Missionaries Phil and Elin Henderson are serving among the Mwinika people of Mozambique and have been teaching literacy and working on Bible translation.

“After four months of studying, the literacy class of seven Mwinikas just finished,” wrote Elin. “It was a lot of hard work and sacrifice for them but they stuck with it and finished strong. We had a small ceremony to celebrate their accomplishments.”

Phil has a standard project for his translation co-workers when they are not busy. He has them check older recordings and translate them. The goal is to have the basis for a lexicon and eventually a dictionary. While one of the translation workers was working on the recordings he came across a recording he had made a number of years ago. Phil had asked him what a person needed to do to be accepted by God, his answer was, “pray several times a day, fast, give to the poor, etc."

When he heard his old recording, he came to Phil laughing and said, “I am checking these old recordings I gave you. I didn’t know the truth back then. I can’t believe you didn’t stop me! You just kept asking me more and more questions and each time I answered the worse it got. And to think, the whole time you knew that what I was saying wasn’t true.”

“After hearing the truth of God’s Word he is able to see how far his belief system has changed,” wrote Phil.

Pray for Phil and Elin as they minister among the Mwinika people. Pray that the Mwinikas will see the truth of God’s Word and trust in Christ as their Savior.

Two days of travel over rough roads brought Pete and Charity Rogers and their family to a bush area for a mutually encouraging Christmas visit. 

They were journeying to visit Anthony and Jennie Chee, who are ministering to the Yao people group.  The Rogers family reports that the transition from their customary city location to the quiet countryside was a welcome change.  So were the cooler temperatures. 

The children of both families delighted in their own brand of fellowship and fun.  Additionally, the fellowship shared by the two families enabled new levels of insight and new understanding in praying for each other. 

But the greatest joy for Pete and Charity was to see this work, up-close and personal, for the first time, a work that their own ministry as support missionaries makes possible.  They share their impressions that reaching the Yao people, who belong to a religious group that is hostile to Christianity, will be a challenging ministry.  

Please pray for Anthony and Jennie Chee and their family as they immerse themselves in the Yao culture and continue to learn the language.  The preparation season requires tremendous wisdom and will be acutely important in establishing readiness to begin to share the Gospel. 

Please pray for God’s grace to actively prepare the hearts of the Yao people to hear the joyful truth and  to embrace the Savior they need so much.

The Mwinika believers are searching for people to tell about Jesus.

The stage was set 25 years ago. In the late 1980s a conflict arose and encompassed most of the countries in the southern Africa. Many Mwinikas fled the fighting and settled in one area. A dispute broke out among the leaders of their predominant religion. Many leaders met together to discuss the issue. Their conclusion: “The problem with our religion is that we don’t understand God’s word. We need it in our own language.” The leaders prayed and asked God for His Word in their language.

The meeting was very high profile at the time, but as time passed, most forgot the conflict and the resulting prayer. But God does not forget.

When one of the believers mentioned that long-ago meeting, everyone there immediately responded that they remembered that time too and they realized that God had answered the prayer. The believers decided that this would be a great time to appeal to their fellow Mwinikas to come and listen to the teaching.

“For me,” wrote missionary Phil Henderson, “it was encouraging to know that God has been at work in this people group for a long time, preparing the soil for the sowing of the seed – this meeting took place about the time I was finishing elementary school.

“Please pray for the Mwinika people and for these believers who are seeking openings to share their faith with others. Pray that the Lord would use a reminder of this long-forgotten meeting to encourage many people’s interest in studying God’s word.”

You can help translate God’s Word into the Mwinika language.

Phil Henderson remembers thinking that Bible translation would be relatively straightforward and simple.

“That was before I actually did it,” he wrote recently.

Even something that seems as simple as “white” can be problematic, Phil discovered as he and his Mwinika co-workers took a stab at Exodus 4:6:

Furthermore the LORD said to him, “Now put your hand in your bosom.” And he put his hand in his bosom, and when he took it out, behold, his hand was leprous, like snow.

“We tried to come up with a way to illustrate whiteness in a culture that is not familiar with snow,” Phil wrote. He suggested “clouds.”

That didn’t seem right to the Mwinikas.

Cotton? That didn’t work either.

Really clean salt? “The translation helpers didn’t bite,” Phil wrote. Then it was their turn.

“Their suggestion was ‘it was really white, like pus is white,’” Phil wrote. “Hmmm. Somehow ‘pus’ didn’t fit with my idea of what the figure of speech needed to convey.

“Then I realized I had to explain to my helpers that this figure needed to do more than just communicate whiteness. It would be used again in the future in different contexts and had to cover a wide range of meaning. It couldn’t just convey color, it had to also convey cleanness and purity.

“This is because another important instance of the use of this figure of speech is in Isaiah 1:18,” which reads, “Come now, and let us reason together,” says the Lord, “Though your sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they are red like crimson, they shall be as wool.”

“Somehow I didn’t think we could translate this ‘Your sins will be washed as white as pus’ and communicate what God was trying to say in that passage. In the end we landed (tentatively) on a type of really white clay or chalk that they occasionally use to whitewash the walls of their houses.”

Pray that Phil and his Mwinika co-workers are able to craft a translation that is clear and accurate. Find out how you can help fund the Mwinika translation.