'Full of Joy and Hope' -African Tribe Celebrates as Wycliffe Bible Translators Complete 1,000th New Testament Translation

Tré Goins-Phillips : Oct 9, 2018
Faithwire.com

"For 101 years, they've been using someone else's Bible," Hersman explained. "So for them to have it in their own language, the language they live and dream in, this is just such a joy to them..." -Russ Hersman, chief operating officer for Wycliffe

[Faithwire.com] There was a party going on, but the Keliko people of South Sudan were only interested in one thing: finally reading the Bible in their own language. (Photo: Raw Pixel/via Unsplash)

In late August, the Wycliffe Bible Translators completed their 1,000th translation of the New Testament, this time for a small refugee tribe based in South Sudan.

"When they get the [New Testament], they kind of ignore the celebration for a while because the first thing they do is they sit down somewhere, open it up, and start reading it for themselves," Russ Hersman, chief operating officer for Wycliffe, told Faithwire.

The translation, he recalled, left the native people "full of joy and hope." The Wycliffe executive said the "gift of the African Church" to the rest of the world is the Believers' zeal and passion for celebration.

For each translation Wycliffe completes, Hersman said, there's "a big party" to dedicate the newly translated Scripture. The celebration was particularly powerful for the Keliko people, he explained, because they have been using a foreign translation of the Bible since 1917... Subscribe for free to Breaking Christian News here.

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