Word Alive Magazine - Summer 2011

Wycliffe Bible Translators of Canada • Summer 2011

A Newfoundland couple sparks a grassroots, Bible-based literacy movement among Guatemala’s Mam people.

English World Celebrates KJV Wycliffe Pioneer Killed Literacy: The Door Opener

Foreword Summer 2011 • Volume 29 • Number 1 Word Alive, which takes its name from Hebrews 4:12a, is the official publication of Wycliffe Bible Translators of Canada. Its mission is to inform, inspire and involve the Christian public as partners in the worldwide Bible translation movement.

Editor: Dwayne Janke

Directing Our Feet Dwayne Janke

Designer: Laird Salkeld Senior Staff Writer: Doug Lockhart Staff Writer: Janet Seever Staff Photographers: Alan Hood, Natasha Schmale Word Alive is published four times annually by Wycliffe Bible Translators of Canada, 4316 10 St NE, Calgary, AB T2E 6K3. Copyright 2011 by Wycliffe Bible Translators of Canada. Permission to reprint articles and other magazine contents may be obtained by written request to the editor. A donation of $12 annually is suggested to cover the cost of printing and mailing the magazine. (Donate online or use the reply form in this issue.)

Printed in Canada by McCallum Printing Group, Edmonton.

Member: The Canadian Church Press, Evangelical Press Association.

For additional copies: media_resources@wycliffe.ca To contact the editor: editor_wam@wycliffe.ca For address updates: circulation@wycliffe.ca Note to readers: References to “SIL” are occasionally made in Word Alive. SIL is a key partner organization, dedicated to training, language development and research, translation and literacy.

Wycliffe Canada Vision Statement: A world where translated Scriptures lead to transformed lives among people of all languages.

Translating Scripture, Transforming Lives Together with partners worldwide, we serve indigenous people through language-related ministries, especially Bible translation and literacy. Our goal is to empower local communities to express God’s love in both Word and deed—for personal, social and spiritual transformation. Wycliffe personnel currently serve globally in more than 1,500 language projects for about 2.6 billion people. However, about 2,100 minority language groups still wait for the power of God working through their own languages. Wycliffe invites you to participate in this effort through prayer, service and funding.

Canadian Head Office: 4316 10 St NE, Calgary, AB T2E 6K3. Phone: (403) 250-5411 or toll free 1-800-463-1143, 8:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m. mountain time. Fax: (403) 250-2623. Email: info@wycliffe.ca. French speakers: Call toll free 1-877-747-2622 or email francophone@wycliffe.ca.

Cover: A Mam believer worships in a church service at Tuichilupe, a village in the northwestern highlands of Guatemala. The light of literacy is being cast on the Mam people by LAMP, an organization initiated by Wycliffe’s Andy and Karen Vaters. Photo by Natasha Schmale

In Others’ Words “ Translation it is that openeth the window, to let in the light, that breaketh the shell, that we may eat the kernel.”

—From the of translators of the King James Bible (400 years old this year) to readers (see article, pg. 4)

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his issue of Word Alive features the photography of Natasha Schmale, our newest addition to the magazine team. A photojournalism graduate of the Southern Alberta Institute of Technology (SAIT), Natasha worked part time for the Red Deer Advocate before volunteering with us in the Wycliffe Canada communications department.

After a life-changing photo shoot on a Wycliffe Discovery work trip in South Asia (Word Alive, Spring 2010), God prompted her to join Wycliffe.

“I saw not only the need for my photography skills, but I realized the importance of God’s Word in people’s heart language,” says Natasha. “What better area could I pour my skills into than to use them to get others interested, involved and excited about providing people with God’s Word?”

Natasha is currently finding financial and prayer partners so she can serve with us full time. But, in the meantime, we did ask her to take a trip this past fall with me to gather stories for Word Alive.

Unfortunately, a few weeks before our planned trip to South and Central America, I had back and sciatica trouble, and was sidelined. The trooper she is, Natasha agreed to proceed with part of the trip A change of plans (to Guatemala). I equipped her with several pages of interview questions and can be unsettling, my digital recorder.

So, while I was working half time, even for those of us taking physiotherapy and resting, who know the Lord.

Natasha was acting as my voice in interviews, in addition to taking photos. She did a marvellous job, and as you can see, God blessed her efforts in this magazine coverage.

Our adjustment in staffing this trip reminded me again of the truth in Prov. 16:9: “We can make our plans, but the Lord determines our steps” (NLT).

That same principle was evidenced in the lives of Wycliffe Canada’s Andy and Karen Vaters, who are featured in this issue. The Newfoundland couple didn’t go to Guatemala to establish a literacy program among the Central Mam, a Mayan people in the northern highlands. As you will read, unforeseen circumstances led to a change in their plans.

Though it wasn’t at all easy for them, God is blessing the Vaters’ flexibility in service to Him. Today, as a result, more than 900 Central Mam can read and write, and their New Testament is coming alive to many as a result.

A change of plans can be unsettling, even for those of us who know the Lord. I know it can be for me! But thank God we have the comforting knowledge that He still has an influence directing our feet—to fulfil His much better plans.

6 Contents

Features Articles by Dwayne Janke • Photographs by Natasha Schmale

6

20

LAMP Lighters

A Newfoundland couple makes a big shift to help spark a grassroots, Bible-based literacy movement among Guatemala’s Mam people.

20 Torch Bearer

A young Mam man leads the LAMP literacy program, convinced of its crucial role in the lives of his people.

30 Light Sharer

Learning to read his mother tongue equips a Mam pastor to share accurate truths from God’s Word—after initial rejection by his own congregation.

Departments 2

Foreword Directing Our Feet

4

Watchword English-speaking World Celebrates KJV

By Dwayne Janke

34 Beyond Words Pop Religion 35 Last Word Literacy: The Door Opener

By Don Hekman

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Word Alive • Summer 2011 • wycliffe.ca 3

Watchword

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University of Toronto

ake my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls.” Since 1611, English-speakers have been writing these words and more on their hearts, thanks to the translation of the King James Version (KJV) Bible.

“The impact of the KJV on the English-speaking world is enormous,” says Wycliffe Canada President Don Hekman. “What strikes me most, as I peruse what is written about the historic context and impact of the KJV, is the parallel to what we see happening in the minority-language societies today.

“We pray for the same impact of Bible translations that are coming to remote villages, cities and societies today.”

In commemoration of the version’s 400th anniversary, the King James Bible Trust has been established to celebrate the KJV and its eternal impact on everyday language, world literature and the hearts of millions.

