I’ve been trying to read a rather academic book because there is some very valuable information in it.
But I find my eyes glazing over after a couple of pages. If I get that far.
I imagine you’ve had that experience as well, so you probably understand what it was like when several Mwinikas gathered around Francois Hattingh and the book he was showing them.
This was the Word of God, the story of the beginning, in Hebrew.
As their eyes scanned the letters on the page and the spaces between the letters, the Mwinikas realized they could not even make out a sound. It was all strange to them. It meant nothing.
Then Francois held up a copy of the text in Arabic. The local religious leader smiled. He took the book in his hands and in a singsong voice recited it.
But the smile faded when Francois asked what it meant.
“I don’t know,” the religious leader said. He explained that he has memorized the sounds the characters make, so he can recite the words aloud. But he has no idea what they mean.
That’s when Salimo, a Mwinika man, began reading the same passage, translated into his own language.
Now everyone smiled. “We understand this!” they said.
This, Francois told them, is why he and his teammates have come to live among the Mwinikas. It’s why they’ve developed an alphabet so the Mwinika language can be written, why they’re teaching Mwinikas to read and write their own language, why they’re preparing Bible lessons and Scripture portions in Mwinika.
God has a message for them, he said. A message in their language, so they can understand it clearly.
You can bet there weren’t a lot of glazed eyes in literacy class after that.
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