Bundeli

That's pronounced boon-day-lee and it is a language spoken in the central part of India. What we learned today is that there are an estimated 50 million people who speak this language, and until 2010 there had never been anything written about Jesus in their language! This is where the ministry of CICM comes in. Part of their operation here is to publish Christian books and materials for Christians in India. Most of this is in Hindi, which the majority of people speak, but three years ago, they initiated a translation project that gave the Bundeli speaking people a New Testament in their own language. So today, in their publishing house we saw actual handwritten manuscript translations of this Bible that were part of the process. Think about it..a language spoken for hundreds of years suddenly has the word of God and the story of His Son Jesus at their disposal. Anybody out there guilty of taking their Bible for granted? 50 million people did not have access to Jesus in their language and now they do!!! But wait, that's not all - the story gets better! Tonight we drove about five miles outside of Damoh to worship with about 150 people from two village churches. Several years ago, they were persecuted and driven from their homes because of their faith (their homes were burned) - but the church survived. But catch this, as I was getting ready to preach I noticed one of the Bibles from the print shop - a Bundeli Bible! I asked Ajai if these were Bundeli speaking people and they were and my sermon was translated in their language and they read from their Bibles! One more cool thing. The cover of this Bible has the pictures of several Bundeli speaking people and and older gentleman from the picture was worshiping tonight with us. He was the first convert of his village to Christianity and is now an elder in that church. For real..can't make this up.