Events will be taking place around the globe throughout 2011. To join the celebrations, visit <www.kingjamesbibletrust.org>. Special KJV 400th anniversary editions are available at <www.biblesociety.ca>.

New Testament cover page in the 1611 King James Bible.

Wycliffe Russia and Finland Gaining Personnel

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ll that stands between 11 young men and women and their membership in Wycliffe Russia is various stages of the application process and, for some, additional English lessons for training and placement purposes. Wycliffe staff is jubilant to see so many from the next generation onboard with Bible translation.

Meanwhile in Finland, Wycliffe staff have set a goal for 2011 of seeing at least 10 new people follow God’s call into Bible translation or a related field of service.

Construction Begins for Ethiopian Training Centre

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groundbreaking ceremony held in mid-October launched the construction of SIL Ethiopia’s new training facility, due for completion in 2012.

The centre, which is the first property SIL Ethiopia has owned since its inception in 1973, will house offices and guest accommodations. It will also be home base for the Ethiopia comprehensive project. The project will soon see SIL working alongside five partner organizations to meet the needs of 30 Africa local language communities.

Eighty-five languages are spoken in Ethiopia Ethiopia.

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Word Alive • Summer 2011 • wycliffe.ca

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od’s Word brought Scripture Use together 128 reprePromoted sentatives from 59 different ethnicities at a Scripture use at Brazil forum in Brazil last September.

Forum Along with other participants,

nearly 100 national and expatriate missionaries also attended the forum, which consisted of workshops, presentations, evening services and morning devotions led by indigenous leaders.

Sponsored by three partner organizations, the event’s focal point was the Scriptures and their application in the participants’ lives. Students at a nearby university attended an event called uniEVANGELICA at the same time as the forum.

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he Wycliffe Global Alliance South organization in Korea’s Southpartner Korea has grown into the GBT largest national Bible translation Holds organization in Asia.

Global Bible Translators (GBT) First was formed in 1984, but already has Place 193 personnel working around the world. Another 23 staff are in training or on short-term assignments. GBT’s personnel are serving in 44 current language projects.

Bible Lessons Elevate Children’s Understanding

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hree years of developing children’s Bible study lessons for the Paama and Southeast Ambrym people of Vanuatu in their mother tongue is paying off. Teachers, children and their parents are excited about the growth they have seen since using the materials.

“With the Sunday school program that our children are doing, they already know a lot more about the Bible than most of their parents,” one father said.

Bible translation is gaining momentum in the South Pacific island, where work is still needed in 70 languages. For example, training has begun to create a pool of fully trained Bible translation consultants from Vanuatu. These homegrown consultants will assist local translators by checking their work to produce clear, natural and accurate translations.

Wycliffe UK

English-speaking World Celebrates KJV

Wycliffe Pioneer Killed in Car Accident

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he international Wycliffe community is mourning the loss and celebrating the life of Dr. John Bendor-Samuel, director-emeritus of Wycliffe U.K., who died from injuries sustained after a car accident on Jan. 6 near his home.

Bendor-Samuel (left) not only helped establish Wycliffe Bible Translators in the U.K. alongside his brother David, but he also served overseas in Peru

and Brazil with wife Pam after they were some of the first students to attend the SIL training school in Britain.

He went on to serve as director there while also pioneering Bible translation throughout West Africa, a pursuit that has paved the way for SIL operations to be successful in the area. He is survived by Pam, their five children and 15 grandchildren.

Solid Progress in Nigeria

Translator Training Boosted in South Asia

ey efforts over the past eight years are moving Bible translation forward in Nigeria, one of the countries with the greatest need for mother tongue Scriptures.

Language survey research among the nation’s languages, to clarify Bible translation needs, is pushing forward with more Nigerians being trained to do this preliminary work.

Formal Bible translation training is now available in country for Nigerians eager to do the work.

Thirty-plus languages have begun to receive their first-ever Scriptures through inter-agency partnership.

And church denominations in the country are being challenged to get increasingly involved.

More than 500 languages are spoken in Nigeria. Bible translation has yet to start in about half of them.

orty Christian educators from across India gathered at Serampore College, West Bengal, in October 2010 to learn more about the Diploma in Bible Translation (Dip BT).

“I had only a vague idea about Bible translations,” said one attendee. “After this course I will appeal to students to join Dip BT and full time Bible translation ministry.”

Increased awareness amongst the Christian community in India about the need for Bible translation is a welcome thing, especially since South Asia has one of the greatest needs in the world for mother tongue Scriptures.

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Solomon Islands Agency Grows

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he near-completion of a new training facility and the distribution of Bughotu New Testament recordings are indicators that the Solomon Islands Bible Translation and Literacy Partnership (SIBTLP) is growing.

Construction of the training centre and an adjacent dormitory will increase capacity for future translation, literacy and Scripture use workshops.

The Bughotu New Testament recordings are part of a pilot project first started on Nov. 11, 2010, and will be distributed on Megavoice units (like the one at right) to the approximately 20 villages that speak Bughotu.

SIL Sponsors International Language Conference

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IL International, Wycliffe’s key partner agency, was among nine organizations that sponsored the International Conference on Language, Education, and the Millennium Development Goals, in Bangkok, Thailand, this past November.

SIL representatives met with 400 others, including Abhisit Vejjajiva, Prime Minister of Thailand, to discuss education and development opportunities for minority language communities.

Abhisit expressed his appreciation to SIL for its support of mother tongue-based multilingual education efforts.

“This project would not have been nearly as successful without . . . the technical assistance from SIL International,” he said. “We firmly believe that the inclusion of local languages in schools helps students improve their academic performance and strengthen their aptitude in the Thai language, while preserving the individual languages and cultures that make us unique.”

Alan Hood

K

Word Count

56% 80% 31%

Overall adult literacy rate in the world in 1950.

Adult literacy rate currently.

Adult literacy rate among the 1.25 billion speakers of lesser known languages.

Sources: UNESCO, SIL International

Word Alive • Summer 2011 • wycliffe.ca 5

A Newfoundland couple makes a big shift to help spark a grassroots, Bible-based literacy movement among Guatemala’s Mam people.

Stories By Dwayne Janke Photographs By Natasha Schmale

Andy and Karen Vaters worship during a visit to a Mam church in Tuichilupe, a village in Guatemala’s northwestern highlands. While the congregation’s pastor, who is not Mam, only uses Spanish in his sermons, people are eager to sing in their heart language, as they do here. A surging grassroots, Bible-based literacy movement is increasing use of the Central Mam language in the spiritual lives of pastors and believers.

