Audio Bibles for the People of Colombia

Guambiano Project - Updates from Our Wycliffe Partnership

The Guambianos of Colombia make up a fairly large indigenous population of as many as 23,000. When the Audio Drama New Testament became available in their heart language, the response was amazing! First, the superintendent of 10 Guambiano schools asked for the New Testaments for the students to listen to everyday. Another ministry also requested them, and the Scriptures are being played over regional radio as well!

A leader in the Guambiano Church reports that among the 2,300 members meeting in their 24 churches, the most exciting moment is when they hear Christ Himself speaking their language — “God speaks Guambiano!” they cry.

Recording the New Testament in the Cacua Language

Cacua Recording Team:

Each time we do a recording of the New Testament in the indigenous languages of Colombia, our hearts are filled with the joy of knowing that the Word of God is arriving in faraway places and to very special people who need to know the love of God.

Recording with the Cacua was very exciting since it was done in the forest in which they live. Seeing them in their daily lives hunting, fishing, picking fruit, they are very excited about what they found in the middle of the forest and want to share it. It was a blessing, and demonstrated the care they had for each of us during this time.

The Cacua are an oral culture that have very few readers.  Only four people knew how to read well and for the recording of the entire New Testament we needed about twenty-seven readers.  Nonetheless, the Lord helped us in that the recording sounded very rich with different voices.  We had to strategize about who would read small sentences and then the narrator would repeat them.  It was this way that we did different characters like Stephen, angels, prophets, and others.   We always prayed, "Father, help us to read well or at least repeat what the directors are saying correctly."  He always answered our prayers.

As we listened to the completed recording, we saw the expressions of emotion and joy in their faces as they heard the dramatization of each of the characters.  It was a beautiful time sharing with them.

We feel privileged to be able to go to those places as the Lord's tools to bless them.  In their own words, the Cacua said:

"This project is a great blessing for our community because the great majority do not know how to read and we also have many elderly.  We're going to always have the recorded Word of God, and when our children grow up they will hear it.  We know that the Lord sent you to give us something that we never thought we would have.  It's a gift from God!"