as i do ministry with my teammates, we’ve ordered english-arabic Bibles and english-arabic Qu’rans for our neighbors so that they can better understand God and experience God in their own heart language.  we’ve had cases where teammates had to order a kurdish Qur’an for a kurdish friend, and an english-arabic Bible for an iraqi friend.  my own experience stretches out only to an order of english-arabic Qu’ran for a sister, who wanted to start reading the Qu’ran and also learn arabic.  the task itself isn’t too hard.  you just go to amazon or ebay and they usually have them.

today, some of our teammates and myself were having dinner with a friend and his roommate.  it was my first time meeting that roommate.  he is a 25-year-old sudanese man who came to america less than 6 months ago (english level: not proficient).  really tall and skinny.  6′ 3″.  in our conversation, we naturally talked about his language and what he speaks.  he grew up speaking dinka (which is also the name of the people group), a dialect in south sudan, and later learned swahili when he fled from his own country (reason: war) and lived in kenya.  so we asked him if he has a Bible in dinka and he said no.  we asked him if he can read dinka and he said yes.  so in my head i naturally thought that we can order a Bible of his heart language on amazon, or on a website of an organization that translates the Bible to different people group languages.

so there i was, on a teammate’s laptop, searching for a dinka Bible.  i looked through many links that google spat out, and the first relevant link that came to my eyes was a link that had an audio stream to dinka new testament.  i clicked on a link to old testament and there was no such audio stream in dinka.  i kept on searching for a written text.. and there was no such thing.  momentarily, i didn’t know what to do.  i’ve heard cases where there are people groups that don’t have Bibles in their heart language.  like, out there.  in the books that i read.  through speakers whom i’ve never met before.  but here i was, witnessing the reality of those people far out there, but right in the dining room where we just had dinner together.

we help people around us.  sometimes we are the means to their solution.  but this time, we couldn’t really help this friend named roommate.  the best he has now was that audio stream website that had a list of all the new testament chapters.  he doesn’t have the accessibility to go to a verse just to reference that verse.  he’d have to listen to it from the beginning of the chapter of the verse he wants to reference, or guesstimate the the part on the stream player.  while all these were going through my head, he asked me to email him that link.  he was excited.  when i asked him if he can understand what he’s hearing now (which was Matthew 1), there was that hint of excitement, recognition in his eyes (or maybe it was his gesture that hinted this).  although he doesn’t have a quick reference access to the Bible (verses) like i do, he was already holding onto this audio stream website so dearly.

then i thought about my Bibles.  BibleS.  having more than one version, majority of those Bibles are left on a bookshelf, a stool that i call “a nightstand”, and one in my bag that i actually use the most.  i wish i can give one of these dormant Bibles in my room so that he can have one: except.. he doesn’t fully understand english yet..  i wish one of these was a dinka Bible.

while feeling helpless, it made me appreciate the value of the Bible the way i’ve never appreciated it before.

p.s. it’s almost 2am and i couldn’t think of any appropriate title to this post.  it was just meant for us to ponder about this kind of reality: how we take things for granted and don’t realize it.  it was not meant to be condemning or anything like that.  speaking of myself, i have 2 that are pretty dusty, one that is semi-dusty and one that gets dull whenever i carry it around.  should i donate the two dusty ones now that different versions are available online?  one Bible shall be good enough, no? (i’m not hinting you anything here.  it’s 2am, whatever i babble can be excused =P  well, except for the situation of our friend named roommate).  buona notte, friends 🙂