Cameron Townsend: Good News in Every Language

Title: Cameron Townsend: Good News in Every Language
Author: Janet & Geoff Benge
Series: Christian Heroes: Then and Now series
Major Themes: Cameron Townsend, Wycliffe Bible Translators, Missionaries, Guatemala, Mexico, Language, Linguistics
Synopsis: After seeing the need for Bibles in indigenous languages, Cameron Townsend founded Wycliffe Bible Translators to translate Bibles into unwritten languages.

What a satisfying read! I just read Cameron Townsend to my children, and as always when we read one from this series, they wanted me to keep going till we finished. I’m always astounded at how they get into these books.

Cameron Townsend was born into a poor farming family in California. During World War I, God called him to go to Guatemala to sell Bibles, and miraculously he was able to get an honorable discharge from the army to fulfill this call. He soon discovered, however, that the country people in Guatemala could not read—or often even speak—Spanish. One man even told him his god must not be very great if He couldn’t speak the man’s Indian language!

Cam set to work to learn and write down the Indian language, and was able, within 10 years, to translate the New Testament into it. He went on from there to found Wycliffe Bible Translators and the Summer Institute of Linguistics, which has completed the New Testament in 500 formerly unwritten languages as at the date the book was published (2000).

We found Cameron Townsend very encouraging, as Cameron lived out his beliefs that God would supply all he needed, and that nothing was impossible with God.

No warnings!

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