. “We’re not just going and doing—we’re going and partnering, and enabling and helping each other grow, and helping each other develop.”

In his interpretation of the book of Acts, Denis says, that’s always what God intended the Church to be. “It’s not denominational. It’s not cultural. It’s under Christ’s leadership.

“Someday that will be a reality on earth, but until that point we have to struggle to get there,” he adds. “I think that’s really what we’re trying to do here.”

(Opposite page, top) Quechua believers assembled at the Quillabamba church gathering act out skits illustrating biblical concepts they learned during one of many sermons—some lasting three hours.

Ministering together, the Chilliwack church team members also dramatized some of the teachings.

(Opposite page, bottom) Chilliwack Alliance teams visiting AIDIA, especially the women, have developed a special relationship with cook Rosa Zapana. On the most recent visit, they went to her house and prayed for her and her severely handicapped son, Alexadra. Previous team members are also paying the nursing school tuition for Rosa’s daughter. (Left) Erma Vietorisz and her husband Dennis are exposed to another sight and sound (and smell) of Quechua culture—this time a woman cooks and sells hunks of pork on the street.

get an actual

emotional

connection just

was sharing the

Word with them

and getting to

speak to them

in a language

which they

understand. . . .”

Word Alive • Summer 2014 • wycliffe.ca 17

A DIFFERENT

GOD SPEAKS AIDIA is working hard so that God’s Word in Eastern Apurímac Quechua effectively spreads to isolated villages in the Peruvian Andes.

I

n their ancient belief-system, the Quechua people of Peru’s Apurímac (ah-poo-REE-mak) region considered the breathtaking Andes Mountains and other phenomena of nature to be gods. So it makes sense that in the Quechua (KE-chwah) language, the Apurímac River—from which the region takes its name—means something like “the god who speaks.”

To the ancestors of today’s Quechuas, the river and its surrounding mountains talked. Part of this “speaking” was likely the Apurímac River’s noisy, torrential plunge some 4,500 metres from its source to its end, along a 350-km course.

Today, another kind of “speaking” is echoing well beyond earshot of the churning Apurímac River in south-central Peru.

God’s Word is radiating quietly but effectively from the capital city of Abancay, along narrow, zigzagging roads and foot trails (and even via the airwaves), to isolated villages in deep canyons and on steep mountain slopes. These life-changing words are

Director Luis Cervantes leads AIDIA, a church-based team impacting the Eastern Apurímac Quechua people of south-central Peru with the translated Scriptures in their language. The organization is headquartered in the city of Abancay, where this cross stands on a lookout high above the valley below.

18 Word Alive • Summer 2014 • wycliffe.ca

“It’s our vision that . . . we would see an impact of the Word of God in people’s lives. There’s simply no use having the Word of God sitting there and people’s lives just continuing as normal.”

for the high-altitude dwellers of this stunningly majestic area, the Eastern Apurímac Quechua people.

God is speaking through the efforts of AIDIA (pronounced “idea”). That’s the Spanish acronym for a church-based organization known in English as the “Interdenominational Association for the Holistic Development of Apurímac.”

AIDIA is a Wycliffe Canada focus-area partner (see back cover) staffed by pastors, other church leaders and many volunteers from the major Apurímac evangelical denominations. They are translating and promoting use of the entire Bible for at least 200,000 Eastern Apurímac Quechua speakers in churches and communities scattered among the rugged highlands of Peru.

Leading the effort is AIDIA’s director Luis Cervantes, a 40-yearold pastor, husband and father of two.

“It’s our vision that through the various ministry departments of our organization, we would see an impact of the Word of God in people’s lives,” Cervantes explains. “There’s simply no use having the Word of God sitting there and people’s lives just continuing as normal.”

The Trouble with Normal “Normal” life is difficult in the Apurímac region (a government administrative “department,” something like a province in Canada).

Apurímac is one of the poorest areas in Peru, with two-thirds of the people considered impoverished. Most Quechuas are farmers who raise crops and livestock that provide meagre incomes. Basic services such as clean water and sewage treatment are rare in communities isolated by rugged distances and limited transportation.

Almost all Quechuas would consider themselves Catholics, explains Cervantes, but they have little knowledge of Christian teaching or doctrine, since the Catholic Church functions in Spanish, where it functions at all. Many still cling to old beliefs that the mountains are gods, needing to be appeased with sacrifices.

Cervantes cites government census figures as he stresses the spiritual needs of his Quechua people. There are 3,255 towns, villages and communities in Apurímac. Only 252 have a church.

“About 3,003 communities are without a church—unreached,” he says. “One district, for example, has 20 communities—villages and hamlets. How many churches exist within that district? Not even one!”

Apurímac’s population has a lower percentage of evangelicals than the national average—for one major reason. Until AIDIA’s work in recent years, there has been a lack of God’s Word and other Christian materials in Eastern Apurímac Quechua, the people’s heart language.

In response, AIDIA is focusing on a half-dozen ministries, including: translating God’s Word, promoting literacy, developing AIDIA is serving Eastern Apurímac Quechua speakers, most of whom live and work in far-flung agricultural communities, where the land church leadership, producing audio/video Scriptural materials, is farmed with back-breaking work on high-altitude Andes mountain encouraging children’s Sunday school and camps. slopes and valleys.

20 Word Alive • Summer 2014 • wycliffe.ca

Peru: At a Glance Name: Republic of Peru Area: 1.28 million sq km (slightly larger than Ontario).

Location: Western South America, bordering the South Pacific Ocean, between Chile and Ecuador.

Geography: Western arid coastal plain; high and rugged Andes in the nation’s centre; eastern lowland jungle of the Amazon Basin, with tropical lands bordering Colombia and Brazil.

Population: 29.5 million.

Capital: Lima (8.77 million).

People: Amerindian 45%; mestizo (mixed Amerindian and white) 37%; white 15%; other 3%.

Economy: Fishing, mining, agriculture (especially coffee) and tourism are economic mainstays.

More than half of the population lives in poverty.

Religion: Roman Catholic 81.3%, Evangelical 12.5%, other 3.3%, unspecified or none 2.9% (2007 census). It is estimated that 25% of Peruvians are influenced by animism and witchcraft as much as Christianity.

