Turibia was an old lady for as long as I can remember. She always wore a faded red ribbon of fabric woven through her two thinning braids to match her faded multi-colored dress. There were deep lines etched on her dark face, which, along with her calloused hands and leathery bare feet told volumes of her difficult life in the Chortí mountains of eastern Guatemala. Turibia had cautiously received the message of Jesus when the first missionary had arrived long ago, but she was always unsure if this foreign God was someone she could truly trust. After all, this was a foreign God, who spoke a foreign language, brought by a foreigner from a foreign land. And when God’s words were read aloud to her, he could only speak Spanish. How could she ever know his ways, and moreover, how could He ever know her and all of the sorrows that had deeply lined her face?
For twenty-five years my father went about the arduous task of translating the Scriptures into the Chortí language. Finally, after a quarter of a century the very first boxes of the completed and published Chortí New Testaments were opened in the main square of the central town of Jocotan. I remember that Turibia was one of the very first in the crowd of outstretched arms to receive a Chortí Bible. She clutched it tightly to her chest, tears streaming down her wrinkled cheeks. Turibia could not read, but she understood the importance of that book. As someone on a loudspeaker read the Scriptures in Chortí, I remember her saying, “Coner nen inata que nidiosir ucanien, pues jaxir ojron niwojroner.” “Now, I know that God loves me, because he speaks my language!” She lived just long enough to see and hear the words of her God in the language of her heart. He was no longer a foreign God but the God of the Chortí. Very soon thereafter she went to be with her Lord.
I have heard similar stories from people all over the world. Not only do people feel loved when we make the effort to love them in their own language, but they also feel loved by God every time that we provide His words to them in their words.
Betsy Elliott
Now serving the Cusco Quechua people of Cuzco, Peru
