Bible Project

Hello, my name is Jeff Fromholz. My family and I have been missionaries in Brazil since 1997, planting churches and pastoring. Almost eight years ago we took on a project to work on a new translation of the Bible in Portuguese. Had I known what I was agreeing to, I may have balked. But God is funny that way. He just asks us to do something without giving us any of the details and we either obey or not. Fortunately we said yes and started this incredible journey and dream of a Bible in Portuguese, faithful to the original, yet in the common man’s language. There are already a few translations in print in Brazil, but you are forced to choose between a good yet unreadable (think King James, understanding that most of Brazil is semi-illiterate) or a very, and I emphasize very, loose translation that they can understand. As such we do see the importance of staying faithful to the Greek, but the need for it to be understandable. Thus, eight years.

We are currently finishing the New Testament and will hopefully send it to be printed soon. One of our other purposes is to have it be affordable. Books here, and especially Bibles, are very expensive. A Bible on average costs about 1/10 of a minimum salary, that is, about $30. Which is really strange considering that it is about the same price for one in the States where the minimum wage is considerably higher than $300. So we are teaming up with a publisher here that shares the same belief with us that the Bible is not a book to be profited off of. Our hope is to be able to give away a portion of the printing and sell the rest for about $5 apiece. A minimum printing will cost about $50,000, but God has shown us time and again that He is bigger than any sum.

We thank God for all of those that He has sent alongside of us to make this dream a reality. May His name be known and glorified through this project.

Jeff