Languages: 65; Spanish & Quechua (official), plus many other indigenous languages.

Pastor Buenaventura Rojas shows a copy of a “Wordless Book” prepared by AIDIA. It is filled with pictures to help students in his orality class memorize Scripture stories in Quechua and then retell them to evangelize others. With so many Quechua believers— especially among the elderly—unable to read or write, orality strategies are important.

Bible Translation Status: 4 languages (including Spanish) have Bibles; 42 others have New Testaments; 16 others have Scripture portions; 8 have work in progress.

Literacy: 67%–79% Sources: World Factbook; Operation World, 7th Edition; Ethnologue, SIL

VENEZUELA GUYANA FRENCH GUIANA SURINAME

COLOMBIA

ECUADOR

South America Lima

BRAZIL

PERU Cusco

At the core of the AIDIA ministries is the Bible translation effort. With the New Testament translated, printed and being distributed among the 200,000-plus Quechua speakers, the translation team is pressing ahead on the Old Testament. Here, Bernardino Lancho reviews drafted translation text, with input via Skype, from Wycliffe consultant David Coombs in California.

BOLIVIA

CHILE

PARAGUAY

Careful About S-o-o-o Many Things Spanish may be Peru’s most dominant language, but it is not used much in day-to-day Quechua life, says Cervantes. “Normal communication in the home is in Quechua.” According to the census, it is estimated that 21.7 per cent of the Apurímac population have never been to school and are therefore monolingual Quechua speakers.

But those with a very limited grasp of Spanish are much more numerous than indicated by the official figures. When it comes to using the Bible, the vast majority of Quechuas simply can’t understand God’s Word well enough in Spanish. Bibles have been available for years in neighbouring languages such as Cusco Quechua and Ayacucho Quechua, but are not similar enough to meet the needs of Eastern Apurímac Quechua speakers.

In 2006, six Quechua pastors from the three largest evangelical denominations trained as translators and, headed by Cervantes, began translation of the New Testament into their mother tongue.

Team member Felipe Valenzuela, an Assemblies of God pastor, remembers how he and the others preached before working on the translation.

“. . . While pastoring a church, as I prepared sermon messages, I began to realize I had committed a lot of errors in the past [using a Spanish Bible].”

“We would often go out into the countryside to teach. Right on the spot, we would literally translate from the Spanish Bible to people in Quechua. At the moment, this didn’t seem too hard to us.

“Then we started learning what was involved in Bible translation,” recalls Valenzuela. “In reality, it was not as easy as we thought. We realized that you had to be careful about s-o-o-o many things to make sure what Jesus wanted communicated was going to be clearly communicated. At that point, we really started valuing the Scriptures in the mother tongue and understanding the importance of it.”

The translators acknowledge that it was challenging in the beginning to work together, coming from different denominations and perspectives. But they have persisted, doing draft translations and talking through them verse by verse. They have drawn on insights from Wycliffe’s David Coombs, who is the

exegetical consultant on the Bible translation project, working remotely with the team from California.

“Little by little,” says Valenzuela, “we began to gel, and now I am quite content and happy.

“I’ve learned a lot through it. I was pastoring a church at the same time, and as I prepared sermon messages, I began to realize I had committed a lot of errors in the past [using a Spanish Bible].”

In April of 2013, the first of 8,000 printed New Testaments in Eastern Apurímac Quechua became available at a dedication ceremony in Abancay (see Word Alive, Spring 2014). The Scriptures are serving as a vital, life-changing tool for believers and pastors alike (see “Hugging the Word,” on page 30).

Understandable and Life-changing Cervantes says God’s Word, coming in accurate, natural and clear Quechua, will only deepen and expand the impact the gospel can have among his needy people.

Alcoholism plagues many people in the countryside. Many husbands verbally and physically abuse their wives and children, and hold them back from attending school.

“When people receive Christ, they stop drinking; then they stop beating their wives and children. Their children start going to school. And at the same time . . . they suddenly start working their fields like they should be.

“You’ll observe that when you enter a community where the majority of the people are Christians. Their fields are green and lush, and their houses are in better condition. It’s an observable difference.”

The translation will also help battle the influence of cults in the area that are misleading Quechuas who have a shallow grasp of God’s Word.

Currently, the translation team is working hard—at a pace of more than 2,900 verses a year—to translate the entire Old Testament and combine it with the existing New Testament by 2022. Those Scriptures are also sure to penetrate deeply into the minds and hearts of the Quechuas, whose culture shares many traits with that of the Old Testament.

Miriam Unzeute is early evidence of that. The 24-year-old nursing student in Abancay is the first person exposed by the team to newly translated Old Testament text. Three or four (Opposite page) AIDIA’s current Eastern Apurímac Quechua Bible translation team consists of local pastors from several Peruvian evangelical denominations: (left to right) Carlos Arias, Oscar Sánchez, Luis Cervantes, Felipe Valenzuela and Bernardino Lancho. The men are driven by a deep need to equip their people, like these visiting outside a local church (left), with God’s Word in clear, natural and understandable Quechua.

Word Alive • Summer 2014 • wycliffe.ca 23

Where Wycliffe Fits In

W

ycliffe personnel, including some Canadians, have long been supportive of Bible translation and related ministries in Eastern Apurímac Quechua.

As early as 1996, speakers of the language contacted Wycliffe’s Peter Landerman (serving in Peru with Wycliffe’s key field partner, SIL), expressing a desire for God’s Word. Two years later, Conrad and Irma Phelps visited Abancay to meet with these and other Quechua speakers, who made some early attempts at adapting Scripture from the New Testament in Ayacucho, a related language.

Training and Mentoring In 2004, Wycliffe’s David Coombs was invited to teach a Bible translation introduction course to various church leaders, which helped AIDIA choose the first members of its Bible translation team. AIDIA leaders invited David and his wife Heidi—who had spent several decades working on another Quechua New Testament project— to help with translation of the whole Bible. In 2005, the Coombses moved to Abancay and began training AIDIA’s five translation team members. The Coombses now work with the team remotely.

