Also, Tanzania, is technically bilingual with official languages of English and Swahili and so the language of the church is English. But the reality is they are taught English in schools as I was taught German--- and we both speak it with the same fluency. So it's been hard to grow the church there. People would love to join, but can't speak English well enough. There is a great advantage to English as there are so many resources available in that language and there's no problem with translation errors. However, it really limits people's ability to join. We just learned that people can now be taught in Swahili in Tanzania. That's GREAT NEWS!
Friday, December 31, 2010
Good News!
We had two children of a family going to the temple. They needed to have their missionary papers processed in order to go to the temple and both be sealed to their parents and take out their own endowments. We learned yesterday that they had been assigned a mission and so could do all this! That was exciting and they processed the papers very quickly!
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Great news, indeed!
ReplyDeleteThis is great news, but we're surprised you haven't had it before. We have taught in Swahili in the Congo all along. The Book of Mormon is the only literature we've seen in Swahili, but lots of people in Congo are taught in Swahili. French is a blessing to them, but it's just like the English of your people, especially with women, children, people in more rural areas. All our meetings in Burundi are translated to Kirundi. In many areas in Congo they're translated to Swahili, Lingala, or Tshiluba. But happy that you have permission to teach in Swahili. It makes a big difference.
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