Tom and Nancy Lin

As someone who has the opportunity to interact with many global issues and see the missions landscape firsthand, people often ask why Bible translation is one of areas that I choose to invest my time in.  My good friend, Ruth Hubbard (a Senior VP at Wycliffe), captured my sentiments well in her recent post on the urgency of “eradicating Bible poverty in this generation.”  But my conversion experience in the Bible translation movement actually began in 2002…

In 2002, Nancy and I moved to Mongolia to pioneer student ministry with InterVarsity.  It shocked us to learn that in 1989, there was only 1 known believer in the entire country, but after the New Testament was translated in the 1990s and the Old Testament completed in 2000, the church exploded into tens of thousands, due in large part to the fact that Mongolians could now read and hear Scripture in a language that speaks to their heart!

In our work with Mongolian students, we owe much gratitude to those who worked so hard to translate the Scriptures into Mongolian, because without them, we would not have been able to share the gospel with Mongolians.  We witnessed hundreds of students reading their Bibles (some sharing Bibles) every morning, drinking up the Scriptures like water! Now, as we look at other communities of people around the world who don’t have access to the Scriptures, indeed it seems unjust.  What can we do together to eradicate bible poverty around the world?