Maria Gabriel López, LAMP’s secretary and accountant, leads several students, at her church in Tuizacaja, through the 10 vowel sounds of Central Mam. Thirtysix letters are needed in the Mam alphabet to represent the language’s sounds.

Napakur Elementary School, one of four schools on Simberi Island offering mother tongue education, grew out of early literacy work done by the Mandara translation team. By the time they begin Grade 3, these students will transition to learning in English.

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Word Alive • Summer 2011 • wycliffe.ca

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ndy and Karen Vaters had a problem on their hands—a big, basic, bewildering kind of problem.

In 1997, the Wycliffe Canada couple had uprooted from Newfoundland and travelled to the town of Comitancillo (Ko mee ton CEE yo), in the northwestern highlands of Guatemala, Central America. They were invited there to help with construction and start-up of a Bible institute that would teach pastors and church leaders among the 70,000-plus Central Mam [Mawm] people.

Wycliffe colleague Wes Collins and a team of Mam translators had completed the Mam New Testament, and Wes was looking to serve in linguistics elsewhere. It was naturally time to begin equipping the Mam to use God’s Word in ministry, so he helped recruit the Vaters to assist with the institute, in partnership with another mission organization.

After 12 years attending and serving in a Gander, Nfld., church following their later-in-life conversions, the Vaters were restless.

Seeking a way to do something even more spiritually meaningful in the world, they came to Guatemala. They were excited and keen to spend a few years helping to establish training for the Mam so the Mayan group could effectively wield the life-changing, two-edged sword—Scriptures in their mother tongue.

But as construction of the Bible institute was drawing to a successful close, a fundamental obstacle became disturbingly evident: only a handful of Mam church leaders were able to read or write well enough to attend the training.

“After Wes left, we worked on the [construction] completion of the institute and continued to spread the word about the training program, hoping to fill a classroom,” recalls Karen. “We managed to enrol [only] nine students.”

Naturally discouraged, the couple from “The Rock” could have hit rock bottom right then, but they didn’t. Instead, the nononsense Maritimers trusted God and asked, What now?

Surging Light

More than 10 years later, the answer to that question—promote and teach literacy, and do it the way Jesus would—has blossomed into a surging grassroots, Bible-based movement among the Mam. LAMP, a Mam organization the Vaters sparked, is teaching hundreds upon hundreds of adults to read and write. As it does so, LAMP is shedding new light on the New Testament, bringing Scriptures to life for people who didn’t know a, b and g from q, l and z. Or, for that matter, any of the other 30 letters in the Mam alphabet.

The Vaters, who more recently are reducing their involvement in the program, are delighted with the advances of LAMP in the past few years.

“I think it’s on a roll right now,” says Karen, whose slight accent, like Andy’s, reveals Newfoundland roots.

In the beginning, the Vaters had to decide whether to even take up the request by Wycliffe leaders in Central America to tackle the low literacy rate among the Mam, estimated then to be five per cent in Mam (and 15 per cent in Spanish). The couple

was not trained to do literacy. Before joining Wycliffe, Andy had been a transport safety supervisor in the Canadian military. Karen had worked in vocational training, and later as a passenger service agent with Air Canada. Still, the Vaters had spent several years learning Spanish and Mam, and getting to know the local culture.

So, “we had a question for God,” says Karen. “‘If You brought us down here and this institute is not going anywhere, why did You bring us? Should we just go home and forget these people?’

“So right away, when our organization asked if we could try literacy, we said, ‘Of course. We can’t abandon these people now.’ ” Adds Andy, “The only reason we’re here now is because there were no students for that course. If there had been students, we could have been out of here by the next year.”

The Vaters were convinced that getting the Central Mam New Testament read and used is key to building up local evangelical churches, which often tend towards biblical shallowness, legalism and division.

With gifts in Bible study (Andy) and teaching (Karen), the Vaters decided to become literacy and Scripture use facilitators. Oh, wow, I could get into that, Karen remembers thinking at the time.

Disappointment & Revelation

Equipped with the right skills through training at an SIL school, Andy and Karen returned to Guatemala and set up a conventional literacy program for the Mam. Among other things, they hired Mam people to run literacy classes.

But the effort never gained any real momentum. The Vaters discovered that paying people to teach others to read attracted only those who wanted to earn money; most of them didn’t have a passion for the job. Of 450 students who registered for literacy classes, the teachers managed to bring a disappointing 100 students through to the final exam. Says Andy: “And most of them were young teens in school who probably knew how to read before they took the course.”

“We kind of ended up spending a whole year learning that this was not the way you can do literacy here—it’s not sustainable,” recalls Karen. “I said, ‘Should we go home? At our age, we don’t have time to waste. We want results. We want people to learn God’s Word.’ ” Then one morning, Karen walked into their office at the other end of their patio, where Andy goes earlier each day to spend some time with God in Bible study and prayer.

“He looked up at me and said, ‘Karen, why don’t we do it just like Jesus did it? Jesus taught His disciples to teach others. Let’s not pay people. Let’s teach church leaders to read and write and to teach others, and pray that God’s Spirit will give them a desire to do literacy as a ministry of their church.’ ” This was a turning point in the literacy thrust among the Central Mam. The Vaters have further refined the strategy: recruit any keen Mam person—rather than just church leaders—who wants to be trained to be a teacher.

“And now, it’s exploded,” explains Karen, “because now, biblically, I think we have it right.”

Word Alive • Summer 2011 • wycliffe.ca 9

“Our concept is to get them to the point of actually understanding what they are reading. If they don’t understand, they won’t continue to read.”

Mam-run Entity

The literacy effort is powered by a Mam-run organization christened Lámpara es A Mis pies tu Palabra (LAMP), or in English “Thy word is a lamp to my feet” (from Ps. 119:105). The legal Guatemalan entity was formed in 2004, in order to build sustainability for the program and pass ownership to the local people.

LAMP’s program has grown into a four-phase, church-based discipleship program to meet the Scripture use needs in the Mam churches. Three staff, led by a dedicated and godly dynamo named Byron Feliciano Témaj (see related story, pg.

20), promote and teach the 16-week, Bible-based program.

First, LAMP staff engages in considerable promotion and interaction with churches in a particular area. Then a literacy centre is set up in a church, school or another public site, to train the Mam in literacy so they can then teach their own local people.

The literacy classes are highly interactive and the Bible content aims to get the Mam people thinking, not just regurgitating information. Sessions are laced with fun activities, like word puzzles and games. The hard-working Mam, most of whom are subsistence farmers who grow corn and raise a little livestock, appreciate that.

