On a cool and partly cloudy Saturday morning in one of the far corners of the earth, several hundred people gathered in plastic chairs on a brown lawn under the façade of an imposing church. Some had traveled thousands of miles by plane and then hours more by car; many had walked. Most were dressed in their very best: men in shirt and jacket, women in colorful fabrics, children in hand-me-down clothes or bright school uniforms. The smell of cooking fires was on the nose, and the sound of heavily amplified voices speaking or singing was in the ear. We had gathered in the village of Haubi, Tanzania, to celebrate.

Haubi is the heart of the Rangi homeland in central Tanzania. The Rangi are descended from Ethiopian warriors and water diviners who called this settlement the place where “water didn’t go out.” Today the tribe numbers near a million. Although I’m a little shady on details, my understanding is that most of the Rangi were “converted” to Islam around the year 1900 by people with guns. Even while the forces of darkness made these inroads, God was working on his own plan for the Rangi. In the village of Haubi, the seeds of faith had been planted by Italian Catholic missionaries, and these Rangi, using guns given to them by those same Catholics, fought to remain Christian. Almost a century later, a boy named Paul was born in that very place, in the least auspicious of circumstances. He would grow up nominally Catholic, and possess great intelligence, imagination and ingenuity; it was thought he would become a doctor.

Meanwhile, across the globe to the West, some people heard about the Rangi and prayed for decades that someone would translate the Scriptures into this boy’s native tongue. That prayer was answered on August 28, 1996, when Oliver and Dorothea Stegen, sent by the Anglican Church of Germany, arrived in Tanzania to begin the work. The work started with great difficulty, but the Stegens persevered and began seeing good fruit in 2002. At that point, a dictionary of the Rangi language was begun as well as discussions and scholarship for the orthography. Largely because the Stegens persevered through those first difficult and seemingly fruitless years, the Lord began to open doors for the work, and they eventually identified a young man by the name of Paul Kijuu—that same native Rangi speaker and brilliant mind—to begin the translation process.

I say brilliant mind, because unbeknownst to anyone, maybe even to himself at the time, Paul Kijuu was not a Christian. Sure, he was a cultural Christian, but it was not until he had been in the translation process for several years wrestling with the gospel concepts of the New Testament that Paul Kijuu was converted by the Holy Spirit through the very Scriptures he was translating and began to love Jesus. What had been a job for him became a ministry and a zeal and a passion! Paul Kijuu had been destined to be a doctor, but instead he became spiritual warrior for his people.

That quiet Saturday morning, August 30, 2024, in that far and remote corner of the earth, an event of great magnitude for the Kingdom of God took place. The work of the Stegens, the work of Paul Kijuu, the work of many SIL* missionaries, and the work, prayer, and gifts of hundreds and probably thousands of other people was brought to completion with the dedication of the Rangi New Testament and given to the Rangi people so that the Lord might use it for his purposes in this tribe, just as he did for Paul Kijuu. We there present rejoiced, as did the angels in heaven.

I invite you to click the link below to watch a five-minute video showing the dedication, and I invite you to take 30 seconds to pray for the Rangi people, that this Scripture would be placed into the hands of those who would read it and then go and bear fruit.

Rangi Dedication video

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*SIL Global, once known as Summer Institute of Linguistics, is a faith-based nonprofit that works with local communities around the world to develop language solutions that expand possibilities for a better life.