In 2006, the team began translating the New Testament, published this past year, and in 2012 they began the Old Testament. Although motivated

by Bible translation, right from the beginning AIDIA realized the need to minister holistically and expanded into a variety of ministries (see “A Different God Speaks,” pg. 18).

Various Wycliffe personnel have taught workshops for AIDIA workers in translation, linguistics, grammar, computers, ethnomusicology, literacy, writing and publishing, radio, children’s ministries, etc.

Two Canadian Wycliffe couples—Larry and Carol Sagert, and Justin and Tammy Hettinga (daughter of Larry and Carol)—worked with the Quechuas for five and 10 years, respectively. They mentored AIDIA staff, helping them to learn to manage the organization wisely and develop skills in planning, training, funding, reporting and accountability.

Dave Crough

From Canada and Beyond Canadian churches and believers have financially supported AIDIA from its beginning, through Wycliffe Canada project funding and partner agencies, including OneBook. Designating AIDIA as a focus project, Wycliffe Canada is committed to Two Wycliffe couples—Larry and Carol Sagert (left foresupporting the remaining Old Testament translation ground), and Justin and Tammy Hettinga (the Sagerts’ and related ministries, now that the New Testament daughter), in this photo taken nearly a decade ago— is finished (see back cover). Wycliffe U.S.A. also helps worked with the Quechua people for years, assisting fund AIDIA. AIDIA and its staff through mentoring and training.

Other organizations have also encouraged and Around 2000, a Wycliffe team worked in assisted AIDIA over the years. Wycliffe Associates, southern Peru to promote distribution of the Cusco a lay technical partner of Wycliffe, sponsored a Quechua Bible. They discovered that it was not as construction project to expand a house, formerly understandable as expected in the neighbouring owned by an SIM (Serving in Mission) missionary, Apurímac region. Wycliffe’s Chana Franchy was sent into AIDIA’s translation and training centre. SIM to investigate Apurímac’s language situation and has provided financial support and personnel subsequently began meeting with a group interested to AIDIA. Campus Crusade sent a team to help in translating God’s Word. Various Wycliffe staff record The JESUS Film into Quechua. Faith presented linguistics studies and grammar workshops Comes By Hearing provided a team to help AIDIA to the group, and Chana continued helping. record the entire New Testament and put it on A translation committee of Eastern Apurímac The Proclaimer digital audio player for use in the Quechua speakers was created in 2002, and they countryside. The Peruvian Bible Society sends started to translate various materials into their offerings to support literacy publications. language. A year later, the committee formed AIDIA as a legal organization. It continued to produce and distribute to churches various Quechua materials, including a hymnbook and a Life of Christ booklet.

“In our literacy classes, it’s not just about the actual act of reading and writing, it’s also about lifting their self-esteem and how they value their language.”

mornings a week, she listens as a team member reads her a draft translation, so she can give feedback about how understandable it is. Asked what Old Testament stories in her Quechua mother tongue have impressed her so far during her checking sessions, Unzeute enthusiastically and thoroughly recounts the postexodus experiences of Moses, the Israelites and God. But is she not familiar with all this in Spanish?

“I had heard it,” she replies, “but it is different now. I understand it more. Sometimes when people would read the Word before [in Spanish], we just couldn’t understand it. This is so much more intelligible. . . .”

Reading for Self-esteem and Truth

Forty-five-year-old Teresa Quispe practises writing as her daughter looks on outside their adobe brick home in Tacmara village. As a youngster, she had little schooling, restricted by her parents to shepherding the family’s sheep. Teresa just recently began learning to read in her Eastern Apurímac Quechua language, thanks to a literacy centre in the local church, one of about 40 started by AIDIA throughout the region. “I feel very happy. I’m reading the Bible and I can read songs in the songbook,” she says. “Thank you, God, thank you, God, I do feel stronger as a person.”

For the many illiterate Quechuas, AIDIA—the only organization promoting literacy in their language—is providing a unique opportunity to grow as individuals.

“Helping them to learn to read and write is helping them to incorporate themselves into the wider society,” explains Cervantes. “Quechua speakers often feel inferior when they come into the city here. They are treated as less. In our literacy classes, it’s not just about the actual act of reading and writing, it’s also about lifting their self-esteem and how they value their language.”

And, of course, the ultimate goal is to equip the Quechuas to read the Scriptures in their own language.

“The arrival of the New Testament has had a big impact on many, especially the sisters [women] who have had little training in reading,” says Cervantes. “Many of them who have bought their Bibles now are beginning to read more and more. Some of these sisters have bought Bibles even though they don’t yet know how to read, thinking that they are going to be able to get their kids to read it to them.”

Kids were a major reason Noemí Rojas joined AIDIA to co-ordinate its literacy program, which is also staffed by her four “facilitators,” who help her train and guide many volunteer teachers.

“I always had been taught since a child that I should be teaching others,” she says of her Quechua church upbringing. “I always had this desire . . . to teach others, particularly children, the Word of God.” Though she was literate in Spanish, Rojas first had to take AIDIA literacy classes so she could learn to read and write in her Quechua mother tongue, a widespread need among her people.

“The big thing is that people just don’t know how to read— and read the Word of God,” says the passionate 25-year-old single woman.

Many people may come to their churches with a Bible in hand and they can actually sound out the words of the Bible in Spanish. But they have no idea what they are reading.

“They are not reading with understanding,” explains Rojas.

Word Alive • Summer 2014 • wycliffe.ca 25

Youngsters to Seniors To change this situation, AIDIA works through evangelical pastors to set up literacy centres in their churches, for Christians and non-Christians alike. AIDIA staff train volunteer teachers to run the classes.

“The majority of these volunteer teachers are actually leaders and pastors in the community,” explains Rojas. But “God doesn’t have limits and often uses young people and even children to do the teaching.”

Bible-based materials are used in three levels of classes, with students ranging from three-year-olds to those who are 60 or more, says Rojas (pictured on the back cover). Quechuas often come to literacy classes with no schooling, including middle-aged women, who she is thrilled to see grow in their skills and become formal leaders in their own churches (see “From Fingerprint to Signature,” pg. 34.)

“Our main goal as of late has been to open up literacy centres at 42 different churches,” she says. “Our goal is to see a thousand students at any given time in the program.”

