Back in May, I was in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, getting ready
to fly up to a town called Mwanza. I would then take a four-hour bus ride on to
another town called Musoma. We have a
large translation project going on in Musoma serving eight language
communities, with plans to expand even more.
As I got in line to check in for my flight, a man walked up
behind me and we began chatting in Swahili. After a few minutes he asked me,
“What do you do here in Tanzania that your Swahili is so good?”
I began to explain our work of language development and
Bible translation. And this man, John*,
was very taken in by what I described. He was a bit hesitant, however, as to whether or not Bible translation
into all the local languages was really necessary since it is already available
in Swahili. However, I just left that “objection” alone. As we continued to chat, I found out that John
was also traveling to the same final destination as I was – Musoma! And he is from one of the tribes for which we
are actively translating the Bible.
I proceeded to check in for my flight and go through
security. After getting settled at my
gate, I saw John and he waved to me, calling me over to sit next to him. He began to ask me more about why I felt
there was a need for Bible translation into his language. I felt the Holy Spirit prompting me to jump
in and dig a little deeper. Pretty quickly, I realized that he didn’t
understand just how deep and rich God’s mercy and grace are for us. He really was in the category I like to call,
“Jesus gets me started, and then it’s my job to finish it.”
A few weeks earlier, I had heard a sermon about Jesus’
statement from the cross, “It is finished!” I felt the Spirit leading me to use that
analogy to show John just how deep God’s grace is. By now, I had also learned John’s profession-
he works for the Tanzanian tax authority! (Jesus loves tax collectors, right?)
I explained to John that the phrase “It is finished!” was used
in legal proceedings in Jesus’s day to indicate that a debt had been paid in
full. I asked John if he had a stamp at his office to use when someone pays off
a tax bill. Of course, he said yes! (In
Tanzania, stamps are very important! You could almost say that the more
important the person, the bigger the stamp he/she will have.)
I then explained to him that when Jesus died on the cross,
he paid for all of his sins, past, present and future. John sat there looking
at me, just bewildered! He had never understood this before.
“Are you serious?” he asked.
I told him, “Do you see now how rich and deep Jesus love and
forgiveness is for you?”
John was amazed!
I then asked him if he now understood why I feel the Bible
needs to be available in his local language so his people could understand this
message for themselves. “Absolutely!” he
exclaimed.
As we boarded the plane, it occurred to me, “That man just
came to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ!”
After arriving in Mwanza, John asked me if we could share a
taxi to the bus stand. We then sat together
on that four-hour bus ride, and upon arriving in Musoma, my colleague offered
him a ride to his house. John and I had
lots of great talks through the day, and he kept coming back to how amazing the
message about Jesus really was and how he had never heard it explained to him
that way before.
A few days later, John came by our offices for lunch. I gave him copies of all the Scripture we
have in his language. The Jesus film is
also nearly completed in his language, and he was very excited to hear about
that.
Even since returning to the US, John and I have continued to
keep in touch, texting back and forth. It was such an honor to be used by God
to tell John just how amazing God’s grace really is, and to watch him respond
to it! I love my job!
--By Paul Hefft
*Pseudonym