Mark and Laura Woodward, supporting Bible translation in Tanzania
Our time at Swahili language school in Iringa is continuing well, and we are starting to look ahead to our next move west in a week or so! We had originally planned to stay in Iringa for four weeks, but have extended that by one more week so as to give Laura as much time to continue with classroom learning as possible.
After many years of hard work a couple of weeks ago the Sangu people of Tanzania’s Mbeya Region were able to celebrate the publication of the first ever books of the Bible in their language. Jonah, Ruth, Mark, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, and Philemon have all been translated and are now available to the Sangu people.
A couple of weeks ago we had the opportunity to visit friends Tim, Jeana and Micaiah in British Columbia, Canada, who we’ll be working with in Tanzania in the future. It was our first visit to Canada which was exciting (having previously only flown over it, and seen its mountains in the distance on honeymoon…!)
Our friends Andrew and Michelle are working alongside translators and literacy workers from nine language groups in Tanzania’s Mara Region, an area that I was involved in a linguistic survey of back in 2005 and 2006. Since I was there the languages have been analysed, alphabets developed, and the first parts of Scripture published in many of these communities.
A couple of weeks ago we had the opportunity to speak at one of our supporting churches, Calvary Chapel of Petaluma, California. If you’d like to know more about what God is doing through Bible translation around the world, and the small part that we play as we work with Wycliffe Bible translators, you can listen to our talk…