Discovering the Botshabelo Mission and Gerard Sekoto

Today we visited this abandoned Lutheran Mission Station on a farm just outside Middelburg, established by Alexander Merensky and Heinrich Grützner of the the Berlin Missionary Society in 1865. The Mission specialised in training people in scripture in native languages. It was here in 1914 that the first complete translation of the bible in a native language (Sepedi) was completed. I think that is the language written around the chancel arch, a translation of John 14.6 : 

Tsela ke nna, le therešo, le bophelo. Ga go e a tlago go Tate ge e se ka nna  
“I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.”