September Celebration: God's Word Now Accessible to Millions!

On September 20, DOOR Africa's translation center celebrated an amazing accomplishment! The campus had seven language groups translating the Bible into their sign language: Burundi, Ethiopia, Ghana, Uganda, Tanzania, Nigeria, and Kenya. All of these translations reach a pivotal milestone, and have collectively granted Scripture access to over 3 million Deaf people!

• Burundi, Ethiopia, Ghana, Uganda, and Tanzania (together called "BEGUT") all completed the translation of 110 Bible stories in the series "Know God How?" (evangelism), "Follow God How?" (discipleship), and "Serve God How?" (church planting). This series of 110 stories give people groups a foundation by providing a survey of Scripture and highlighting key stories in that survey.
• Nigeria completed the translation of the first 32 of these Bible stories in the series "Know God How?"
• Kenya completed the development of translator and Bible study notes to accompany the 110 Bible stories in the three series above. These translator notes are incredibly important in assisting future translations; they describe exegetical and sign language linguistic issues in the texts, why certain passages were translated the way they were, etc.

The celebration was an emotional time for the BEGUT teams as well, as after the celebration they headed back to their own countries. They have told me that they will miss the environment of DOOR's Africa campus, where sign language is the primary language of communication, where they learned their value to the Kingdom as believers and as translators, and where they made such close bonds with other translation teams. Please pray for them as they get settled in their home countries again.

Click here to see some video highlights, too!

All seven teams celebrating with a song following the Scripture presentation

DOOR President Mike Buus being presented with one of the BEGUT translations

Board Chairman Clare De Graaf being presented with the Kenya DEEPs translator notes