Sudan (MNN) — A Christian cannot grow without access to God’s Word. Using Church-Centric Bible Translation principles, unfoldingWord is empowering a Sudanese church-planting network to alleviate Bible poverty.
“We’re seeing a lot of progress in Sudan,” Arne* says.
“We began the work in 2021 and trained a foundational group of 20 people from the Sudanese Arabic community in translation basics.”
unfoldingWord partners with church planting networks throughout Sudan, teaching local believers how to translate God’s Word into minority languages. Learn more here. Last year, along with finishing work in Sudanese Arabic, believers trained new translators from five other language groups.
“We have not helped them with this process. They (Sudanese believers) have been taking these five language groups through the same foundational translation training using the Bible story set we gave them,” Arne says.
“It went the best of any group we’ve worked with in transitioning the skill sets to the Gateway Language community.”
Next month, unfoldingWord will start topical studies with the Sudanese Arabic group. “We’re expanding their knowledge and translation [skills] through a program we’re calling ‘The Equipping Journey,’” Arne says.
“This program is designed to focus on things every believer needs to know to be a Christian. For example, we’ll teach them about the topic of faith through the lens of Job one and two, and then they will translate that Scripture [into Sudanese Arabic].”
(Photo courtesy of unfoldingWord)
When complete, the students will once again become teachers.
“As they finish up with the Bible stories, they will turn right around and teach [the five language groups] what they’re learning now through this Equipping Journey process,” Arne says.
Will you add this project to your prayer list? “We always want people praying because there’s spiritual warfare,” Arne says.
“Many of these areas are Islamic and very antagonistic towards discipleship activities.”
*Pseudonym
Header and story images courtesy of unfoldingWord.