This past fall, nearly 800 people were taking classes in 38 literacy centres.

Having put their hard-working hands on farm tools all their lives, some older Quechuas have enough trouble holding a pencil, let alone learning to read. So AIDIA has added orality classes into its program.

In the village of Huascatay, for instance, Pastor Buenaventura Rojas leads an orality class of 12 people. Like other class leaders, he uses the “Wordless Book,” filled with pictures to help students memorize Scripture stories in Quechua and then retell the Bible stories to evangelize others.

“They had always heard these teachings,” says the 64-year-old with a well-lined, National Geographic face, “but when I teach the story, we end up memorizing the text that goes with it and people will ask me to keep expanding and teach more about it.

They are very excited about learning.

“It’s the images here that really spur them on and help. That’s how they are learning; it’s through the pictures.”

This AIDIA-inspired new ministry is fuelling this driven pastor, who gave his life to serve God after recovering from a serious illness. “I came to the Lord when I was 49,” Rojas says, “and I will serve Him until I die.”

(Above) After a hard day in the fields at an altitude of nearly 3,500 metres, Arturo Larria enjoys a kind of milky rice pudding, piping hot from his mug. His wife Reina brings in grass for guinea pigs (an eventual meat supply), scampering around underfoot in their village home at Tacmara. AIDIA taught Arturo to read and trained him as the local Evangelical Church of Peru congregation’s literacy teacher. As a church leader, he is delighted to use the New Testament in his mother tongue.

“No matter what kind of trials come our way, when I open up the Word and begin to read it, it encourages me and gives me strength,” he says.

“It’s pretty beautiful to read the Bible.” (Right) Young and old, like this woman spinning wool as she walks through her village, now can have access to the Scriptures in their Apurímac Quechua.

AIDIA is beginning to train pastors and other Quechua church leaders to use God’s Word in their language to build their understanding of basic Christian teaching. While AIDIA now holds regional workshops for groups of leaders out in the countryside, it started the effort with two, week-long events in Abancay for those in neighbouring communities.

“In the two groups, something pretty interesting happened,” recalls Cervantes. “I never had a chance to teach a single page of Developing Church Leadership my teaching materials. Within five minutes, they started raising While pastors like Rojas may have passion, unfortunately many in their hands and asking questions.”

The questions kept coming—for five days: What are the the countryside don’t have much formal training. attributes of God? Who is Jesus? When a Christian dies, where “I don’t have an exact number,” says Cervantes, “but my quick do they go? Where do non-Christians go? Aren’t the Jehovah’s estimate is that 95 per cent of leaders and pastors have never Witnesses just other brothers and sisters in the church? What are gone to seminary or Bible school. Because they have very little the prerequisites and roles of a pastor? preparation and training, you end up having so many errors “Probably 80 per cent of the pastors in the countryside entering into their teaching.”

These leaders are compelled to shepherd churches because of don’t meet any kind of biblical requirements for a pastor,” adds Cervantes, who pastors a local church in Abancay. “Many of the Quechua tendency for the Christian community to simply them could be living with someone common-law. They might be make them pastors, explains Cervantes. Untrained rural pastors separated from their families.” do their best but often teach unbiblical ideas.

26 Word Alive • Summer 2014 • wycliffe.ca

“I don’t have an exact number, but my quick estimate is that 95 per cent of rural leaders and pastors have never gone to seminary or Bible school.”

“Almost everybody that Jesus Loves the watches it says, ‘My Little Children husband does the same Separation, of a sort, thing to me.’ So that’s also exists within why people leave crying— Quechua churches when it comes to they so identify with it.” children. Many Quechua believers have not seen kids as an important part of a congregation; they associate the church with adults.

“Because churches never had anything like a Sunday school program,” explains Cervantes, “what happens is that during church, kids remain out shepherding the flocks and the cows.”

His eyes moistening with concern, Cervantes says AIDIA launched its Sunday school and Christian camp program, recognizing two things: that the Quechua Church’s future is its children, and that childhood is a crucial time to learn about God. Those concerns also drive Rocío Villegas, a young female AIDIA staffer, who serves as facilitator of the children/youth program, working with a core of youth volunteers from Abancay.

“She’s doing an excellent, excellent job,” says Cervantes. “She was able to . . . train various Sunday school teachers and then they were able to open their Sunday school programs in each of their churches.”

Through their efforts, Quechua-language Sunday school programs started in 30-plus churches this past year, and several youth camps were held for kids under 15.

“I see that the local church is beginning to take ownership for doing something . . . for the children in their churches,” says Villegas. “We hope it will become routine for churches to do more for children.”

catches AIDIA staff by surprise. Probably the best example is a half-hour drama film in Quechua, filmed in just one day by Vásquez and a team of Christians from various churches. It tells the story of an abusive husband.

“Almost everybody that watches it says: ‘My husband does the same thing to me,’ ” explains Cervantes. “So that’s why people leave crying—they so identify with it.”

The video ends with a call to receive Christ as a first step to dealing with such marital problems.

Walking with Us Despite their progress and successes, AIDIA ministries are stretched to capacity. God’s speaking has not been heard clearly in many, many more isolated Quechua communities.

To achieve AIDIA’s strategic goals, translator/Pastor Valenzuela says it is crucial for Canadian believers, through Wycliffe Canada, to stand with AIDIA (see back cover).

“We are very thankful More on the Web: for the help we’ve Listen to a translated interview excerpt gotten from them,” he in which AIDIA Director Luis Cervantes says. “We know that outlines the main challenges his organization many are praying. We faces, at <exclusives.wycliffe.ca>.. know many have been supporting us financially, so the work of God in this part of Peru can continue to grow and extend the kingdom of God. “We Christians, we are one in the body of Christ, in whatever part of the world, and we need one another,” adds Valenzuela.

“With their prayers and with their offerings, they [Canadian Christians] are walking with us.

“That’s what it is to do missions.”

Heard and Seen Back at AIDIA’s translation and training centre, it has become routine, as part of the Eastern Apurímac Quechua language emphasis, to produce audio and video materials to strengthen individuals, families, small groups and churches.

