Do You Speak Shona?

I have recently started volunteering as a Social Media Coach for the Billy Graham Evangelist Association. I documented my experience in this blog post entitled, “Are you afraid to share the Gospel?“. Today I had a unique question asked of me.

I had the opportunity to direct message with someone from Africa and she said it was difficult for her to understand what I was saying in English. I asked her what language she spoke and she said “Shona”. I had never heard of Shona so I looked it up and found it is the language spoken in Zimbabwe.

Normally, I would have just ended the conversation and asked for someone who could speak this language on our team, but I was thinking that probably no one on our team spoke Shona; most of our foreign language speakers are fluent in Spanish.

I then used Google Translate to translate from English to Shona. I then pasted it into the chat with this person and asked them in Shona if they could understand it. And she said “Yes”.

So we continued on back and forth from English to Shona and Shona to English and I used Google translate to do the translation.

Through this process I was able to share the Gospel with her in Shona. And do you know what? She prayed to receive Jesus as Lord and Savior! I then gave her some additional resources to grow in her faith.

Now this is the type of “Speaking in Tongues” that is really valuable for leading people to Christ!

Here are some screenshots of our interaction. I am “ROBERT” in this chat and I changed her name to “GUEST”. There is no personal information shared in this chat, just the basics of the Gospel and how to respond:

And here is how I used Google Translate:

God is good and is allowing Christians to share the Gospel around the world using these technology tools.

“Now to Him who is able to do far more abundantly beyond all that we ask or think, according to the power that works within us, to Him be the glory in the church and in Christ Jesus to all generations forever and ever. Amen.” (Ephesians 3:20-21)