“We figured that these people have worked on their land all their lives. Life has not been fun,” explains Karen. “So we have to make our program fun so they will really want to be there.”

A Statistic Called Nicholas

Since March 2003, nearly 900 people have learned to read and to write in Mam through LAMP’s program. On the upswing in recent years, this number includes students, literacy ministry leaders, pastors and Bible study participants.

While the Vaters are quick to share statistics about the LAMP literacy effort, they are just as quick to deflect attention away

10 Word Alive • Summer 2011 • wycliffe.ca

(Left) Byron Feliciano Témaj, coordinator of LAMP, and the Vaters work together to solve a computer problem, as Byron works on an advanced literacy workbook for the 70,000-plus Central Mam. More than 900 people have learned to read and write in Mam through LAMP’s program.

from numbers towards the real goal—transformed lives.

“We don’t really care how many people we’re making literate,” says Karen frankly. “We care more about how many people are studying the Word. We care more about how many people are actually understanding the Scriptures.”

Adds Andy, “Our concept is to get them to the point of actually understanding what they are reading. If they don’t understand, they won’t continue to desire to read.”

On that basis, you can’t get a better “statistic” than Nicholás Augustín Coronado—he’s now literate, he’s actually studying and understanding God’s Word in Mam and he’s growing spiritually.

Nicholás is also 70 years old—long past the age of 55-plus when, say the Vaters, most literacy experts will tell you it’s too difficult to learn to read.

In his adobe brick home in the village of Tuichilupe, Nicholás explains that he learned how to read and write some Spanish when he was in school as a youngster.

“We always spoke Mam in our house, but to read Mam, we didn’t know how to do it,” Nicholás says through interpretation.

“We didn’t even know how to recognize the letters.”

Making a livelihood as a farmer and weaver, Nicholás thought it impossible to learn to read his mother tongue when LAMP staff first came to teach him and other classmates.

Nicholás Augustín Coronado, a 70-year-old church leader who learned to read his Mam language just a few years ago, helps his wife Rosa with the Mam alphabet in their home’s outdoor kitchen in Tuichilupe. Nicholás says reading the New Testament renews his mind, just as God admonishes.

Word Alive • Summer 2011 • wycliffe.ca 11

“First, we learned the alphabet. There’s 36 letters in Mam. The alphabet in Mam is different than the 28 in Spanish,” explains Nicholás, his voice rising with excitement. “After four months, I still didn’t really know how to do it. Then all of a sudden . . . I could read it!”

“And there’s a lot of people now that . . . can read in Mam.”

Empowerment and Renewal

As a church leader, Nicholas’ desire to share God’s Word has been given a great boost from mother tongue literacy.

“When I read it, I understand it. It’s clear,” emphasizes Nicholás, who is proud to display his diplomas for finishing several levels of LAMP classes. “Now when I’m preaching from the Bible in Mam, I teach what that Scripture verse means in Mam to the people.

“It’s very important for the people,” he continues. “When a person preaches in Spanish, the people who understand are really only the people who understood how to speak first in Spanish.

But the people who don’t, they’re just sitting there, not knowing

what is being said.”

More On The Web: To see the difference From reading Scriptures in between John 3:16 in Mam versus Spanish, visit <www.wycliffe.ca/wordalive/mam>. Mam, Nicholás has made new

discoveries, passing them down to his wife Rosa, who has started taking literacy classes. “. . . God has told us that we have to keep renewing our minds. In order to renew our lives and change our lives, our minds have to be renewed,” he says. “I didn’t know that before.

Now I can read the Bible and renew my mind. By renewing my mind, my life is going to be changed.”

He Didn’t Understand

Nicholás then throws out a specific example of an insight he’s gained since learning how to read Mam Scriptures. It illustrates why Bible translation and mother tongue literacy are so crucial in helping people—church leaders and laymen—to understand even basic biblical concepts.

“One of the things that really caught me was when I read, Jesus is the way, the truth and the life,” notes Nicholás. “Nobody

“I could see a light go on in his head.

God’s Word is for them.”

(Below) The Vaters, along with LAMP staff and others, sing a Mam hymn as they begin a weekly Bible study at the organization’s office in Comitancillo. Some Mam must trek for two hours to get to the study, but it is worth it. Now able to read and take study notes (above), these Christian leaders have discovered that the unfolding of God’s Word gives life-changing understanding to the “simple”—including the largely uneducated Mam people.

can come to God without Jesus.”

Reading the Mam translation clearly showed Nicholás that Jesus is the road to God, something that just didn’t make sense to him in Spanish. “I didn’t understand that before. He’s the road to a life eternal.”

Walking that road during the sunset of his earthly life, Nicholás is making every minute count to feed his hunger for God’s truth.

“God has given me this life and he’s given me my good health.

I have a purpose,” says the grandfather of “about 20.”

For Simple People?

Bible study is also an official part of the LAMP strategy. When a church is involved in literacy classes, encouraged to send leaders to weekly gatherings held in the LAMP office in Comitancillo, a town of 3,000. Some regulars among the nearly 20 at the study, like Pastor José Alberto (see story, pg. 30) and his wife, walk for two hours each way just to attend. (In fact, José was presented with a study Bible this past year to mark five years of near perfect attendance.)

It was during one of these studies—usually led by Andy when the Vaters are in Guatemala, between periods back home in Newfoundland—that a key insight helped change the Mam view towards their Scriptures.

“These people don’t look at the Bible as something that God meant for them, because they see themselves as uneducated people,’” says Karen.

At a Bible study several years ago, Misael Crisostomo, who helped develop LAMP course materials initially, was asked to read Psalm 119:130, in Spanish (the Old Testament is not yet translated into Mam). The verse says that the unfolding of God’s Word gives understanding to the simple.

Guatemala At a Glance Name: Republic of Guatemala Area: 109,000 sq. km (about the size of the island of Newfoundland); a land of mountains, volcanoes and lakes, and a major exporter of coffee and bananas Location: Central America; Mexico’s southern neighbour Population: Approx. 14 million

“The Spanish tried to destroy their language and to some degree, they succeeded. They didn’t destroy their language, but they pushed it into the homes.”

U.S.A. Mexico

Guatemala

Capital: Guatemala City (metro area pop. 2.5 million)

South America

People: Mestizo (mixed Amerindian-Spanish - in local Spanish called Ladino) and European 59.4%; K’iche 9.1%, Kaqchikel 8.4%, Mam 7.9%, Q’eqchi 6.3%, other Mayan 8.6%, indigenous non-Mayan 0.2%, other 0.1% (2001 census) Religion: Roman Catholic, Maya-Catholic (animistic), 24% Evangelical Official languages: Spanish; 25 Amerindian languages, principally K’iche, Kaqchikel, Q’eqchi, and Mam

Belize Mexico

Scriptures produced for languages and dialects: 4 have Bibles, 27 have New Testaments, 12 have Scripture portions.