With leadership from audio/video specialist Cirilo Vásquez, AIDIA has recorded and distributed audio and video versions of the Quechua Christian song book it published. It has also recorded two versions of the New Testament. One is for Hosanna’s handcranked/solar-powered Proclaimer audio-player, which is used

by Scripture-listening groups and has actually helped plant new churches. The Genesis video is coming next, to accompany The JESUS Film, that was dubbed into Quechua a couple of years ago.

Sometimes the widespread popularity of their products (Opposite page, top) Rocío Villegas, AIDIA’s children/youth program facilitator, leads some kids in Bible-based activities in the countryside.

She is working to encourage and train Quechua churches to provide ministry to children as the future leaders, instead of overlooking them.

Often during church activities, adults attend while children stay at home to work. (Extreme left) Along a roadside, children help separate lima beans from chaff and husks, and (left) herd livestock to and from pasture. (Right) Quechua storybooks like this one, prepared by AIDIA for literacy classes, not only are written in the mother tongue, but feature content related to the life and culture of the people.

Word Alive • Summer 2014 • wycliffe.ca 29

An Eastern Apurímac Quechua pastor knows full well the value of the New Testament for his church. After all, he helped translate it.

A

s Mario Valverde received his copy of the Eastern Apurímac Quechua New Testament in April 2013 in Peru, he did what only seemed natural—he clutched it to his chest.

“I received it with a huge hug, because I needed it as well,” says the pastor of the Quechua congregation at the Evangelical Church of Peru in Abancay. “I needed something to be able to read and give to the people.”

As part of the Bible translation team, Valverde got his New Testament immediately when the shipment of 8,000 copies arrived in Peru from printers in Korea, ahead of the dedication ceremony in Abancay (see Word Alive, Spring 2014). He began preaching from it before the celebration.

“People would come up to me and say, ‘Oh, brother, where can we buy it?’ ” recalls Valverde. “I kept having to say, ‘You have to wait until April, at the dedication—then you can buy one.’

“They waited with hunger and thirst for that day.”

Having led a growing flock of several hundred Quechua 30 Word Alive • Summer 2014 • wycliffe.ca

speakers since 2000, Valverde knows how indispensable the mother tongue Scriptures are for 200,000-plus Quechuas living in the Apurímac region of south-central Peru (see ”A Different God Speaks,” pg. 18).

Getting Prepared Born to a Catholic family in a small town, Valverde came to know Christ at a house church service in a jungle community when he was 17. “From there I began to live for Christ and prepare myself.

Pretty quickly I began to get trained to become a pastor.”

After preaching in rural communities in the Andes Mountains for several years, the Evangelical Church of Peru leadership asked Valverde to start leading a Quechua-speaking congregation in the regional capital of Abancay. It began with 14 people; today it has 250.

“The majority of them are from the countryside, but some are from the city as well,” Valverde says of his growing congregation,

(Above) Members of the Evangelical Church of Peru congregation in Abancay, Peru, fervently sing, worship and pray in their mother tongue (Eastern ApurĂ­mac Quechua), encouraged by Pastor Mario Valverde (right), who helped translate and enthusiastically uses the New Testament to nourish his rapidly growing ďŹ&#x201A;ock.

“People kept asking me, ‘From what Bible are you reading?’

When I read it, people . . . really understood it well.” many of whom now work in the city market. “It all happened naturally through our language—the language that was given by our parents.”

Early on, Valverde faced the challenge of preaching in Eastern Apurímac Quechua without translations of Scriptures in the language. The best he could do to prepare sermons was to read a Spanish Bible and translate the Word into Quechua. “Quite often pastors will preach in Spanish and somebody will be translating it into Quechua.”

Valverde was introduced to the concepts and methods of Bible translation by Wycliffe’s David Coombs, who has since served as translation consultant with the Eastern Apurímac Quechua translation team. Having seen Valverde preach in Abancay, AIDIA invited him to several training workshops and then suggested he be part of a team of pastor/translators.

Working half-time, Valverde slowly got equipped for the job, “When we began talking about translation in the first training event, it seemed really difficult,” recalls Valverde. “I knew that God would have to give me wisdom to be able to do this.”

Huge Blessing Valverde was correct to expect the task of translating Scriptures would be challenging for him and the translation team.

“Sometimes we would get stuck for 30 minutes or an entire hour on one single verse, trying to get clarity on it. One person would say this, another person would say that.”

But persevering in the work brought a huge blessing to Valverde and his church.

“Since I was analyzing the Word of God in the translation [process], I was able to preach really well, so that people could really understand. And because of that, the church started to grow,” says the 47-year-old pastor. “I always give thanks to God for being able to translate the Word of God.” The best the Eastern Apurímac Quechuas previously had were Bibles in neighbouring languages, Cusco Quechua and Ayacucho Quechua. Those are pronounced quite differently, use a number of different words and are not understood well by Eastern Apurímac Quechua speakers.

As the translation of their New Testament progressed, More on the Web: Listen to worship at the Valverde would read from Quechua church Mario leads, print-outs of those sections in at <exclusives.wycliffe.ca>. his church. “People kept asking me, ‘From what Bible are you reading?’ When I read it, people . . . really understood it well.”

Valverde also printed out translated Scripture for the congregation’s leaders to study. The pastor quickly noticed that God’s Word in their mother tongue deeply touched those leading worship, deacons’ ministries and prayer and social assistance ministries.

“They began to understand better and they began to change,” says Valverde. “Their spiritual lives started to get better. Their

married lives got better. And their ministry life would improve.

“Homes began to get better and you’d see whole families beginning to serve God with their whole hearts.”

Scriptures for Outreach What’s more, the translated Scriptures have played an important role in two outreach efforts of the church.

The church buys a time slot on local radio to minister entirely in Quechua for two hours each night, reaching well beyond the walls of its sanctuary.

Felicitas Coyori, an illiterate 51-year-old woman, began the radio programs in Quechua five years ago.

“I would just pass on the teachings I had received from the Word of God, and sing songs and praises,” she says, adding that the popular program is now simultaneously distributed beyond the local airwaves. “Our programs are streamed through the Internet and we get notes from Quechua speakers all over the world.”

Others in the church have joined the radio ministry, now using the printed Eastern Apurímac Quechua New Testament.

