Stepping up to the Challenge

Stories to encourage and strengthen – Wycliffe World Day of Prayer 2021

Lugue, Paraguay – After more than three years of hard work, Josema is only one year away from becoming a full-fledged Bible translation consultant. He also currently serves as a professor at the Evangelical University of Paraguay. 

Josema recently learned that pandemic delays can often have the opposite effect—in his case, accelerating his training. Chris, one of Josema’s translation consulting mentors, will soon be reassigned to another location. To be ready for that transition, Josema must keep up with his studies so he is ready to step into independent consulting when Chris moves on.

Using Zoom, Josema led his first translation checking session of Acts in the Mixe del Istmo Guichicovi language. He also continued gaining expertise in Paratext and Logos, two innovative translation software technologies. In fact, he learned them so well that he was able to lead a Zoom workshop in Paratext and solve issues within both systems.

When Josema isn’t consulting, he teaches Hebrew, Old Testament exegesis, and missiology at the Evangelical University of Paraguay (UEP). But even while teaching, Josema is working for the Bible translation cause. “My main goal in teaching is recruiting people from my classes to be part of the Bible translation movement,” Josema shares. This summer, he recruited two of his students to serve as exegetes, checking the Ache and Ñandeva translations against the original Hebrew and Greek texts.

Working steadily toward the mission of Bible translation requires patience and a vision for what the church can accomplish with time. When he began his consultancy training, Josema asked himself, “How can I fully enjoy being part of missio Dei [God’s mission]?” This year, he discovered his answer: “I have realized that dedicating your entire life to the mission is living one day at a time, enjoying every moment. That is my main prayer today: Enjoy God’s mission every day.”

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• Wycliffe World Day of Prayer – 11 November 2021
• Meditations