A welsh girl, Mary Jones, had worked six years to save money to buy a Bible. She then heard that Rev Thomas Charles, the minister in Bala, Wales, a town 25 miles away, had a Welsh Bible for sale. She walked and arrived the next day but was told that the only copy left was promised to someone else. Because she was heart broken, Rev Charles sold her the Welsh Bible, and gave the other buyer an English Bible instead.
Four years later Rev Charles was in London. He spoke up for the need for the Welsh people for Scriptures. Rev Joseph Hughes, a minister in Battersea, was so moved that he initiated the establishment of the British and Foreign Bible Society in March 7, 1804, to distribute the Scriptures to people across the world.
It gathered momentum in tandem with missionary movement in the late 1800s, and similar societies were formed in Europe and USA. Now the Bible Societies all over the world has taken up the mission of translating, publishing and distributing Bibles all over the world. The Bible (in whole or in part) is now available in 2,303 languages, a mere one third of an estimated
6,500 spoken in the world. (Reference: Bible Society of Singapore. www.bible.org.sg)
