Bible translators bringing clean and Living water to Africa and Asia

Wycliffe Associates are thrilled to see their new clean water initiative working well alongside their Bible translation ministry in Africa and Asia. 

Wycliffe Associates is an international organization that empowers mother-tongue Bible translators and partners with local churches in the advancement of Bible translation. Recently the ministry started providing clean water systems in remote communities and they have seen the incredible benefit from it, both physically and spiritually. 

"We’ve seen how God uses a clean water system to draw men, women, and children to faith in Christ," says Stephen Martin, Vice President of Field Development in a news release. "At the water stations pastors and national Bible translators sometimes read aloud the Scriptures they’ve most recently translated."

The initiative is called Operation Clean Water, in which Wycliffe Associates supplies tools and training for local Christians to dig water wells and build clean water systems for their villages.

Staff were noticing how bringing translated Scriptures to villages without access to clean water wasn't helping people struggling to survive with dirty water sources. 

"A clean water source becomes a hub for an entire community, a place where believers will share the newly translated Word of God with their friends and family members," says Martin.

They have watched a transformation happen already. 

"In one village, a woman struggled to care for her husband and three children. She made a long, daily trek to the nearest river, where she retrieved dirty water for her family," says the news release. 

The local Bible translators and church leaders installed a clean water system in the heart of her village.

"On the first day she went to the water station, a local pastor was reading aloud from the Bible in the woman's language. She gave her life to Jesus Christ that same day. When she returned home with clean water, she told her husband what happened. A week later, he attended a church service with his wife, where he, too, heard the Scriptures in his language. Now the woman and her family are committed Christians and are active in their church."

The ministry has built 38 water systems and plans to construct additional systems in Africa, Asia, and South America over the next year.