With help from fellow literate church member Isabel Hurtado, Coyori has turned to serve elsewhere: among the 360 inmates at the prison at Abancay.

Scared But Protected Coyori and Hurtado, 47, admit they were at first scared going into a men’s prison. But they simply talked with the inmates, were accepted and invited to return.

“Because we are going there with clean hearts to preach the Word,” says Hurtado, “God will protect us.”

Every Saturday, the women lead Bible studies with about 15 prisoners using the New Testament in Quechua (and also the Spanish Bible, since a few prisoners are not Quechua speakers).

The group has prisoners serving jail time for such crimes as rape, drug-related offences, theft and fraud.

“Inside the prison, it’s very, very sad. These men are always crying. Many of them don’t have any food,” Coyori says, explaining the Peru prison system. “[Outside] people have to bring it to them.”

The couple sometimes brings food, but knows the ultimate bread of life, God’s Word, is crucial for deeper life change.

“Clearly, some in there are already believers . . . who need to repent again,” says Hurtado. “But many in there have never repented, and aren’t believers and need to repent.

“We need to help them open and understand the Word of God. They kept saying, ‘We need Bibles.’ So we brought them Bibles.”

(Opposite page) Pastor Mario’s wife, Silvia, and church colleagues Felicitas Coyori and Isabel Hurtado, stroll by the prison at Abancay.

Felicitas and Isabel minister to male inmates there, thankful they have Quechua Scriptures to use in weekly Bible studies with the prisoners. (Right) Pastor Mario lifts sand to add to a cement mixer, during construction work he does on the side to pay back a debt on which a member of his family has unfortunately defaulted.

The two women are thankful to be using the Scriptures in Eastern Apurímac Quechua as they minister.

“We need it. It’s very good. People can comprehend it,” explains Hurtado. “For me, when I hear it, I comprehend it better, and am able to pass it on better.”

Coyori notes that one inmate, who had killed someone while driving, but surrendered his life to God while in prison, is now attending the Abancay congregation.

A Lingering Vision Back at the church, Valverde is excited about the future impact among his people now that the New Testament is available in their mother tongue. And he looks back fondly on his seven years of service with the translation team.

Unfortunately, however, he is no longer involved in the current Old Testament translation. This past summer, the former bricklayer was forced to resign from the translation committee and take up higher-paying construction work to pay back a debt on which a member of his family had defaulted.

But Valverde’s vision for Bible translation—which will likely take until 2022 for the Old Testament to be completed—has not died.

“One day,” he says in faith, “I’ll find myself back in translation.”

From Fingerprint to A middle-aged Quechua woman journeys through the darkness of illiteracy to the light of literacy.

L

ike other members at the Assemblies of God Church in Abancay, Peru, Marcelina Sauñe (left) would occasionally need to sign documents related to the congregation’s business affairs.

While fellow believers wrote their names, Marcelina could only provide a fingerprint of her thumb. For, until a few years ago, the middle-aged Eastern Apurímac Quechua woman could not write or read.

Sauñe explains her journey, from the darkness of illiteracy to the light of literacy, as she stands quietly at the crowded, downtown market in Abancay in the Apurímac region of southcentral Peru. She is selling small blocks of cheese brought from farmers in the countryside. Other vendors around her are noisily hawking vegetables, boxes of matches, plucked chickens with feet and heads still attached, cooking oil—and everything else under the sun, blocked overhead this day by blue tarps.

The 40-something-year-old (“I almost don’t keep track of my age”) is at first soft-spoken, almost expressionless. But as she relates the latter part of her story, she becomes more animated.

Her eyes sparkle and a shy grin begins to grow on a face capped by a traditional, brown felt hat.

Hers is a story of restricted educational opportunities as a youngster and a late-blooming determination in adulthood to read and feed on God’s Word.

“My parents never put me in school, so I never learned to read,” explains Sauñe, of her early family life on a farm in the Huancarama area. Her mother was more open to it, but her father thought a girl who attended school would go only to learn how to write letters to boys. A distraught Sauñe watched other children around her attending school, conducted in Spanish.

“I found myself feeling of less value. I was very sad.”

Too Busy for Classes So, Sauñe spent her days tending the family’s animals and looking after her younger siblings, a duty that became even more essential when her father died. As Sauñe grew to marrying age, her mother gave her away against her will to begin a difficult period with her new husband.

“That was my life,” she recalls. “When I was with this man, I did not live well. This young man . . . began to drink a lot, and treated me very harshly and abused me.”

Later, literacy classes were offered by AIDIA (see “A Different God Speaks,” pg. 18). But by this time Sauñe was a young mother with the first of an eventual six children; she was simply too busy to attend.

Life took an important turn when both Sauñe and her husband became Christians.

“When we both came to the Lord, my husband completely changed and stopped abusing me,” she says.

Having moved by this time to Abancay, the family began attending the Assemblies of God Church. Sauñe craved knowing

o Signature God’s Word, even if it was still only available in Spanish. But her inability to read was a barrier to the Scriptures. Moreover, her illiteracy meant she was often cheated in her new cheese-selling business at the marketplace, because she didn’t know how to properly count money during sales transactions.

Sauñe did the best she could on her own, praising God by following along in church worship to memorize the songs.

“When they read the [Spanish] Bible, I listened,” she adds, “but I would hear it just for that moment and then I would forget. It did not stay in my head.”

She began taking a Spanish Bible to church, asking persons beside her to mark the text that was preached, so she could go home and have her husband or one of her children read it. But they lost patience and stopped reading it for her. A heart-broken Sauñe wept with discouragement.

Ma

rceli

na S

auñ

elina

Marc

In 2006, AIDIA staff began teaching mother tongue literacy in Sauñe’s church and urged her to attend. It was finally the chance to become literate that she had missed for decades.

“I had a deep desire. I kept saying, ‘Yes, I’m going to learn,’ ” she recalls. “I used to ask God: ‘My Father, I want to learn those letters, what they are saying, in order to worship you—so I can also speak your words, Father. You will teach me. Help me!’ ” Like the others in the class of about 15, she began to practise writing shapes with a pencil. She gradually learned the vowels and consonants in Quechua, recognized how small circles and sticks worked together to form letters in her mother tongue, and how those letters formed words.