Literacy: 48%-55%; Indian 0%-25%, Mestizo 75%-85% Sources: Operation World, 7th Edtion; World Factbook; Wycliffe Global Alliance; U.S. Department of State website

Comitancillo Mam Region

Honduras Guatemala City El Salvador

(Above) While English speakers can boast multi-storey libraries full of literature in their language, Mam reading materials are limited to just one small shelf. That collection, including the New Testament, is gradually growing as LAMP encourages reading and writing among the Mam in their heart language. Much of the Mam recorded history, as well as any literature, was destroyed by the Spaniards centuries ago in their conquest of Guatemala.

(Below) Karen Vaters husks corn—used in making tortillas: a Mam staple—with the father-in-law of Pastor José Alberto (see related story, pg. 30). Over the years, the Vaters have developed many close relationships while serving with those in and around Comitancillo, the largest town situated among the Central Mam people.

Word Alive • Summer 2011 • wycliffe.ca 15

Their church’s pews transformed into desks for LAMP literacy classes, two young Mam students work through workbooks in the village of Tuizacaja.

Classes were originally directed at adults. Now children often attend, reinforcing Mam literacy taught in schools. Some youngsters also help older adults during LAMP classes.

16 Word Alive • Summer 2011 • wycliffe.ca

“The word used for ‘simple’ in his Spanish Bible is ‘sencillo’, which is the word the Mam use in this culture to refer to themselves: simple people,” explains Karen. “They say, ‘Well, we can’t do that—we’re just simple people.’ It really means ‘we’re uneducated.’

“When Misael read . . . ‘sensillo,’ ” recalls Karen, “I could see a light go on in his head. God’s Word is for them!”

This is a revolutionary perspective for a timid people who had been told ever since the Spanish invaded Guatemala in the early 1500s that their language and culture were inferior.

“The Spanish told them that their language was useless,” says Andy. “The Spanish tried to destroy their language and to some degree, they succeeded. They didn’t totally destroy their language, but they pushed it into the homes.”

Fortunately, things have changed in recent decades. Young Mam school children are now taught to read and write their

“And whush, everything was at peace; the oppression was gone. It was like there was a battle and it was won. God won the battle.”

mother tongue. Even the Guatemalan version of Kentucky Fried Chicken, Pollo Campero, in a nearby city, displays menus and signs in Central Mam. “That’s the change in the country—from total rejection to total acceptance [of the indigenous languages],” says Andy.

Not a Word of Spanish

But there’s still much more literacy work to do among this Central Mam population. These people are concentrated in an area with a 30-km radius around Comitancillo, which is located about 50 km (as the crow flies) from the Mexican border. As you radiate out from this main town into the mountainous backcountry, the need only increases for Mam literacy and Scriptures.

“Once you get a half-an-hour walk from Comitancillo, the

knowledge of Spanish goes psssh,” says Andy, dropping his hand.

“There’s lots and lots of women and children who don’t speak a single word of Spanish.”

Adds Karen: “Who goes out five-hours walk away and helps those people? LAMP does. And, of course when that happens, they say, ‘Oh, my goodness, More On The Web: Wycliffe Canada sponsors a somebody’s come to help funding project for the LAMP activities. To give us. Nobody ever comes out toward this project, visit < www.wycliffe.ca/ here!’ That’s another reason donate>. Or use this magazine’s reply form. In why LAMP is doing well.” either case, specify “LAMP.” Some of that distance is being overcome thanks to the use of motorcycles by Byron and others, and by radio broadcasts in Mam (see story, pg. 20).

The Vaters estimate that the literacy rate among the Mam could currently be near 20 per cent, but they think it is possible Word Alive • Summer 2011 • wycliffe.ca 17

18 Word Alive • Summer 2011 • wycliffe.ca

to raise that level much, much higher—maybe even to 80 per cent. To accomplish that, LAMP will need more funding, more personnel and perhaps a small Jeep or two to help staff navigate muddy roads during rainy periods.

“I guess that will come,” says Karen. “If it’s God’s will that we grow, then that will come.”

Strange Wind

While Andy, 68, and Karen, 62, are eager to see things move ahead quickly, they have also learned perseverance, for from the beginning there have been significant struggles. Since the early days, some Mam church leaders have opposed the literacy thrust of LAMP, fearing it will undermine their authority. And the Vaters tell tales of spiritual warfare, like an incident just before the New Testament was dedicated in 1999. A small group of angry Mam believers told the Vaters, and a Guatemalan missionary who was going to teach at the Bible institute, that they should leave the area.

Fortunately, after being won over by several references to Scripture, the crowd dispersed and everyone went peacefully outside.

Then a highly unusual whirlwind arose near the town’s central square, and rolled down the street, moaning and rumbling something like disapproval at the meeting’s positive outcome. It finally disappeared over the cemetery at the other end of town.

“And whush, everything was at peace; the oppression was gone,” recalls Karen. “It was like there was a battle and it was won. God won the battle.”

Obstacles and setbacks facing LAMP have prompted the Vaters more than once to think of packing up and returning to Canada permanently. Staff members have also been discouraged and some even ridiculed. But for every setback there have been some breakthroughs too.

One church leader, Moses, who joined and then left LAMP’s weekly Bible study when it challenged his legalistic beliefs a few years ago, typifies an emerging new attitude.

This past fall, he had an entirely different tone in a public affirmation of LAMP at literacy classes being held in his church.

“LAMP is the meat of the church,” he said.

Encouragement is growing as increasing numbers of Mam Christians realize the spiritual importance of what LAMP is doing for their people.

“Yes, it’s been difficult,” admits Karen, “but you know what?

Right now, good stuff ’s happening.

“The fruit comes in really trusting in the Lord . . . and saying, ‘Whether I live or die, He is the Lord.’ Where else is there to go?”

Andy and Karen walk the hilly streets of Comitancillo, with the small town’s multi-coloured graveyard stones (see related photo, pg. 34) interrupting the view of green slopes on the mountainous horizon. This scene is a huge contrast from the Vaters’ home in Newfoundland. It is here, however, that they found challenge and fulfilment as second-career servants of God, helping to bring life-transforming literacy to the Central Mam people.

