It’s not about us!

Kouya New Testaments

Back in January this year, I wrote about having mixed feelings as we planned a trip to Ivory coast…

We know why we are going – to celebrate the New Testament (10 years after it arrived in the country) & the Megavoice players (solar powered MP3 players with Luke and Acts loaded).

But we have some fears, some anxieties, some uncertainties… It is almost 15 years since we left Ivory Coast in July 1997. We really want to go and visit our Kouya friends again. But will we fit in? Will they remember us? Will we recognise them?

Over the succeeding months God encouraged us through friends and colleagues – and we prayed that our presence at the dedication would be relevant and appropriate.

As the Air France plane flew high over North Africa, I sat scribbling in a cheap Tesco notebook…

It’ very important to note: THIS IS A KOUYA CELEBRATION.

• It’s certainly not about anything we have done!!
• It’s about what the Saunders and Arthurs have done – but not primarily.
• It is more about Kouyas – Bai Emile, Bai Laurent, Tra Didier, Kalou Ambroise and many others – but still not primarily.

It is about what God has done in reaching out to the Kouya people – as the tee shirt says “Dieu parle Kouya!”

As I wrote yesterday – it was a truly Kouya event!

And then I spotted Sue Arthur blogging on Kouya Chronicle under the title of A very Kouya celebration. Sue writes…

Although the New Testament was only now being officially dedicated, many Kouya Christians have been reading God’s word in their own language during the last 10 years, and I certainly saw quite a number of New Testaments which did indeed look well used.

Rather than being dominated by long speeches by dignitaries as these events sometimes are, the formalities were performed with a light touch, bringing organisation and spontaneity together in typical Kouya fashion.

Sue presenting a Kouya NT to Bai Laurent's widow

We were moved as Didier recounted how he had come to trust God during the time he and I were working on translating John’s gospel. There was sadness, too, as we remembered those translators who were no longer with us, but the overwhelming emotion of the day was one of rejoicing – we were ‘eating joy‘ as they say in Kouya, celebrating the way God’s word had come to the Kouya people!

Finally back to my Tesco notebook scribblings…

This week we will celebrate God’s Word in Kouya, translated with help brought from the west in answer to Bai Laurent’s prayer that God would send someone to help translate the Bible into Kouya. Praise the Lord!

Laurent would have been so proud – just as he was when he held the first computer print out of the whole New Testament!