At church, she followed along in the hymnbook, associating what she heard sung with what was written on the pages. “So, little by little, I began to learn to read.”

After six months, she was asked do a church service reading of Scripture (in the neighbouring language of Ayacucho Quechua) in a church service. She did so to the degree she could, before sharing her testimony.

While working through several years of AIDIA classes, Sauñe came to another pivotal point in her life, when her seriously ill husband had to go into hospital. With money running out and concerns that her husband might not recover, Sauñe needed God’s comfort. She borrowed her friend’s Ayacucho Quechua New Testament (which was then the most closely related translation available to her type of Quechua). Knowing that her Bible reading was still very limited, Sauñe prayed: “My Father, this night, I need you to talk to me through your Word. Because who is there for me to trust? It is you. Now, in your name, I am going to open this Bible. Now talk to me about what you want. In your name, I will be able to read. Help me; talk to me.”

Feeling Great Joy Sauñe had turned to Psalm 40, a perfect fit for her situation.

She read the whole passage, which God used to comfort and challenge her to a deeper surrender. She continued to pray; her husband eventually recovered.

“That’s how I learned to read,” she says. “For God, nothing’s impossible. God always helps. He helped me. He put a lot of enthusiasm into my heart.”

Today, Sauñe is a key leader in her Quechua congregation. She leads singing and worship and continues reading the Scriptures, now available in her own Eastern Apurímac Quechua. She would even like to learn Spanish, so she can take God’s Word to those needing to hear it in that language.

“I feel great joy and I give thanks to God,” says Sauñe. “When I couldn’t read, I felt like I was of no value to anybody. Now that I’ve learned, I feel great joy.”

And what about those documents occasionally needing to be signed at her church? Sauñe has graduated far beyond pressing an inked thumb down on paper.

“Now,” the humble cheese-seller says proudly, “I am able to actually sign with my own name.”

Marcelina Sauñe

Another Chance

“I used to ask God: ‘My Father, I want to learn those letters, what they are saying, in order to worship you—so I can also speak your words, Father.’ ”

Sauñ

Word Alive • Summer 2014 • wycliffe.ca 35

e

Beyond Words Translating the Gospel

By Hart Wiens

Part 9

Lexical Equivalence

By Hart Wiens “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” (John 3:16)

T

he little Greek word pas (πᾶς) is represented by the two English words “everyone who.” The translators of the King James Version, writing in an older form of the English language, were able to use just one word, “whosoever.”

The Canadian Oxford Dictionary labels this word “archaic.” More recent versions such as the New International and the Revised Standard have also tried to retain one-word equivalence, with “whoever.” Unfortunately, in contemporary usage this has become a rather flippant slang expression for the youth culture in the same domain as “whatever.” This contemporary usage of the term tends to diminish its appropriateness to convey the meaning intended by the original Greek term.

The term used in the Greek actually means “all” or “every.” In this grammatical construction it means “everyone who.” This is exactly the rendering that the New Revised Standard Version and other meaning-based versions such as the Good News Translation and the Contemporary English Version have chosen. The term extends the invitation as widely as possible. Using the word “everyone” challenges our human tendency to be ethnocentric.

The early followers of Jesus were Jewish. They had grown up with the view that they were God’s chosen people and therefore superior to the Gentiles, who, according to them, lived outside of God’s blessing and providence. They held this view even though, in the covenant God made with their ancestor Abraham, He Jesus made it clear had specifically indicated His intention to cause them that He came to earth to “be a blessing to all nations on earth” (Genesis to love and rescue all 22.18, CEV). This sense of superiority is a natural part people, regardless of of our human nature. We tend to define God in our own image and to believe that He cares about us more their origins. That’s than He does about others. Jesus challenged these Good News! assumptions. He made it clear that He came to earth to love and rescue all people, regardless of their social, religious or ethnic origins. That’s Good News!

The Good News that Jesus brought has a universal implication that motivates His followers. They go to great lengths to ensure that this message is made available to all people in the language and style of communication that speaks to them most clearly. This is why the Canadian Bible Society, along with its many partners such as Wycliffe Bible Translators, focuses significant resources on the support of Bible translation in Canada and around the world. People speaking several thousand languages still lack the ability to hear this Good News in a language they can really understand. We rely on your prayers and support to change this situation.

Editor’s Note: This is part of a series of 14 articles reflecting on the verse John 3:16 word by word. The series illustrates some of the challenges Bible translators face as they seek to present God’s Good News in every language spoken on earth.

36 Word Alive • Summer 2014 • wycliffe.ca

Part 10

Key Terms “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.” (John 3:16)

T

his word “believes” is a “key term” because of the critical role it plays in communicating the message of the Bible. In the gospel, belief is the channel through which salvation by grace comes to people (Ephesians 2:8). The Greek root is translated in English as “believe” or “faith,” depending on the version and context. This core word occurs 240 times in the New Testament.

The translator’s challenges are to first understand the concept in the Greek, and second, to express it in the language receiving the new translation. It’s critical to go to the source text for key terms, ensuring faithfulness to the original.

There is a problem with our English verb “to believe.” For those not very familiar with the gospel, its meaning may be limited to a dictionary-level understanding of simply accepting something as true. That is belief at the intellectual level. In the context of the gospel, the original term carried a deeper meaning of acceptance, not just at the head level, but also in the heart. Whenever the original Greek term is used in conjunction with the preposition “in” or “into” as it is in this verse, it carries the meaning of faith or confidence in a person to the extent of acting on that faith.

We struggle for the right word to translate key terms such as “believe.”

Sometimes a language has a unique word that captures the full meaning. The common word for believe in Kalinga is “manuttuwa.” It goes back to the word for truth, which in Kalinga is “tuttuwa.” When used as a verb, this term is commonly used to mean “believe” as well as “obey.” The Kalinga understand intuitively that to believe in Jesus means to obey His teaching. This does not make the road to discipleship any easier for them. However, it does bring their understanding of the gospel more directly in line with the teachings of our Lord’s brother James, who maintains in his letter that faith without works is dead.

