December 2008

“Within a year I obtained the Injil* in my native language!”

                                                                                                                      *Injil = New Testament

In the last newsletter for 2008 we should like to share the testimony of a young man from Central Asia:

“I was born into a traditional Central Asian family. Although our grandparents kept telling us children that Allah existed, we were brought up the Soviet way, and like my older brothers I was sure that there was no God or Allah. To us the family means very much. The word of one’s older brothers is law for the younger ones.

“When I left school and had to decide about my future, one of my older brothers had become interested in spiritual matters. Each time he came home from his university for the holidays he shared something new with me. The first time he told me about eastern religions. That sounded very interesting to me. Next time sports had caught his interest. The following time I understood that he was seriously considering Islam. But when he came home the last time for his holidays I saw that he had changed into quite a different person.

“It turned out that he had become a believer in Jesus Christ. Even to this day I can see before me how my brother got out of my father’s car and took his suitcase from the boot. My father caught sight of the title of a book: ‘The Bible’. He looked at my brother and asked: ‘What! Have you become a traitor to our faith?’ My brother answered: ‘Dad, this book is teaching me to love God, to honour you and mother and to respect my brothers.’ Then my father said: ‘If that is the case, you may read it.’ On that very evening my brother told me everything that he had learnt from this book: about our sinfulness, about the Saviour, who wanted to give life to humanity and to fill it with meaning. That night I believed in Jesus Christ. When my brother returned to the university he gave me his Russian Bible. Unfortunately at that time I didn’t know Russian well enough to read through the book.

“But God provided a miracle: within a year I obtained the Injil in my native language! Now it became easier for me to tell my friends about my faith, and we began to study the Injil together. Almost every day we met and discussed this book. In time we understood that our Injil needed some revision (the book was translated abroad in the Soviet time). There were some words which we did not understand and verses which were not correctly translated. All this we found out because we gathered so often and studied God’s Word so attentively.

“We have seen God’s care for us. There are people who are translating His Word into our language. Now we have very good translations of the Old Testament books. We very much hope that we will also soon have a more modern version of the Injil. We are ready to help as much as possible.”

Bible translation into several Central Asian languages is in progress. Please help us to continue this work!

Best wishes for Christmas and the New Year!

Thank you for your support of IBT’s translation work!

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Contact
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E-mail: rhwillcol@aol.com

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