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Why I Joined the Bible Translation Movement

 And now for something completely different - a testimony! 

Why did I join the Bible translation movement? I often get asked this question, and it's a good one. Of course, it was a matter of calling. But how did that calling manifest itself? It's a long story...

Back in the 1980s we already knew that God had called us into mission work, but we didn't know what type of mission work he'd called us too. In my final year at university I visited Crosslinks in London, but they told me to go and get a secular job, and establish my profession, then I'd be able to use that in mission work.

We got married, settled down, and became school teachers. But we were still exploring opportunities for mission - in fact we lived in a highly multicultural city, attending a church in the inner-city area where there were a mix of Muslims, Hindus, Sikhs and Christians. This enabled us to continue friendship making amongst those of other faiths, whilst attending the church and building relationships with other believers.

At some point we attended a weekend at the Wycliffe Centre, as was. It was a weekend of role-plays and discussions. A lot of it was great fun. We were also asked some really good questions, such as, "What is more important, translating the Bible for a church that is asking for it, or for an unreached people group?" Well, there isn't a right answer to that question, but it got us thinking. We decided that Bible translation is one of the best ways of reaching an unreached people group, and signed up for a ten day training course in linguistics (phonetics and grammar) and Bible translation. This confirmed our ability to do translation, as our grades were high.

We then talked to our home church, who were keen to send out church planters. In the end someone from Wycliffe Bible Translators visited the elders of the church and explain to them that it is not normally possible to plant churches and translate the Bible. Often two different teams will be at work among a given people group or in a certain village, one working on church planting, the other on Bible translation.

So, off we went to All Nations for two years to study the Bible, Greek, missiology, and all kinds of other useful things (dentistry and car maintenance among them). We then studied linguistics and Bible translation at the Wycliffe Centre, and not long after that got on a plane to Central Asia (via Russia, where we learnt Russian and had some field orientation classes). Once we were abroad we became assigned to SIL.

Sadly I hear some people today saying that SIL is not primarily a Bible translation organisation. It is about languages and linguistics. That may be partly true, but we joined it to reach unreached people groups via the tool of Bible translation. That has, and always will be, our heart for mission, and our calling.

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