THE WORD AT WORK Issue 199 – Winter 2012

The drum beats roll out across the island. The festively-dressed people gather. Then, the local chief and bearers appear carrying a box of Bibles in a specially-prepared yam house on their shoulders. The emotion becomes immense. The crowd breaks out in singing and dancing. The Kiriwina Bible is here!

Photo Credit: Doug Lawton

It’s been fifty years since Australian missionaries Ralph and Margaret Lawton first arrived on the island of Kiriwina, in the Trobriand Islands.

Right from the start Ralph recognised that new Scriptures were urgently needed for the Kiriwina people, to replace outdated Scriptures which had first been published in the early 1900s.

Chief Togarai and bearers carrying a box of Bibles in a specially-prepared yam house.

Join TV journalist Joy Reid as she shares her experience on the Trobriand Island of Kiriwina in Papua New Guinea. After more than 50 years of work, the people of Kiriwina receive their first full Bible in their heart language.

Watch the video as TV Journalist Joy Reid shares her experiences of the launch.

Living along the banks of the Orinoco River in Venezuela are the Piaroa people. They are a subsistence hunting and fishing people, renowned for their extraordinarily peaceful and egalitarian society. They first received the New Testament in the 1970s, but with the passing of time the language has become outdated and so a new translation of the New Testament is underway.

Piaroa church leaders with old copies of the New Testament, all that is now available of the 1970s translation.

Nestled in the eastern reaches of the Himalayas is India’s picturesque state of Sikkim.

Around ten languages are spoken by the 600,000 residents who live there, including Lepcha which is the language of the oldest inhabitants of the region, and which has been in decline for some years.

Lepcha Christians in a village in Sikkim State, India.

In days gone by translation work was carried out by missionaries, but today the work is done by indigenous translators. “Training the translators” is now a key aspect of the support that the United Bible Societies provides to indigenous groups, who want to begin a Bible translation. In the Americas, for example, there are now two translator training programmes – one in Costa Rica and one in Peru.

Members of the Chol Bible translation team, one of Mexico’s indigenous language groups, who received training from the United Bible Societies.

Two day’s drive south of Mexico City, in a small mountain village high in the remote regions of Quetzaltepec, speakers of the Mixe language wait eagerly for members of the Bible Society translation team to arrive.

These young Mixe girls speak the Ayuk dialect. They are one of seven Mixe-speaking groups who are still waiting to receive God’s Word in their heart language.

For Sinat and her family, who live in Cambodia, there seemed to be no way out of the poverty that they had always known. But there was one “option” which was readily available. Skipping school, Sinat began trafficking drugs. Things seemed to be going fine, until one day Sinat was arrested and sentenced to two years in Pusat Prison, one of Cambodia’s most notorious prisons. She was only 18 years old.

Former drug trafficker Sinat’s life was changed forever when she received a Bible in prison and committed her life to following Jesus.

Congratulations to Caitlin Finlay, 19, and Julia McIntosh, 18, who joined Bible Society’s Flying Bibleman ministry visiting remote Aboriginal communities in Australia’s Outback, in May 2012.

Mission Adventurers Julia McIntosh (left) and Caitlin Finlay.

A love of flying and a call to bring Bibles to remote Outback communities are both vital prerequisites for Australia’s Flying Bibleman. Born of the vision of pioneer pilot, Trevor Booth, in 1966, the Flying Bibleman ministry now stretches from Broome in the west, throughout the Northern Territory, and to the northern communities of South Australia, Far North Queensland and the Torres Strait. It’s an area covering over three million square kilometres or 40 percent of Australia’s land mass.

The community celebrated when speakers of the Djambarrpuyngu language received the New Testament on Elcho Island, off the coast of Arnhem Land, in the Northern Territory, in June 2008.

It was 1945, and Len Harris was a lone missionary in Australia’s remote Northern Territory.

Len spent his time travelling between Aboriginal communities, encouraging the small number of Christians and baptising new converts. But Len was frustrated by the large number of Aboriginal languages, and the sheer challenge of communicating the Gospel to the Aboriginal people.

Thanks to the work of pioneering translators, such as Len, Grace and Bidigainj, Aboriginal children such as these are now able to have access to the Bible in their heart language.