Seeing this as a further opportunity to spread the Gospel in Thailand, the bible-translating ministry had agreed to the university offer to train hundreds of students from the country to share in its ongoing translation work.
On its website, the Christian ministry has described Thailand as a 'strategic location' for Bible translation throughout mainland Asia, given its central location to hundreds of language groups still in need of the Scripture.
Bruce Smith, the president of the Bible-translation ministry, told Mission Network News that a lot of work was still awaiting them and he saw this project as a long-term investment.
"While there are several dozen translations that are in progress, there are a couple hundred more that haven't even been started, so this is a long-term investment. We're looking at this in terms of its value for the next 30-40 years," said Mr. Smith.
The ministry was asked to assist this partnership by renovating one of the school buildings for use in the linguistics education division. In addition to the construction, they would also be assisting the linguistics library with administrative support.