Translation Has Begun

"Leave your country, your people and your father's household and go the land I will show you." These are the words that the Lord spoke to Abraham in Genesis 12:1, the very first verse we translated after coming here to Enga Province. As I (Adam) consider this verse, I realize that it is not only Abraham's story, but also our own. Just as God called Abraham, God called us to leave our country, friends, and family, and go to a place that He would show us. That was nearly four years ago. Now, that vision and dream has become a reality, and we are making steady progress on translating the story of Abraham into Enga. In fact, by the time we head back to Ukarumpa on September 10, we should have the story of Abraham just about ready for the translation team to test in their villages. God is good!

As I read Genesis 12:1 in Enga, I am surprised at how clear it sounds to me now, especially when I consider the literal back translation into English, which reads,

Lord Abram telling, "You of tribe and land and those leaving, I you land a show I will do that to go."

Enga sounded so backwards and foreign at first, but now a sentence Genesis 12:1 sounds quite natural. We are so thankful that God has given us all the tools and resources we have needed to get to this point, and we rest confident that He will continue to do so. We give him praise on this momentous occasion of actually beginning the work that we have spent so much time and energy preparing for.



Enga Cultural Show
The day after our arrival here in Enga, we had an opportunity to take the kids to the annual Enga Cultural Show. There were various groups from all over Enga Province who dressed in traditional clothing as they performed traditional songs and dances. People also did demonstrations of traditional ways of life including building houses and bridges from bush materials, making traditional wigs out of human hair, making stone axes, and even shouting messages just like they did long ago. In fact at one point, when one of the demonstrators say me, he started yelling out in Enga, "Kone epelyamo-ooo. Kone epelyamo-ooo. Ip-ooo. Ip-ooo." What he said was, "A white man is coming! A white man is coming! Come and see! Come and see!" This is exactly what people would yell out when foreigners with white skin first started coming to Enga Province. (In fact even today I often hear people saying the same sort of thing when I walk around town although they don't yell it out for all to hear like they did in times past.) Overall the show was quite an experience for the kids, who were often just as much of a spectacle as the performers since people almost never see foreign children in Enga Province.

Thank You
As we celebrate the beginning of our translation work, we want to take a moment to thank all of our faithful supporters. We could not do this without your prayers and support. You are a wonderful part of this great work that God is doing here among the Enga people of Papua New Guinea. Thank you!

The God Sacrifice

Papua New Guineans often talk about how God was in Papua New Guinea before any missionaries came. Enga is no exception, and God was literally in Enga for generations before the first contact with Christian missionaries.

When the Apostle Paul visited Athens, he found an altar with an inscription that said, “To An Unknown God” (Acts 17:23). Generations before the first missionaries came to Enga, the people of Enga also offered sacrifices to an unknown god.

In traditional Engan culture, most spirits were considered evil. However, during difficult times such as a draught or famine, some Engans would perform a ceremony called gote pingi, which literally means “doing god” or “doing the god sacrifice”. Men would go to a mountaintop and divide up a small piece of ground into sections. Each man would then steam-cook food in his section of ground using heated stones and leaves. While the food was cooking the men would go away.

Aipinimanda, the mountaintop where Engan
men did the god sacrifice (gote pingi).

By cooking the food on top of the mountain, the men attempted to please an unknown spirit or god with the aroma of the food. Their hope was that this unknown god would in turn bless them and help them through whatever challenges they were facing. When the men returned, they would look for signs in their section of ground to see if this unknown god had answered. If a man found a centipede, for example, it meant that he would have many children. If he found a snake, however, it meant that he would die soon.

When missionaries first came to Enga and spoke about God, the people of Enga were able to make a connection between the unknown spirit to whom they had been offering sacrifices and the God of the Bible. Over time, they began to learn that it wasn’t the aroma of their food, but the sacrifice of Jesus Christ that paved the way for God’s blessings.

Bible Translation Work Has Begun
In May, the Enga translation team completed five weeks of training. This culminated in a large parade and celebration in Wabag town to launch the Enga Bible translation project. The Enga Bible translation team is now busy drafting a translation of Genesis, chapters 12 through 21. This portion of the Bible is their assigned homework from the translation training they received, and it will give them a good opportunity to apply the skills that they have learned. Next week we are planning on returning to Enga for an extended stay to check and revise the translation draft of Genesis 12-21 and begin work on translating the book of Mark. After nearly four years of planning and preparation, it is exciting that the translation work is underway! Our hope is to finish the book of Mark in 2014 and distribute it in print and audio format to raise awareness for the project.

