Guyana Authorities Investigate Deaths of Two Wycliffe Missionaries

Wycliffe Bible Translators released a statement on 31st March, announcing the death of two American missionaries who had been found slain at a farm they rented in southwestern Guyana near the border with Brazil. Guyana police are now investigating the case while many residents of the San Jose district have speculated robbery as the likely motive.

Richard Hicks, 42, and his wife, Charlene 58, had been working for the Dallas-based Wycliffe Bible Translators and the Summer Institute of Linguistics in Florida since 1994.

On Wednesday 30th March evening, the Hicks' bodies were founded outside their burned home. Deputy Police Chief Henry Greene told the Associated Press that they were still not sure what exactly happened.

Kenneth Glover, a spokesman for the Guyana Bible College, said the Hicks were translating the Bible into the Wapishana language spoken by thousands of Indians in the border region, which is a cattle and peanut-farming region about 230 miles southwest of Georgetown, the capital.

According to a statement on Wycliffe, both missionaries’ grew up in missionaries’ families. Charlene is from Chicago. Rich, a Canadian, grew up in South Africa where his parents were involved in missions work. Rich began linguistics training in Dallas where he met Charlene in January 1990. The couple married two years later and they went to Guyana to help with language development and translation of the Scriptures into the Wapishana language. The couple did not have any children.