“To believe” carried Translation is never easy. Often it seems downright a deeper meaning of impossible to simply and accurately convey some of the teachings of the Gospel in other languages. But at other acceptance, not just times we experience the serendipity of finding concepts at the head level, but in a new language that convey the message about Christ also in the heart. with a clarity that almost transcends the original. There is always something to be learned by reading or hearing the message in a new language.

Reprinted with permission from the Canadian Bible Society’s “Translating the Gospel” article series, written by Hart Wiens, CBS director of Scripture translation. Hart and his wife Ginny served with Wycliffe Canada in a Bible translation project among the Kalinga people in the Philippines for 19 years. More recently, Hart has been a Wycliffe Canada board member.

Word Alive • Summer 2014 • wycliffe.ca 37

A Thousand Words A Shadow of Their Former Selves An Eastern Apurímac Quechua woman and her children stand on the roadside beside a flood-lit outdoor church gathering (see related story, pg. 6) in the village of Quillabamba, Peru, eerily casting their shadows on an adobe brick building across the street. Often a marginalized people in Peru, the Quechua people are finding hope, confidence and God’s love through the ministries of AIDIA, so they can emerge from the shadows of society into a brighter mainstream.

Natasha Schmale

38 Word Alive • Summer 2014 • wycliffe.ca

Last Word Meeting at the Crossroads

By Roy Eyre

L

ast year I fulfilled a lifelong dream to attend the dedication of a New Testament translated into another language. On a Sunday morning in the city of Abancay, Peru, I joined hundreds of Eastern Apurímac Quechua men and women, many of whom had walked for many hours to attend what would become a fivehour dedication service.

Of course, ceremony, greetings and multiple sermons were an important part of the event. But it was the other elements that held the crowd’s attention.

Organizers had their audience in mind. The service included local folk bands, leading shrill songs of worship and celebration that were distinctly Quechua. Their musical style sounded almost Asian, involving stringed instruments and even an accordion.

But it was the dramas that imprinted my memory.

Children pressed to the front to observe a group of kids acting out the parable of the sower who scatters seed among thorns, rocks, beaten path and fertile ground. Such agricultural references Could the Quechuas’ easily hit the mark for these weathered hunger for the farming folk.

At one point, I noticed a stir at the Bible inspire a new back of the room. A man wearing tattered movement within clothes and waving a bottle snaked Canada? Could we his way down the crowded main aisle, learn from their efforts grumbling and muttering to himself.

Finally he teetered onto the stage and a to take the Bible into well-targeted drama unfolded. While I every corner of their couldn’t understand the words, the plot community? was very clear: a drunken man abusing his kids, a wife pleading with him and then taking his wrath.

It was a somewhat familiar story to those of us from North America. But how would the Quechua audience respond? Women leaned forward in anticipation, taking in every word. They snickered at the jokes somewhat self-consciously, almost afraid to show they resonated with the portrayed scene. This play was hitting extremely close to home. Most of these women knew this scenario, and they were anxious to see how it could be resolved.

The wife found a pastor to speak to her husband, and he used the Scriptures in the man’s mother tongue to soften his heart. God entered a desperate situation and redeemed this husband and father. The crowd loved it.

A couple of days later I attended a school where a young Quechua woman taught a group of Grade 1 students (similar to the one pictured above) that God had created them unique and special, and no adult

Natasha Schmale

should ever be allowed to violate them. My throat went dry as I realized that young, beautiful children like these can experience abuse.

Celebrating a completed New Testament is only the first step. We desire to see mother-tongue Scriptures put to use in the church, in the home and in the public square. We long to see churches growing and marriages, families and communities transformed as God’s lifesaving words cut to the heart.

There is an irony to a group of pastors coming down from Canada to participate in this celebration. The Bible does not enter conversations in the public square or in kitchens and living rooms of our country, as it once did.

In some ways, Canada (which some may consider “postChristian”) and the growing Eastern Apurímac Quechua Church are going in opposite directions.

But maybe that’s why it’s so important that we learn from each other. In some ways, we are meeting at the crossroads. Could the Quechuas’ hunger for the Bible inspire a new movement within Canada? Could we learn from their efforts to take the Bible into every corner of their community?

God’s Word provides answers to the desperation and desolation common to both of our cultures. The Bible gives hope to the poverty of our spirits. As Peter said to Jesus in John 6:68 (NIV): “Lord, to whom shall we go?

You have the words of eternal life.”

Roy Eyre is the president of Wycliffe Bible Translators of Canada.

Deliver to: PM 40062756

Wycliffe Canada Featured Project

Invest in the Eastern Apurímac Quechua!

Y

ou can help advance Bible translation and Scripture use in Peru through the work of AIDIA, a local organization, serving the Eastern Apurímac Quechua people (featured in this issue of Word Alive—see pages 6-35).

Here are the details of this specific project which Wycliffe Canada is sponsoring with other partners.

Project Name: Eastern Apurímac Quechua (AIDIA) Location: South-central Peru, South America Language Group: Eastern Apurímac Quechua Project Overview: Wycliffe Canada partners with a local Peruvian organization, the “Interdenominational Association for the Holistic Development of Apurímac” (whose Spanish name is shortened using the acronym AIDIA), to translate the entire Bible into Eastern Apurímac Quechua. At the same time, AIDIA promotes its use in Quechua-speaking churches and communities by advancing literacy, developing church leadership, producing audio/video Scriptural materials, and encouraging children’s Sunday school and camps. These activities, carried out while the translation of the Bible is completed, ensure that churches and communities will be well-prepared to receive and use the Bible when it is ready.

Timeline: 2012-2022 Project Funding Needed Annually: $120,000 Donate to this important Bible translation-related project today!

• Use this magazine’s reply form (fill in the box indicated for this project).

• Give online at projects.wycliffe.ca.

• Call 1-800-463-1143 and indicate your gift is for “Eastern Apurímac Quechua (AIDIA).”

Noemí Rojas, a literacy program co-ordinator serving with AIDIA (see story, pg. 18), helps a little girl form letters in her Eastern Apurímac Quechua language.

RETURN UNDELIVERABLE ITEMS TO WYCLIFFE CANADA CIRCULATION 4316 10 ST NE CALGARY AB T2E 6K3