Ever since Tyndale House Foundation began in 1962, it has been supporting the work of Bible translation. Among the earliest partners that the Foundation supported was Mundo Cristão, a Christian publishing house in Brazil founded by Peter Cunliffe. A close friend of Tyndale founder Dr. Ken Taylor, Peter agreed to the challenge of translating Living Letters into Portuguese. Eventually, the entire Living Bible was translated into Portuguese as La Biblia Viva. Through contacts Peter Cunliffe had with the Brazilian Department of Education, 20 million copies of La Biblia Viva New Testament were distributed throughout the public school system.

In 1985, Mark Carpenter succeeded Peter Cunliffe as the head of Mundo Cristão. Mark grew up in Brazil as a missionary child and speaks the language fluently. He attended college in the states and eventually came to work at Tyndale House Publishers for a time, serving in the Editorial department. 

According to Mark, Ken Taylor was personally invested in the success of Mundo Cristão. “Ken continued to be very interested in our success and progress in Brazil,” recalls Mark. “And so once in a while, he would just write us a letter and say, ‘Tyndale has come into some extra funds. Do you need some cash flow help?’ And, of course, we always needed cash flow help. And so once in a while, a very welcomed check would arrive from the Tyndale House Foundation at Ken’s initiative. So we felt very much taken care of in that sense by Tyndale House.”

In 2009, Mark met with Tyndale House Publishers to explore the possibility of developing a Portuguese translation of the New Living Translation (the successor to The Living Bible). Over the course of six years, Mundo Cristão gathered a group of six scholars to create the Nova Versão Transformadora (NVT), a modern Portuguese translation of the Scriptures. Mark shared with us that, “Tyndale House Foundation was very responsive to our requests for additional financial help with some of the production costs that we were having. We felt moral support from Tyndale House, particularly the support of the Bible department and their advice with the translation work. And we’re very fortunate and very grateful for the fact that people seem to love this translation. I mean, every week on Twitter, we’ll see all kinds of people commenting on it, and pastors that are now adopting it as their official translation on their churches.”

Your purchase of Tyndale House products makes grants to organizations like Mundo Cristão possible.