Basketo (pop. 57,800) Ethiopia

2016-01-29

The Bas­keto New Tes­ta­ment was completed a cou­ple of years ago but suffered nu­mer­ous set­backs dur­ing the print­ing stage. Praise God the books finally ar­rived in Ethiopia in July 2015! Trans­port­ing them to the re­mote, difficult-to-reach Bas­keto area had to wait un­til roads dried af­ter the rainy season, but once dry, the pre­cious shipment of 10,000 books was fi­nally driven there in cargo trucks. A celebration ser­vice was held in December 2015. Hal­lelu­jah! It was a long road, in more ways than one, but God was faith­ful and used the prayers of many peo­ple. Pray for a great har­vest for God’s king­dom among the Bas­keto through God’s Word. Pray that they will tes­tify with the prophet Je­re­miah, “When I dis­cov­ered your words, I de­voured them. They are my joy and my heart’s delight … ” (Je­re­miah 15:16, NLT).

The Bible translation team spent more than 20 years working on the Basketo New Testament. Though the translation and printing processes proved to be long and arduous, abundant spiritual fruit was evident. Praise God that in early 2016 ten thousand completed Basketo New Testaments arrived in Ethiopia! Today more than 94% of the Basketo community identify as followers of Jesus, and they have even begun sending people to minister to other language communities.

Blessed be God!!

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Tolu