Empowered WorldView: Bringing God's Word To Life

By Njavwa Simukoko, Communications Specialist, Zambia

In Hamaundu, accessing a Bible in the local language required travelling nearly 45 kilometres to town, a cost few families could afford. Even when scriptures were preached in church, many community members listened without truly comprehending. Without both literacy skills and mother-tongue scriptures, God's Word remained out of reach for hundreds of families.

Pensina Sikaputa, 58, understood this gap deeply. "We only depended on what we were told," she says. "We could not prove it for ourselves because we did not know how to read." 

For years, her community longed for Scripture in a language they understood, yet even when World Vision's Zambia Bible Project finally distributed Bibles, a second barrier surfaced. Many parents held the Word of God in their hands but lacked the literacy skills to read it.

Pensina's own transformation began through World Vision's Empowered World View training and Bible distribution program. Where she once received Scripture passively, she now engages with it personally and teaches others to do the same. Today, as an Adult Literacy Reading Camp Facilitator, she guides five learners through the process of reading and understanding the Bible in Chitonga, their mother tongue.

"I am very empowered now, and I feel happy sharing the Word of God with my community," she says.

The change extends beyond reading skills. 

"God answered my prayer through World Vision," she says with a smile. "My thinking has changed. I am living my full life now." 

Her learners slowly sound out verses beneath the same acacia shade, their voices growing in confidence with each lesson. What once felt distant and secondhand is now deeply personal.

The community impact is visible. Families who previously relied entirely on others to interpret Scripture are now engaging with the Bible directly, building faith rooted in personal understanding rather than borrowed belief. For Pensina, this shift represents something far greater than education.

"My dream is that everyone reads the Word of God and knows the truth for themselves," she says, her eyes lighting up. "That is how faith grows."

Her story reflects a wider need across Zambia's rural communities, where language barriers and low literacy rates continue to limit access to Scripture. Addressing one challenge without the other leaves families only partially equipped.

With continued support, World Vision plans to expand literacy programs and Bible access across Hamaundu, ensuring more families not only receive the Word, but genuinely understand it. For women like Pensina, sitting beneath the acacia tree with her grandchild close and her Bible open, that understanding has already begun reshaping a community from the inside out.