ELKHART, Indiana (Mennonite Mission Network) – Qom* Christians in the Argentine Chaco celebrated last December, with music, dancing and praise, the arrival of the complete Bible in their mother tongue. Three months later, their northern brothers and sisters also rejoiced in the beauty of God’s word in the Qom language at the Mennonite Church USA offices in Elkhart, Indiana, during a meeting of the board of directors.
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Mar. 23, Lois Buckwalter, Byrdalene Horst, Gretchen and Keith Kingsley, and Mattie Marie Mast, all former fraternal workers** among the Qom people, read some of their favorite portions of Scripture.
Gretchen Kingsley read from the last two verses of Proverbs 31: “The woman who fears the Lord is worthy to be praised. Give her a share of the fruit of her hands and let her works praise her in the city gates.” She chose these verses because she believes that the Bible can help restore dignity to Qom women, a topic Mennonite workers frequently emphasized in Bible circles. This kind of biblical study gathers a community around an open Bible. After the reading of a passage, people draw from their own spiritual experiences to share what God’s word is for them in their particular culture and context.
“Before Christianity, women were quite equal to men. As the Spanish culture moved in, women lost their place and their voice in many ways, and so I felt it was important to lift up the women and encourage them,” Gretchen Kingsley said.
Byrdalene Horst said she chose a passage from Ruth for two reasons. First, because Ruth was a good friend to her mother-in-law, which is unusual in many places in the world, and, second, because Horst focused much of her teaching in the Chaco on the theme of friendship.
Despite the passing of Albert Buckwalter (2004) and Willis Horst (2013), their memory was vividly evident in the celebrations on the two continents. These men helped lay the foundations of what came to be known as a “ministry of presence.” This way of being missional has become a hallmark of Mennonite Mission Network’s ministry.
Buckwalter, husband of Lois, worked with the first Qom translators to put their language into writing, develop a dictionary, and begin a Bible translation. Horst, husband of Byrdalene, lectured extensively about a ministry of presence and co-authored Misión Sin Conquista (Mission Without Conquest) that will soon be available in English.
Richard and Ruth Anne Friesen worked with the revision of the Qom New Testament and preparation of a study guide from 2004, until Richard’s death in 2010. Richard was buried in a Qom cemetery in San Carlos, among the people he loved so dearly.
Barry Bartel, member of Mission Network’s board of directors, spoke of how the work of the Mennonite team among the Qom people had a great influence on his own sense of mission and service. One of the gifts that Willis Horst gave to mission was that God redeems each person’s story and each culture’s story, instead of insisting that those in other cultures accept “our story,” Bartel said.
Before the new version of the Bible was published, the Qom people had about two-thirds of the Old Testament in the “Short Old Testament” and the entire New Testament in an older spelling style.
“Having the whole Bible brings esteem,” Byrdalene Horst said. “Especially since this translation was done by a team of Qom translators making the decisions themselves.”
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She described the work sessions with the Qom translators gathered around the computer discussing different versions of a given text in Spanish, and then what was already in the previously translated Qom Bible. Then, they would choose the Qom phrase that best expressed the concept.
“It was challenging for the Qom translators, but also really exciting. So, this translation is really their work. It is not an outsider that wasn’t born there doing it for them. That’s part of the pride of this text,” Horst said.
Luis Acosta, an Argentine member of the Mennonite team in the Chaco, worked with four Qom translators to complete the Old Testament. According to Acosta, having a written language plays an important role in empowering marginalized people.
Gretchen Kingsley agrees. “It is a way to preserve the beauty of their God-given culture,” she said.
*Previously known in North American Mennonite circles as the Toba people.
**About 60 years ago, members of the Mennonite team in the Chaco abandoned the concept of a mission compound and moved into indigenous neighborhoods to walk alongside their Qom brothers and sisters in Christ. They prefer to call themselves “fraternal workers” to distinguish their way of being in mission from a Western-centric mission model.
