DOCUMENTING A GIFT: A BIBLE DEDICATION
A view of the mountains we traveled through.
As some know, I was in Mexico during the month of May visiting family and watching my brother graduate high school. While most of my time was with my family, one Sunday my parents and I went out to the town of Chuxnaban Queztaltepec, in the state of Oaxaca. We drove up and down a whole range of mountains for about three hours before we arrived. We left early in the morning and arrived in Chuxnaban in time for breakfast. The point of the trip was to witness the dedication of the Bible in the language spoken in Chuxnaba: Mixe.
Mixe is a pre-hispanic language, spoken at the same time as the Aztec and Zapotec languages spoken in Mexico. Many of the people in the town do not speak Spanish well because their first language is Mixe and they learned Spanish either through necessity or through school. As a result, missionaries came and trained up local men to do the translation into their own language. And we got to see the result of the decades of work it took to put it all together!
The service was wonderful. Local pastors came to speak on the importance of the Bible and, specifically, on having it in their own language. Different Mixe people came to the front to read the Bible in Mixe or sing. One older lady in particular, all dressed in the traditional clothing, was invited to speak. She spoke for a long time, and while I could not understand what she was saying, she had tears running down her cheeks.
After the service, there were enough Bibles to give to everyone who was there. There were five distributors and everyone lined up to receive their Bible. The looks of hunger and joy as the people received God's very own Word in their hands were priceless. This trip was such an incredible experience, I hope you will be encouraged by this in the fact that you have always had a Bible available in your language! Click through the gallery to see more pictures from this special event, and leave a comment!