Adam's family visiting the people of Sakarip
in Enga Province.

Boyd Family Visit
We were wonderfully blessed to have Adam’s father, mother, sister, and niece visit for a few weeks in June and July. The highlight of the trip was visiting Enga Province, which required a ten-hour bumpy ride over the Highlands Highway with nine of us squeezed into a Land Cruiser. Adam’s family was amazed at the friendliness and hospitality of the Enga people. They had the opportunity to experience a mumu, which is a traditional way of steam-cooking food by placing heated stones in the ground, covering them with leaves, placing the food on the leaves, covering the food with more leaves, and then putting dirt on top to keep the heat inside. The Enga people were incredibly touched that Adam’s family would travel so far to visit them. Adam’s father was asked to speak at three different gatherings, and each time he shared with the people about God’s love. He told them that even though we live so far away and come from such different cultures that we are all part of God’s family.

InFocus Newsletter
A story from one of our previous updates about our time in the village of Immi was published in June in Wycliffe USA’s bimonthly newsletter InFocus. This newsletter is sent to the financial partners of Wycliffe. Click here to read more about it.

Enga Bible Translation Launch

"Rata tat tat…rata tat tat…rata tat tat…" We heard the drumming as the boys marched down the street to escort us to the launching of the Enga Bible Translation Project. I (Adam) along with two representatives from Newbreak Church in San Diego and two other expats watched in silent awe as the boys marched down the alley to the guest house where we were staying. A now growing crowd watched as they performed for us and then led us into the streets of Wabag town. As we turned a corner to enter the main part of town, we saw a line of ladies in ceremonial dress singing and dancing while rhythmically beating kundu drums.

As we waited for the parade to continue, church leaders from all of the denominations in Enga Province started falling in line behind us until there were more than a hundred people in the parade. After all of the churches arrived and took their place, we began marching through the heart of Wabag town with literally hundreds, if not thousands, of people looking on. As we walked I heard one of the pastors telling everyone in the crowds that all of the churches were partnering together to translate the Bible into Enga.

The parade led to a field in the center of town to a large stage that looked like an open house built on stilts. About fifty of us went on to the stage including the translation team and pastors from the various churches. After a time of worship, I was asked to get up and speak. I began telling the crowd a little bit about our story…in Enga. "We came to Papua New Guinea last year," I began only to be interrupted by thunderous applause. "Then we went to Madang to learn Tok Pisin" (more thunderous applause). The people were so excited to hear a foreigner speaking in Enga that they could barely contain their applause with each sentence I spoke. I kept it short and sweet (which was all that I could handle in Enga) and made a few remarks in Tok Pisin to introduce our visitors from Newbreak Church who had traveled all the way from America to take part in this celebration.

After some more speeches, I had the opportunity to play an audio recording of the story of when God tested Abraham (Gen 22:1-19). This was the story that we had translated during the five weeks of translator training that I had just completed along with a team of nine Enga speakers. It was the first time anybody had ever heard this story in Enga. I watched as people in the crowds nodded their heads up and down with a look of excited anticipation. The Word of God was so clear to them as they heard it in their own language. It was like they were sitting around the fire at night and hearing a story.

After the celebration, the church leaders gathered for a meal. One of the leaders stood up and said that the Enga people themselves needed to support this work financially, and he pledged 500 kina ($250) from his own church. Six or seven others stood up to make pledges, and by the time all was said and done, 2,700 kina ($1,350) had been pledged. That is equal to one person's average annual income here in Papua New Guinea. The overall cost of the work is far greater than what was pledged, but the desire of the churches to be involved financially shows just how much they value having the Word of God in their own language.

When the Enga Bible Translation Board told me that they were planning a celebration to launch the Enga Bible translation project, I was expecting a small gathering of fifty people. I was blown away by the parade through town that infinitely exceeded my expectations. I realized that this project is much bigger than the Boyd family or even the translation team. The Bible in Enga is something that God is very clearly orchestrating, and we are blessed that God has allowed us to be a part of what He is doing.

