The Undelivered Letter
by George M. Cowan

Some years ago in Mexico my wife, Florrie, and I, part of the Mazatec New Testament team, moved to an isolated ranch to be free from the frequent distractions in the Mazatec village. Old Aniceta and her family graciously shared their home with us during the months of intensive revision work. Aniceta was like a mother to us.

When we left the Mazatecs for our annual teaching assignment at the Wycliffe Language Course in England, we often thought of Aniceta and prayed for her. One day we wrote her a letter to let her know we hadn't forgotten her and that we still loved her and were looking forward to returning soon. What a thrill it would be for the old woman to receive a letter for the first time in her life! We could just picture the excitement. She would talk about it for the rest of her days.

The First Letter in 70 Years

But the problem of how to get a letter to her arose. She lived away out in the mountains. The man in the town post office would not know who she was. After having lived almost seventy years without ever receiving a letter, there was little likelihood she would ask for one now.

But one of her sons, a close friend of ours, worked in the mail town. The man in the post office would know him. Because of our close friendship, we knew the son would consider it a privilege to deliver our letter to his mother.
Three months later when we arrived in the village, we visited our old friend. She was overjoyed to see us but didn't mention the letter, much to our surprise. Finally we asked if she had received it.

"Letter? What letter?" No, she hadn't received it.

Failure and Disappointment

Later we saw the son. Had he received our letter from England, written to his mother?

"Oh, yes. Several weeks ago."

"But we've just been to the ranch, and your mother said she didn't receive it," we said.

Chagrined, the son confessed he had forgotten to deliver the letter--it must still be in his town house. He emptied table drawers, looked under sacks of coffee berries, and moved mounds of corn in the search. He never found the letter.

Something deep down in our hearts hurt. We had counted on the son, but he had failed us--not maliciously, but through failing to give it immediate attention.

Still Waiting for the Message

Then we remembered that almost 2,000 years before, God had written a love letter to let people know He had not forgotten them. God faced a problem of delivery, too. So He sent it in care of us who know and love Him. But we've failed to deliver it--not maliciously, but by doing nothing about it. Because of our neglect, over 3,000 language groups still have not received the message of God's love that He sent to them.

That is why we as members of the Wycliffe Bible Translators and the Summer Institute of Linguistics do what we do the way we do. May God give us the personnel and the means to deliver God's letter to all those who still have not received it.
(The Word that Kindles by George M. Cowan, 1979, Epilogue.)

About Mother-Tongue Literacy

We believe a person best learns to read in his mother tongue. We are not alone in such belief. Margaret Mead has written: "A basic condition of successful literacy... is that it should be attained in the mother tongue. Literacy achieved in any language other than the mother tongue is like... to remain superficial and incomparable with the literacy of people who learned to read in the language in which their mothers sang them to sleep."
(The Word that Kindles by George M. Cowan, 1979, p 110.)