Our mother tongue is the language we learned as kids from — you guessed it — our mamas. It is the language in which we think and pray and dream, and it is the language that touches our hearts and evokes emotions. It is the language in which the Word of God resonates...
What happens when a person dies? As any Kono person will tell you, when someone dies, there is the problem of blood. Not the blood of the person who passed away, but a blood sacrifice that is needed to ensure that the soul of the deceased will, indeed, make it to God....
It was Friday afternoon at the end of a long week. The air was deadly calm, so thick you could cut it with a knife, as the seven of us sat in a tiny room in a village house in Papua New Guinea. Every day, from early morning until late afternoon and even some evenings,...
We didn't know what was going on, really, but just decided we should get in line because that's what everyone else was doing, and deep down, no one really wants to look out of place, right? The smiling faces and the beat of the drums let us know that this was a happy...
“Where did this happen?” “Near Bethlehem.” “What kind of place is Bethlehem?” “A small village.” “What appeared in the sky?” “An angel.” Christmas was approaching, and the Apal people were about to hear Luke’s account of Jesus’ birth in their own language for the...
“She gave birth to her first son, wrapped him in cloths, and laid him in a manger — there was no room for them to stay in the inn.” (Luke 2:7 GNT) The Christmas story from Luke 2 seemed to be a reasonable place to begin translating God’s Word into the Apal language....
The Kawah people of West Africa have a proverb: “The elder knows a roasted peanut.” Though I don’t pretend to understand all this proverb’s nuances, I can tell you a couple of things about it. First, the Kawah people LOVE roasted peanuts! (So do I!) Peanuts play an...
How can you translate “one fifth” into a language that doesn’t have words for fractions? …
Your prayers make a difference!…
Those lists of unclean animals in Leviticus just about killed me. Like ‘rock badger.’ Do you know what the Samka call it? It’s a ‘boulder goat.’ Like I could ever have guessed that! …
An old man stormed in, and his angry words tumbled out. My husband and I were still new in this community and only…
A chicken is just a chicken until it becomes a symbol of God’s transforming work in the hearts of His people.…