It was at Botshabelo that the missionary R.F Güstav Trümpelmann, with the invaluable assistance of his erstwhile student, Abraham Serote, translated the Bible into Sepedi (Northern Sotho). The publication in 1904 by the British and Foreign Bible Society of this combined effort was the first complete Bible in an indigenous language. Their work was interrupted by the Anglo Boer War, during which BMS missionary Daniel Heese was murdered by members of the Bushveldt Carbineers, an irregular regiment of the British Army.