“If your God is so great, why doesn’t he speak my language?”

These words were spoken by a Cakchiquel Indian in Guatemala to Cameron Townsend at the end of the First World War. It changed his life.

Townsend abandoned his attempts to sell Bibles and began living among the Cakchiquels. He learned their complex language, created an alphabet for it, analyzed the grammar, and translated the New Testament in the remarkably short span of ten years.

And that was the beginnings of the beginnings of Wycliffe Bible Translators.

In 2012 people are still asking the same question!

Far and near
It is said that you, God, speak!
How do you do that?
Is it in their tongues?
If it is truly so,
God, when will you speak in my tongue?

East and west, north and south,
The Creator speaks, it is said!
Not in the language as of birds;
But in other human tongues I cannot understand!
God, when will you speak in my tongue?

These are the  first two verses of a poem written by James Lokuuda Kadanya, a speaker of the Toposa language of South Sudan. Toposa is still without Scripture. The full poem appeared in the Wycliffe Blog this morning.

As you have read above, the Cakchiquel people got their New Testament in the 1920s.

Bai Laurent, a Kouya friend from Ivory Coast who has appeared in my blog before here and here, prayed a similar prayer for over 40 years and had the New Testament in his language before he died last year. It is that New Testament celebration that we are going to attend on 21 March.

What can you do to help James and the Toposa people get God’s Word in their language? Try looking at this!

And if you are in N.Ireland, come along to Wycliffe and Me on Saturday 25 February 2012. Find out more on our website