Word Alive • Summer 2011 • wycliffe.ca 19

Torch Bearer A young Mam man leads the LAMP literacy program, convinced of its crucial role in the lives of his people.

Byron Feliciano Témaj, co-coordinator of LAMP, enthusiastically goes over consonant and vowel sounds of the Central Mam language in a class of level-one literacy. The dedicated and godly dynamo leads a staff of three, aiming to reach the mountainous Mam people by teaching literacy and training others to teach.

f Wycliffe’s Andy and Karen Vaters are

the lighters of LAMP, sparking its literacy program among Guatemala’s Mam people (see pg. 6), then Byron Feliciano Témaj can best be described as the organization’s torchbearer.

The 25-year-old newlywed is co-ordinator of LAMP’s efforts to bring literacy to as many of the 70,000-plus Central Mam as possible. He is part of a three-person, full-time staff that tirelessly promotes and teaches classes that make the life-changing Word of God come alive for the Mam. “It’s important for my people to have it because that’s what changed me,” says Byron through an interpreter. “In my experience, every day I read the Bible and every day I find something new, something good.

“I want my people to enjoy what I enjoy.”

Enjoying a committed Christian life took a while for Byron.

He was born and raised in a Mayan family from the Mam people group in Chicajalaj [Chee ka ha LA]. The village is a small mountaintop community, about 25 minutes’ walk from Comitancillo, the municipal centre.

“I’m from a Christian family, especially my mother. She lives out her faith, and from the time I was a child, she took me to church. I went to church for many years but I didn’t have a personal relationship with Christ.”

Byron walked to school and his farming father partially paid for the education. After classes and during school vacation, Byron did odd jobs like loading cargo on buses to earn the rest of the money he needed. He studied his way through high school and then college, with a desire to be a teacher.

“When I graduated in 2004, my mother said it’s time for me to get baptized and that I needed to start having a relationship with Christ,” says Byron. “Then I felt a real need to know God better.”

Byron began looking for work but he placed a condition on God: if He didn’t give him work, then he couldn’t serve God.

Word Alive • Summer 2011 • wycliffe.ca 21

“He didn’t answer me,” laughs Byron, now as he looks back on it. “So I had to change my condition. I told Him, I was simply going to work for Him.”

Everything Changed

Byron got a volunteer position at a Christian radio station in Comitancillo, called Estereo Vida (Life Stereo). A week later, he took another job working for a teacher in a town three hours away by bus, but that quickly became a problem.

“We had a conflict because I came into contact with a lot of teachers who didn’t want anything to do with Christ. They wanted me to drink with them, but I knew I had to serve God.” Byron left the teaching job and returned home, crying out to the Lord for direction. A friend told him about the LAMP office, with the Scripture verse Ps. 119:105 written on its gate. He decided to make a cold call to ask about work.

“Fifteen days later, I arrived at the LAMP door,” says Byron, his voice softening and lowering. “At that moment, everything started to change.”

“I now know exactly that God was answering me.”

Both Byron and the Vaters looked with great pleasure at each other on that day in 2005. They recognized that God was bringing them together for the good of His work through LAMP. “When I arrived at LAMP I didn’t know Andy or Karen Vaters, but I knew at that moment that they were going to be somebody special in my life.”

Recalls Andy: “Byron was different—he was totally in love with the Lord and it showed in his nature. We suspected from the moment we met him that God had a special purpose for his life and had brought him to our door.”

Initially, Byron didn’t fully grasp what LAMP and its work was really all about. But as he worked, he absorbed its ethos.

“In this process, I found what LAMP really meant,” he says. “I thought it was just about teaching. It was more than teaching. It was bringing people to know the Word of God.” Seeing the potential in Byron after about three months, the Vaters asked him to go to Lima, Peru, to attend a linguistics course for indigenous leaders at Ricardo Palma University.

Interestingly, Wes Collins, the Wycliffe member who had led the Mam New Testament translation project between 1979 and 1999, was teaching at the course.

“It was difficult for me,” Byron recalls. “I had to leave my community for the first time and that was painful. For three months I suffered from the different climate and the lack of tortillas. Several times I cried. I asked myself, I wonder why God brought me here?”

Byron sings a song from a Mam song book over Estereo Vida (Life Stereo), a Christian radio station that he convinced to include Mam language programming. He uses his radio show to read the Scriptures in Mam, and sing worship songs. Many Mam-speaking listeners tune in, thrilled to be hearing something more meaningful to them than the usual Spanish.

“Mucho!”

Byron got his answer: the training he received for language work and his spiritual growth while in Peru built up his faith and skills to serve God back in LAMP. He remembers being touched by one particular song in church. It referenced the prophet Isaiah’s commissioning, when God asks who will go to His people, to which Isaiah replies: Send me!

“That’s when I made a promise I was going to always work for Him,” says Byron. “That is a promise that I’m never going to go back on.”

22 Word Alive • Summer 2011 • wycliffe.ca

Byron’s mother serves him some corn tortillas. Byron, his wife and extended family live together in the small town of Chicajalaj, a short distance across the valley from the main city of Comitancillo.

Byron leans in to help LAMP students during a literacy class in Tuichilupe.

Besides teaching his Mayan people, the busy newlywed co-ordinates the Mam literacy project, evaluates the results and develops classroom materials—all with a giving heart.

“Although I’m a co-ordinator, I don’t think of

myself as chief. I want to serve.”

Word Alive • Summer 2011 • wycliffe.ca 23

Byron and his wife, Miriam, walk along a steep path on their way to a LAMP literacy class in the mountainous terrain of the Central Mam people.

What does that promise practically mean as Byron serves in his role as head of LAMP? “Mucho!,” he says, laughing. “I’m co-ordinating the project.

I’m evaluating the advances, the results. I’m developing materials. I’m serving my co-workers. These are the basics. And I go out to teach literacy.

And Byron does it all with a giving heart.

“Although I’m a co-ordinator, I don’t think of myself as chief,” he says. “I want to serve. That’s what I do.”

In addition, Byron has continued working at the Estereo Vida radio station. In fact, while working for the station, which had Spanish-only broadcasting, he used his position to leverage his people’s language. First, he read from the Mam New Testament.

Then he convinced station managers to include Mam language programming on its schedule—first a half-hour once a week, then one hour and now more than 2½ hours. The increase has been driven by excited Mam speakers phoning the station, expressing their pleasure at the broadcasts in a More On The Web: To hear Byron language that speaks to their hearts. and his LAMP Mam program, visit “During the program, I read <www.stereovidagt.com>. , at Scripture, I read the Bible stories 9-10 a.m. CST Tuesdays. His station that LAMP has written. We sing in program is at 7:30-10 p.m. CST Mam. I have a big audience!” on Wednesdays.

