I could trust it!

an Audibible!

One afternoon, James, a Kamano-Kafe Bible translator, received a phone call from his cousin, an engineer with a master’s degree who worked at a big gold mining company. A fellow Kamano-Kafe speaker had recently come to visit his cousin and brought with him an Audibible, a hand-held, solar-powered audio player that held all of the translated Kamano-Kafe New Testament along with Genesis.

“Where did you get this?” James’ cousin had asked.

“The team of Kamano-Kafe translators had made it,” the man had responded.

As James’ cousin listened to the Scriptures being spoken in his own language, he was amazed. “I’ve read the English Bible and the Tok Pisin [Papua New Guinea’s trade language] Bible, and I’ve not been able to understand. I wasn’t ever able to comprehend all the meaning.

“But, when I heard the Scripture spoken in my own language, I knew I could trust it. These words, they contained all the meaning of the Bible, and it was in my own language! It touched my heart, and I’m so happy.”

James, who is working with his fellow Kamano-Kafe translators to translate the Old Testament, and his cousin talked for a while longer. “God is doing a good work with this!” the man exclaimed, “It’s good you keep working on this task! I regularly go to church and worship and listen to a sermon in English or Tok Pisin, but when I finally heard it in my own mother tongue, God’s Word touched me deeply. It took its rightful place inside me!”

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I originally wrote this article for The PNG Experience (the blog that chronicles translation and language work in Papua New Guinea). Over the next year, I'm planning stepping into the Kamano-Kafe team as translation adviser while the primary advisers are in the US on home assignment. Stay tuned for more Kamano-Kafe stories and videos to introduce you to these remarkable people!