Captivating the children and adults. A story from Luxembourg

A story from our staff member in Luxembourg. He had the opportunity to speak with two pastors, both of whom had taken to using the Luxembourgish translation of The Lamb in their churches. Pastor Pol* and Pastor Pier* had taken to distributing copies of “D’Lämmchen” to their congregations and had received very positive feedback from them. In all, over the Christmas season, 11 boxes of D’Lämmchen were distributed! Pastor Pier is now considering following up by guiding his congregation through a study of the German version of “The Stranger on the Road to Emmaus”.

Pastor Pier shared the following story:

We started a Luxembourgish worship service this year (2012). Having taken the decision to begin such a service, we knew that we were unlikely to be able to put a structured children’s work in place straight away. We therefore decided to have a time in the service specifically directed towards the children and “D’Lämmchen” seemed perfectly suited to that. It had the additional advantage of the audio CD with the text read out which both saved us as foreigners (Pastor Pier is English) from having to read the text out loud and meant that the children would be able to understand the text well without any mispronunciations.

To keep the children’s attention, we prepared a PowerPoint presentation for each chapter with images reflecting the theme of the text, timed to change regularly. After each chapter we held a quiz based on the questions at the end of each chapter. We had small prizes for the first child to be able to answer correctly. The whole event captivated the children, who from their answers had clearly understood the text—much better than would have been the case if we had used any other language. The adults too, found it to be a very clear presentation of the Gospel message, which strengthened their faith by concentrating on the essentials. From all points of view, using D’Lämmchen proved very beneficial and we were very grateful to be able to use such an excellent tool.

There was a lady too, who just started attending this new Luxembourgish worship service and the moment she heard the simple and clear presentation of the Gospel through D’Lämmchen, she made every effort to have her husband come and listen to “The Lamb” sessions. That was exciting to see!

What great encouragement, especially for our translation team that worked hard to get The Lamb translated into Luxembourgish. While we create new resources in English first, we recognise how important it is to have these resources translated into as many languages as possible. Seeing the Luxembrougish edition of The Lamb being so well received, it reminds why we put in so many hours to get a translation just right. We want to ensure that the Gospel message is clear in every language. Thank God that we can see fruit from our labors.