His vision is for even more airtime in Mam to scatter more of God’s seeds on the wind of radio, but that means increased costs. “We need more money!” he says, surprisingly in halting English.

Odd Teaching

Byron says LAMP literacy is crucial for the Mam people if they are to truly understand their Scriptures.

“For me it’s not a problem, because I knew how to read Spanish. But we’re not Spanish speakers,” he says. “It’s very difficult to understand the Bible in Spanish. We’re talking about people who’ve never even been to school. For them it’s even more difficult. And because of that, we need LAMP.” As Byron and the LAMP team travel the steep and windy mountain roads and pathways by motorcycle and foot to promote the literacy courses, they discover just how great that need is.

They have sat in Protestant church services, hardly able to believe their ears at strange teaching coming from the mouths of Mam pastors: Adam wanted a woman so he had to pray for one before God made Eve. The original pair sewed aprons of leaves to cover their nakedness, so if a Mam woman does not wear an apron to church, she is not going to heaven. It is a sin to pray in a place that has not been sanctified (i.e. outside of a church).

Byron recalls personally talking to one distressed mother, who attended a church that taught there are 18 unforgivable sins, including marriage. Being married, she felt she could never truly be accepted in the church, unless she got “unmarried.” Asking Byron why he seemed so free from the burden of judgment, he happily shared the central truths of Gods’ Word in Mam.

(continued on pg. 28)

24 Word Alive • Summer 2011 • wycliffe.ca

Fortunately, Byron can also ride a motorcycle to travel the steep and windy roads to get at least partially to some far-flung villages—isolated communities which often see little outside help.

Byron welcomes a LAMP student with the traditional greeting among Mam people. They lightly touch the finger tips of their right hands and then touch the same hand to their foreheads. It is customary for a person to greet everyone this way when they walk into a room and when they leave.

â&#x20AC;&#x153; When I started reading the Bible, I started to change.

Reading the Bible changes people.â&#x20AC;?

Byron talks to individuals from other villages following a LAMP class. The 25-year-old LAMP coordinator has a deep passion for his people to discover the truths in the life-changing Word of the God, in their heart language.

(Above) A natural and trained teacher, Byron leads a classroom of students through a level-one workbook produced by LAMP. (Right) Byron and Melecio López, who works at LAMP part time as teacher and promoter, sound out the Mam letters as they demonstrate to the class how to work in pairs.

Hamming it up, Byron purposely makes mistakes, which Melecio corrects, to show the class that they need to help each other.

26 Word Alive • Summer 2011 • wycliffe.ca

“ In order to use the New Testament, it’s important to offer literacy.”

Word Alive • Summer 2011 • wycliffe.ca 27

“One woman . . . said, ‘Six months ago,

I didn’t know what an a, an e an i or a j were,

and now I can read God’s Word in my language.’ ” The Bible Changes People

Absorbing God’s Words in Mam is the solution to weak teaching among the people.

“The vision of LAMP is that people’s hearts will be transformed, says Byron. “For example, I was a Christian but I wasn’t transformed. When I started reading the Bible, I started to change.”

“Reading the Bible changes people.”

As a team of Mam translators now works on the Old Testament, Byron has been tempted to join the work, rather than limit himself to be the translation project’s director. But he believes God has directed him to focus on the LAMP literacy effort.

“He put in my mind that it’s not worth it to translate the Old Testament, if the New Testament isn’t being used. In order to use the New Testament, it’s important to offer literacy.”

The work is challenging and LAMP faces setbacks at times.

Still, Byron takes encouragement from seeing Mam reading in church—“to me, that’s big.”

He is also energized when smiling Mam readers receive final diplomas at yearly LAMP course graduation ceremonies, like a special one in December 2009.

was totally overwhelmed by the response to the literacy event.”

Byron was right.

While leading the Mam New Testament translation project, Wes and his wife Nancy, a nurse, had their hands full learning the complex language (with its 36 letters, directional verbs and glottal stops). They also were busy meeting medical and community development needs. Giving attention to literacy then was also difficult because of a division over which of two alphabets would be used in Mam literature, and other complicated reasons. So Wes is delighted to see how far literacy has come.

“It was altogether overwhelming to me,” he said after attending the graduation event for 50 new Mam readers, which was broadcast by Estereo Vida. “One woman came forward and said, ‘Six months ago, I didn’t know what an a, an e an i or a j were, and now I can read God’s Word in my language.’ People were beaming, reading and laughing. . . .

“It was amazing.”

Byron remembers telling Wes a few years ago that he left the Mam a deeply valuable foundation—the New Testament.

“I have a profound appreciation because the New Testament Wept for Joy is left. But it was the Vaters who actually followed up. And with Translator Wes Collins attended the ceremony, featuring reading the resources, LAMP now exists. If LAMP didn’t exist, then the and writing contests, concerts and competitions, and Mam hymn New Testament would be ‘lost.’ and song singing, says Byron. “Wes gave a talk in Mam, but “Wes’ work was important,” concludes Byron. “But literacy is before beginning, he broke down and wept for joy. I think Wes even more important.”

“ If LAMP didn’t exist, then the

New Testament would be ‘lost.’ ”

28 Word Alive • Summer 2011 • wycliffe.ca

Byron leaves his adobe-brick home to travel to another LAMP class promoting literacy. He is convinced that if Mam people weren’t taught to read and write, their translated New Testament would be “lost.”

Word Alive • Summer 2011 • wycliffe.ca 29

Light

t

O

verwhelmed with emotion, José Alberto takes off his hat and buries his face in it as he weeps. The chapeau becomes a handkerchief, of sorts, to absorb his tears.

José is recalling one of the darkest periods of his life—when it should have been one of the brightest—as a pastor among the Central Mam people of northwestern Guatemala.

It was a time when his little congregation in the village of Tuijala [Twee HA la] dismissed him as their pastor—for preaching the truth.

In 2004, José learned how to read and write Mam through classes offered by LAMP, a Mam-run organization teaching Bible-based literacy among the people (see story, pg. 6). Literacy equipped José to preach directly from the New Testament in his people’s mother tongue, rather than prepare sermons from listening to audiotapes of the Scriptures in Spanish.

His wife Fabiana helps tell his story.

“All I can say is before we knew how to read and write, we often preached from the Bible according to our understanding . . . . ,” she says. “Being able to read and write, we understand that what we were sometimes preaching was not correct.