We would like to extend a special thanks to Dan Lamborn and Luke Shearer from Newbreak Church in San Diego for coming to Papua New Guinea to be a part of the Enga Bible translation launch. We also extend our heartfelt thanks to all of the folks at Newbreak Church who funded the five-week Translators' Training Course.

If you would like to listen to the story of when God tested Abraham in Enga, please click here.

Translator Training

Greetings from the town of Wabag, where just yesterday we officially launched the Enga Bible translation project (more about that next month)!

Over the past five weeks, we have been working with nine Enga speakers from five different denominations to learn about translation methods and principles. In practice work, we encountered challenges like how to translate 'the sea was rough' and 'he paddled a canoe'. These are foreign concepts since the Enga people live nowhere near the ocean and rarely ever see a canoe. After long discussions, we settled on 'the sea flopped around' (the same verb is used to describe what a fish out of water does) and 'he drove (literally: rope held) a ship'. The latter translation is based on the Engan practice of tying a rope to a fallen tree to drag (or drive) it to another location. The person holding the rope is the one who is 'driving' or 'steering' the tree. Enga people use the borrowed word 'ship' for any form of water transportation.

The Engan trainees enjoyed discovering their own language. While they are masters of speaking their own language, they have never really studied it before to determine what all of the little bits and pieces of their language mean. As they began considering the literal English translations of their language, they would laugh. They never realized just how different Enga is from English. Consider for example, the Enga translation of Genesis 22:2. The NIV Bible reads:

Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, whom you love—Isaac—and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a burnt offering on a mountain I will show you.”

The literal word-for-word Enga translation reads:

That after God speaking sitting, "Your son one only, Isaac, you love feeling that one taking Moriah land the to go. Having gone he sacrifice becoming burning let him be consumed by fire saying mountain a I show will do the on cook," said.

Or to put it in standard English grammar (which still sounds awkward):

After that, God while (literally: sitting) speaking said, "Taking your one [and] only son Isaac, that one, go to the land [of] Moriah. Having gone, [on] a mountain I will show [you], at that [place], cook [him] saying, 'burning [and] becoming [a] sacrifice, let him be consumed by fire."

As you can see, translation work is not easy! Please pray for us as we begin work on the Enga New Testament over the coming months, and praise God that the Enga Bible translation project is now officially underway!

To view a video of some highlights of the five-week Translators' Training Course, please click here.

Can Anything Good Come From Immi?

In the book of John, when Nathanael heard where Jesus was from he asked, “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” The Lord laid a similar question on our hearts during our time in the village of Immi.

"Can anything good come from Immi?” That is the question the Lord laid on my (Adam’s) heart one Sunday afternoon during our time in the village. Nathanael had asked a similar question when he heard where Jesus was from. “Can anything good come from Nazareth?” he asked. Surely the Messiah should come from a better place than that!

Immi is considered to be one of the worst villages in Enga Province, and the Engan people are one of the most feared and disliked people groups in all of Papua New Guinea. So there is not much of an expectation that anything good would ever come out of Immi. In Tok Pisin they would call it a ‘rubis ples’, which means ‘rubbish place’.

Yet the Lord gave me an opportunity to speak in the Immi Assembly of God Church on two occasions and share what He had laid on my heart to encourage them. I told the people that, just like Immi, Nazareth was considered a ‘rubbish place’, where nothing good ever happened. Yet just as God brought up the Savior of the world from Nazareth, God wants to bring up pastors and Christian leaders from Immi. I told the people that God wants to change Immi from a place where nothing good ever happens to a model village, where people live lives of love and forgiveness based on God’s Word.

On the occasions I had to preach in Immi and in Wabag town, we saw seven people respond to an invitation to give their lives to Christ, and I believe many more felt the tug of the Holy Spirit upon their hearts. And when the people have access to God’s Word in Enga, I know that God is going to continue to transform Immi, and all of Enga, into a place where good things happen!



A look at what we have been doing since our time in the village of Immi...

Language Learning

During our time in the village of Immi, we didn’t have any formal language learning sessions, yet we were learning all the time. In particular, a man named Sai came almost everyday to just sit and talk with us, and he almost always spoke to us in Enga. By the end of our five weeks, I (Adam) could understand most of what Sai said because he very patiently spoke slowly and clearly for me. Since returning to Ukarumpa, I have been able to build upon my informal learning from the village and make substantial progress toward understanding how Enga verbs are conjugated and how the syntax (or sentence structure) works.

