Latvian team celebrates final translation

The year 2021 is a landmark year for Entrust’s women’s ministry training, known as Sieviete sievietei, in Latvia. It’s the year in which a process 13 years in the making came to completion.

It started in 2008, when the Latvian Baptist Union’s women’s ministry translated Entrust’s Walking with Christ discipleship course into Latvian. Women’s ministry leaders took the course in Latvian and began to offer it to women in their churches. After completing WwC, many women wanted more.

At the request of the Latvian Baptist Union, teams of North Americans began to travel to Latvia to facilitate Entrust’s core modules. Facilitating Relational Learning (incorporating WwC) was offered in 2014, followed in subsequent years by Developing a Discerning Heart and Discovery Bible Study. All the study materials and the intensive training events were in English, meaning only women fluent in English were able to take part. Soon it became apparent that this training process needed to become Latvian, both linguistically and culturally.

Translation—along with some re-writing to make the content relevant to Latvian culture—editing and formatting of the module workbooks began. FRL was completed in 2017, DDH in 2019 and DBS in 2020. Then, at long last, in July of 2021, the fourth and final core module, Equipping Women to Serve, was finalized and put into print.

“We had a great team to accomplish these five courses,” says Lasma Asme, Sieviete sievietei director.

Fourteen team members had a hand in various aspects of translation and contextualization over the years of work.

The final translation is not the end of the story.

“Our vision is to equip as many women as we can to facilitate those courses in local churches,” Lasma says, adding that the desire is for “participants see new ways how to pass it on … new facilitators who can train others and make new facilitator generations!”

The vision continues. “We hope for online courses in 2022,” she says. “We hope for regional hubs (training centers in strategic parts of the country). We hope that God will continue this work. As Psalm 90:17 says, ‘May the favor of the Lord our God rest on us; establish the work of our hands for us—yes establish the work of our hands.’ “