Millions of citizens in Central Asia and the Caucasus Mountain region can now read Seventh-day Adventist books in their local languages.

“Our pastors and members were begging for materials in other languages, but we had nothing to give them,” says Wilmar Hirle, who directs publishing for the Adventist Church in the Euro-Asia region. “So we set a big goal last year: to translate at least three books for each of these eight countries where Russian is not the major tongue. We didn’t even know where we would find translators in some countries. But somehow, with many miracles, we reached the goal and even surpassed it. Many of the books are already printed.”

During the past nine months, Adventist books on health, family and spiritual topics have been translated into the dominant languages of Armenia, Georgia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan. Until now, the church in Euro-Asia had printed most books only in Russian, Ukrainian or Moldovan.

Most people in the former Soviet nations can understand some Russian, but that is changing as new generations grow up speaking the original national languages of Central Asia and the Caucasus region.

Nadezhda Devyatkina, director of publishing for the church in Central Asia, says that more than 30 percent of the nearly 55 million people who live in that territory do not read Russian. “We have two urgent needs,” she says. “One is for literature in local languages, but the other is for literature evangelists who can speak these languages.”

Hirle says the next step will be to continue translating other books and to develop new materials that more precisely meet the needs of various people groups. “We need to do even more,” he says. “People need to read about God in the language that touches their hearts.”