Lae Regional Center Managers

Because we are new members of Wycliffe/SIL in Papua New Guinea, we were not able to vote at the biannual conference held in March. Instead, we managed the regional center in the coastal city of Lae for three weeks during the conference. As temporary managers we did not have a lot of duties, and so most of Adam’s time was spent on language learning. We enjoyed being in a bigger city where we could actually go to a sit-down restaurant and buy all sorts of western items at the grocery store! Yet on the trip back home, one of our greatest fears was realized when the Lae center pickup truck that we were driving back to Ukarumpa broke down in the middle of nowhere. We were stranded on the side of the road for three and a half hours before missionaries from the Ukarumpa Auto Shop came to rescue us. Praise God that a local man who sold diesel in a little roadside hut took care of us and even provided us some fresh coconuts so that we could stay hydrated in a very hot place!

Translators’ Training Course

We are now in the second week of the five-week long Translators’ Training Course (TTC). We have a team of nine Enga speakers participating in this training, where they are acquiring the basic tools and skills they need to translate the Bible. It is one of the largest groups ever to complete TTC. Adam is mentoring half of the group while Martha and Maniosa Yakasa (the lead Enga translator) are mentoring the other half. Please pray that the the trainees will be well-equipped to translate the Word of God into the Enga language.

Choosing Forgiveness

"I was just a little boy when they killed my father," Max told me during our five-week stay in the village of Immi. When I asked Max how old he was when his father was killed, he said that he wasn't sure. He doesn't know the date of his birth. All he knows is that he was about the age of our oldest son Jacob (who is seven) when his father was killed in 2000 during tribal fighting. That would mean that Max is now about 20 years old. According to traditional customs, Max now has the "right" to exact revenge upon the tribe who killed his father, and because he is such a big, strong, young man, those people are very much afraid of him.

Max, however, is a Christian. And as a Christian, he has forfeited his "right" to get revenge upon the people who killed his father. Instead, when he has seen people from that tribe out in the marketplace he has given them food as a way to let them know that he is not going to pay them back for what they did to his father. In Papua New Guinea, and especially among the Engan people, payback killings are a way of life, and so it is extremely rare for a person to forgive rather than to get revenge. But Max understands that revenge is not a "right" but a sin, and that it is his duty as a Christian to love and pray for his enemies.

Max became one of our closest friends during our five weeks in Immi. We saw him nearly every day, and we shared life together eating sweet potato, learning Enga, going on walks, and even going spear fishing. Max felt personally responsible for ensuring that we were safe during our time in Immi and would sometimes sleep outside of our house at night to make sure nothing happened.

Max is one of the few people in Immi who has had the opportunity to go to school and learn English. He dreams of one day becoming a pastor, and is trusting God to provide finances for him to finish his education. And so on our last Sunday in Immi, we were able to honor Max in front of the Immi Assembly of God Church and present him with an English Bible. It will be a challenge for him to understand it well because English is not his first language, but it is a start. I look forward to the day when I can present him with the Enga New Testament!

If you would like to hear Max sing an Enga worship song that he wrote, please click here. It is called Jisasa Epea, which means Jesus Came.

Warrior Turned Preacher

During our five weeks in the village of Immi, we met a man whose story helped us understand just how desperately the people of Enga need the Word of God in their own language. (For a lighter video of our five weeks in Immi, please click here.

I liked Joseph (not his real name) as soon as I met him. He came across as kind, quiet, gentle, respectful, and polite. Anytime we needed anything, he was always ready to help us. He quickly became one of our friends, and he always spoke to us in Enga. Yet he spoke slowly so that we could understand, and he always patiently listened and helped me (Adam) as I responded to him in my broken Enga.

Because of Joseph's personality, I was a bit shocked one day as we rode a bus into town and he pointed out to me villages in neighboring tribes that he had burned to the ground. From 1972 until 2005, Immi had been plagued by tribal fighting, and we came to discover that Joseph was their best warrior who had killed many people among their enemies. In Engan terms, he was "a cassowary" who always went to the "teeth of the fight" (or a hero who always fought on the front lines). He was even hired out across the province as a mercenary to fight battles for other tribes. Somehow during all of those years of fighting, Joseph was one of the few men from Immi who was not killed.