“For example, we’ve learned that . . . a person who deliberately and routinely plans to sin is not a Christian and hasn’t changed, although there are lots of times that we do things and then we realize that it is wrong. God forgives that, when we repent.”

As José preached with clarity for the first time in Mam, his flock felt overwhelmed by the new teaching and they got angry.

As a result, they expelled him.

“Many, many, many times we prayed in our home,” adds Fabiana, speaking of those dark days. Her comment brings her husband to tears.

When José collects himself, he picks up the story: “The group got angry and kept me away from preaching for three years,” he says.

Learning to read his mother tongue equips a Mam pastor to share accurate truths from God’s Word—after initial rejection by his own congregation.

Reinstated to the Pulpit

But as LAMP’s literacy ministry opened up the Mam Scriptures to more of the people at large, José’s former congregation realized their error.

“After three years, they came down to my house and they asked for forgiveness for having prohibited me from preaching.

They said, ‘We were wrong. You don’t preach like some other pastors, but you tell the truth.’ ” José was reinstated as pastor. Today, he ministers to about 70 Mam in a house church that is part of the Central American Mission denomination. He is also a key literacy teacher for LAMP. “Before, my mind was closed and now my mind is opened,” he says of the change wrought by literacy. “Before, I tried to understand the Bible and bought Spanish Bibles so I could learn how to read the Bible, but I couldn’t do it. Then LAMP came and is teaching us how to read the Bible.”

Breaking down with his memories, Pastor José Alberto uses his hat to bury the tears. He is trying to tell how his church expelled him when he preached what he had learned directly from the Mam Scriptures that he could finally read for himself.

Word Alive • Summer 2011 • wycliffe.ca 31

Another benefit brought by LAMP, says José, is the weekly Bible study offered at the organization’s office in Comitancillo.

To get there, he and his 48-year-old wife must walk several hours, arriving at 8:30 a.m. and leaving at 12:30—or later.

Sometimes, the studies continue unofficially as the Mam attending keep asking questions until well into the afternoon.

In the early days of his attendance, José became so eager to clear something up about Scripture, he walked to the Vaters’ house early in the morning on three different days—hiking nearly three hours there in the morning and nearly three hours back to his village in the afternoon.

“We really want LAMP to continue because the Bible studies are changing people,” says José. “Because now they can take their Bibles to the study with them and understand what it says.”

Opening Up a Road

The transformation he desires for other Mam is what keeps him teaching and promoting literacy. José knows what it has done for him.

“For me this was a great change,” says the 57-year-old father of four, who has a small farm and some sheep. “It’s like opening up a road for me. I continue to go down that same road and it 32 Word Alive • Summer 2011 • wycliffe.ca

José strolls down down the main road of his town, Tuijala. Restored by his church as pastor after people realized he was preaching truth, today he confidently knows and freely shares the Mam New Testament teachings.

“ We really want LAMP to continue because the Bible studies are changing people.”

gets wider. I understand more and more. I read the Bible two hours every morning, and two hours in the afternoon and two hours at night.”

“The result is that I’m at peace: I’m content,” José continues, as his father-in-law fingers kernels from corn husks outside their adobe brick home tucked into a hillside.

José says learning to read Mam has also improved his marriage.

“We’re much happier together as husband and wife,” he says. “We’re learning together. I can take her to the Bible and we can read it.”

In addition, literacy has also meant new opportunities for José in his village. In 2005, his literacy training prepared him for election as the “Auxiliary Mayor” of his village. These prestigious officials in each mountain community serve for one year, donating their time to deliver mail, act as policemen in domestic disputes, attend community meetings and bring concerns to the mayor in Comitancillo.

“In my life, everything’s changed,” concludes José. “Nothing is the same.

“I’m a totally different person now.”

José sings a song from a Mam worship book during a Bible study at the LAMP office. For José, and his wife, Fabiana, the Bible studies have been vital in helping him work through and understand God’s Word, available in his people’s heart language.

“ In my life, everything’s changed.”

Word Alive • Summer 2011 • wycliffe.ca 33

Beyond Words

Natasha Schmale

Pop Religion

Candles illuminate an aluminum can tucked inside an altar on a gravestone in the cemetery at Comitancillo, Guatemala. The Mam people (see stories in this issue), a predominately Catholic group, celebrate the Day of the Dead on November 1. They attend to the graves of their loved ones, bring flowers and even food. They believe that the dead are participating in the festivities. Kites are also flown high above the graveyard as a symbolic link between the living and the dead, sometimes with messages to loved ones attached to the tails.

34 Word Alive â&#x20AC;˘ Summer 2011 â&#x20AC;˘ wycliffe.ca

Last Word Literacy: The Door Opener

By Don Hekman

F

section of clearly Christian work and broadly humanitarian work. Wycliffe stands for access to the Scriptures and access to education. Wycliffe is engaged in the fight against biblical illiteracy, against illiteracy at large, and against poverty.

People may learn to read because their deepest desire is to read the Bible, but they don’t stop there. Learning to read the Bible opens the door to reading anything—their rental contract, a tax form, the newspaper, the politician’s pamphlet, a job application, a history of their nation, their

Dave Harder

or those of us for whom reading is as natural as breathing, we can hardly imagine what doors were opened to us in Grade 1, or earlier, when we learned to read.

I’m thinking of the doors to literature, to how-to manuals, to self-expression, to formal education, to economic development, to participation in civic affairs . . . the list could go on and on. And it opens the door to what’s precious to all of you readers—to digesting and meditating on the very words from God in the Bible.

We can hardly imagine life without these opportunities, but millions—no, billions—of people live without them.

Studies show that one of the major motivations worldwide for adults to learn to read is for religious purposes. For Christians this means that what drives them most to move from illiteracy to literacy is the desire to read the Bible.

LAMP, which is featured Wycliffe is in this issue, was founded engaged in the on that principle. And as people learn to read the fight against Bible, LAMP also opens the doors for all the opporbiblical illiteracy, tunities mentioned above. against illiteracy If you knew Wycliffe Canada’s Andy and Karen at large, and Vaters personally, you would know how passionagainst poverty. ate they are about the Mam people in Guatemala and about how the LAMP program equips the Mam for service in the church and in society at large (see stories in this issue).

That’s also why I love the work of Wycliffe Bible Translators. We actively serve at the inter-

hero’s memoirs . . . the list is endless.

Through literacy, the door has been opened a crack. It can then be swung open wide, and formerly marginalized people can walk through with pride into a better future.

Don Hekman is president of Wycliffe Bible Translators of Canada.

Word Alive • Summer 2011 • wycliffe.ca 35

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