• Baylor alum and family take the Gospel to non-literate people around the world

    Jim Loker

    Tucked away in the mountains of countries such as Mexico and Guatemala, people groups speak languages known almost exclusively among their own tribes, because their language is only spoken — not written. For Baylor alum Jamie Loker, BSEd ’82, and her husband, Jim, the Biblical mandate to carry the Gospel into all corners of the world means overcoming the barriers of language to share the Bible with people like these, a mission they’ve lived for three decades now.

    Jamie knew the mission field was her calling from a young age. She followed in her parents’ footsteps to Baylor, where she majored in education and minored in Spanish. Sometimes, though, she wondered if the classes she was taking would really be useful in missionary life. She met Jim shortly after graduating while both were working for Wycliffe Bible Translators. They married and moved to Guatemala; there, their eyes were opened to the vast array of people groups that did not have a written language. Reaching them became the Lokers’ lives’ work.

    Jim and Jamie began working with non-literate groups in 1995, and have since translated the Bible in audio form into more than 90 different languages. Doing so, however, has been far from simple. Many of these groups, such as those in the mountains in Mexico, are isolated both linguistically and geographically, and often harbor a deep distrust of outsiders. The Lokers worked with pastors and other locals to begin to build rapport with the people they sought to reach. Eventually, as their relationship grew, they found people who could translate the language. Then they began the painstaking process of recording the Bible and sharing it via hand-held digital devices, CD players and low-frequency radio stations and radios. Often, the process took years, but it remains a worthwhile one. Jim describes the moment of seeing people hearing the Gospel in their language for the first time and seeing their hearts change as being like “hitting a home run in the World Series.”

    Jamie Loker

    After almost 30 years abroad, the Lokers today reside back in the United States, but their work continues; Jim is the executive director of Audio Scripture Ministries, and he and Jamie now serve those in the mission field who are carrying out the same work they did for so many years. Although glad to be closer to family and friends, Jamie says they miss the mission field and the way their unique calling was used to change lives. She also laughs as she remembers the days she thought her classes at Baylor might not be useful to her.

    “I wondered what the point was sitting in class sometimes,” she says, “but God has used every single class at Baylor out in the field. Every single experience I had there, he’s used to serve others in some way.”

    Sic ’em, Jim and Jamie Loker!