Conference Celebrations for Completed Translations

In March, we had our conference for all our staff in Uganda. This is an event which happens every other year, and people travel in from their village translation centers to join us. This was an especially joyful year as we celebrated the completions of translations of four New Testaments. Although we still have quite a lot of work to do before the books head to the printers (namely final checks and typesetting), a huge amount of work is now complete!

The back of our conference shirts

I had lunch with one of the translators for the Aringa New Testament, Barnabas. He told a friend and me that working on Scripture is like a woman in labor - it is so difficult but then she rejoices as new life enters the world. After we finished eating, my friend looked up at the wall in the dining room and saw this batik, which seems to sum it up well.

One of my favorite parts of the conference was the worship. There's just something amazing about singing to the Lord with people from several countries and languages. It always gives me a taste of heaven, worshiping God with believers from many places in several languages.

In Joshua 4:2,3 God commanded Joshua to, “Choose twelve men from among the people, one from each tribe, and tell them to take up twelve stones from the middle of the Jordan, from right where the priests are standing, and carry them over with you and put them down at the place where you stay tonight.”

So we had four stones with the names of each language which has recently finished the translation of the New Testament.

At the end of the day, a translator from each of the languages then carried the stone on his shoulder while everyone cheered and praised the Lord for the work He is doing. These men and women have spent many years working for God to carry His words to their people.

Joshua told the people, "Each of you is to take up a stone on his shoulder, according to the number of the tribes of the Israelites, to serve as a sign among you. In the future, when your children ask you, ‘What do these stones mean?’ tell them that the flow of the Jordan was cut off before the ark of the covenant of the Lord. (Joshua 4:5-7) I'm not sure what will become of these stones, but I know people throughout Uganda, Tanzania, and all over the world will be telling their children about how the Word of God came to them in their languages by His power and to His glory!

It's an exciting time for us here in Uganda, and we're so thankful the Lord has blessed us with seeing this work coming to fruition. Around 1,900 languages are still waiting for a Bible translation project to start. Let's not forget to pray for them. As Jesus said, "The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field." (Luke 10:2)