Then three years ago, when Darren Terros came to pastor the Assembly of God Church in Immi, Joseph began turning his life over to Christ. Pastor Darren is a well-educated man who could have chosen many more desirable church locations to become a pastor. But he felt the Lord leading him to Immi. On his first Sunday as pastor, there was only a small handful of people in attendance and the total offering was just eight toea (forty cents). Nevertheless, Pastor Darren served where he felt the Lord was calling him and began reaching out to people like Joseph. Now Joseph is one of the leaders of the Immi Assembly of God Church and is currently serving as the Assistant Pastor.

On our last Sunday in Immi, I had the privilege of presenting gifts to three of the men who had helped us, looked out for us, and become our good friends. Joseph was one of the three. I presented each one of them an axe or machete and a Bible. First I asked them to hold up the axe or machete. Then I addressed the entire congregation and said, "Before, your lives were based on weapons like these and you used them to kill and destroy." Then I had the three men hold up their Bibles and I said to the congregation, "Now your lives are based on the Word of God, and these axes and machetes that you used to use to kill and destroy will now be used to build new houses and build a new life based on the Word of God."

Joseph had never owned a Bible before. Because there is no Enga Bible yet, I gave him a Tok Pisin Bible instead. He can barely read it. He reads one word at a time with a long pause between each word as he tries to make out the next word. What he really needs is an audio recording of the Bible in Enga, which of course does not exist yet. Nevertheless, after the presentation he went to the pulpit to say a few words. As he tried to speak, tears came streaming down his face as he clutched his Bible and kept staring down at it. He had difficulty speaking because of the emotion he felt. It was evident that God was truly at work in his life. I felt incredibly privileged to be able to encourage him and to witness this moment in his life.

On the last day of our five weeks in Immi, Joseph accompanied us to the Wapenamanda airstrip to say goodbye. As we were riding in the car, he and some of the other men pointed out places along the road where fighting had happened and where people had been killed. Then as we passed a prominent Christian international school, Joseph told us that he had once burned down the school's administrative offices and had also at that time been planning on killing a couple of American students at the school.

I turned my head away and pretended not to understand what I was hearing. I felt anger welling up inside of me. It's one thing to burn down the houses of your enemies, but why in the world would you burn down the office complex of one of the best schools in the province and try to kill innocent children. I had heard on our previous trip to Enga about the school's offices being burned down. It was a very big deal when it happened. I couldn't believe that the man who did it was sitting in the car with me and had become one of my good friends. I wanted to lash out and say, "What did that school ever do to you that made you want to burn it down?" but I held my tongue and sought wisdom from the Lord as to how to respond.

Before long Pastor Darren, who was also in the car (and who was also very angry to learn about this), tried to help me understand the mindset of people like Joseph before he knew Christ. They knew nothing about God, and they had been around fighting all of their lives. They viewed tribal fighting much in the same way that Americans view war. In a war, you destroy any resources of the enemy that provide aid to the enemy. The school provided jobs for the neighboring tribe, including income that could be used to buy guns and bullets. Plus the school brought prestige to the tribe and the possibility of other development projects in the future. So in the pre-Christian Enga mindset, the obvious thing to do if you are at war is to burn down that resource so that it can no longer aid the enemy.

It was easy for me to overlook Joseph's past wrongs when I thought he was just burning down the bush houses of his enemies, but now I was truly conflicted in my spirit about how I should respond. But I slowly realized that when Christ died on the cross, he died for ALL of our sins, even the most heinous crimes, and that I too must forgive Joseph and embrace him as the brother in Christ that he had now become. So as we said our final goodbyes, I gave Joseph a hug as a way to let him (and myself) know that I cared for him and accepted him despite anything he had done in his past.

But Joseph is just one man among the more than 300,000 people in Enga province. How many more are out there who still know nothing about God and who continue to fight because it is the only way they know? How many more like Joseph struggle to read and understand God's Word in Tok Pisin? How many more lives would be changed if everyone had access to an audio recording of the Word of God in Enga? The need for the Word of God in Enga cannot be understated!