word alive magazine - fall 2015 - wycliffe · 2 word alive • fall 2015 ... “until you can read...

Fall 2015

Wycliffe Bible Translators of Canada

7,000 Words in 10 Days + Ears That Hear? + Unexpected Weapons Against Human Trafficking

A multi-language Bible translation effort is helping villagers of Cameroon’s Ndop Plain see a previously “foreign” Jesus as their countryman.

CHANGE ON THE PLAIN

2 Word Alive • Fall 2015 • wycliffe.ca

Foreword

Waking Up to God’s WordDwayne Janke

In Others’ Words“Until you can read the story of Adam and Eve, of Abraham and Sarah, of David and Bathsheba, as your own story . . . you have not really understood it. The Bible . . . is a book finally about ourselves, our own apostasies, our own battles and blessings.”

—Frederick Buechner (1926-), Presbyterian minister, theologian and author, in Now and Then

Fall 2015 • Volume 33 • Number 3Word Alive, which takes its name from Hebrews 4:12a, is the official publication of Wycliffe Bible Translators of Canada. Its mission is to inform, inspire and involve the Christian public as partners in the worldwide Bible translation movement.Editor: Dwayne Janke Designer: Cindy Buckshon Senior Staff Writer: Doug Lockhart Staff Writers: Nathan Frank, Janet Seever Staff Photographers: Alan Hood, Natasha Schmale

Word Alive is published four times annually by Wycliffe Bible Translators of Canada, 4316 10 St NE, Calgary AB T2E 6K3. Copyright 2015 by Wycliffe Bible Translators of Canada. Permission to reprint articles and other magazine contents may be obtained by written request to the editor. A donation of $20 annually is suggested to cover the cost of printing and mailing the magazine. Donate online or use the reply form in this issue.Printed in Canada by McCallum Printing Group, Edmonton.Member: The Canadian Church Press, Evangelical Press Association. For additional copies: [email protected] To contact the editor: [email protected] For address updates: [email protected]

Wycliffe serves minority language groups worldwide by fostering an understanding of God’s Word through Bible translation, while nurturing literacy, education and stronger communities.

Canadian Head Office: 4316 10 St NE, Calgary AB T2E 6K3. Phone: (403) 250-5411 or toll free 1-800-463-1143, 8:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m. mountain time. Fax: (403) 250-2623. Email: [email protected]. French speakers: Call toll free 1-877-747-2622 or email [email protected]

Cover: Two women stroll home near sunset after collecting firewood and plantains on the Ndop Plain of Cameroon, Africa. In this region, mother-tongue Scriptures in multiple languages are showing villag-ers that Christianity is not a white man’s religion.

Photograph by Natasha Schmale

As the Sunday morning service moved along at Mbamong Baptist Church in the village of Bambalang, Cameroon, I noticed a young woman standing behind the congregation. The pony-tailed woman

(an usher, as I discovered later) carefully surveyed those in attendance. Her eyes scanned the 80 people listening to Pastor Pius Mbahlegue as he delivered his sermon in the Bambalang mother tongue, while the bright morning sunshine outside pushed the mercury towards another near 30-degree day this past January.

Every so often, the woman’s gaze zeroed in on a lowered head with slumping shoulders. Then quietly, she strolled over to the dozing man or woman and gently tapped them on their shoulder until they woke up. If the person sleeping was seated beyond the usher’s reach, she got the attention of a nearby worshipper and pointed to the dozer as a target for tapping.

I whispered to Wycliffe’s Dan Grove (supervisor of the Ndop Cluster translation, literacy and Scripture-use initiative, featured in this issue) that I have never seen church ushers designated to wake up sleeping people during a sermon. Grinning, he informed me that when he and his wife Melody first began serving here, the usher was equipped with a long stick!

Fortunately, dozing off in church is becoming a lot rarer in Ndop area churches.

As I talked to local pastors and Wycliffe personnel serving in the Ndop Cluster, they shared the same observation. People attending church are more alert and more engaged when sermons are preached from newly translated Scriptures in their mother tongue.

And they are more responsive. Dan recalls several years ago when he was helping to train Pastor Pius and Pastor Novethan Shanui so they could translate God’s Word for their own Bambalang people. After translating the Christmas Story from Luke, the passage was read in church.

“All of a sudden, everybody laughed,” recalls Dan. “And we thought, Oh, man, we’ve messed something up. This doesn’t really work well, or something’s wrong.”

After the service was over, Dan asked Novethan what was the matter with the draft translation. Why did it prompt laughter from the first-time hearers? The pastor said nothing was wrong. In the verse where Joseph and Mary put Jesus in a manger, the translators had used a more meaningful cultural equivalent for the Bambalang people who don’t raise cattle: Baby Jesus was laid in a kind of trough where salt is offered to sheep.

“They laughed because they understood it. All these years, they had been hearing about a manger [in English Bible versions] and didn’t know what a manger was. For the first time, really, the Scripture was theirs.”

The moral to these stories? It is better to laugh in church with understanding and appreciation, than sleep because of clouded or zero comprehension. Bible translation is key!

Now, on the practical side, I wonder if I should lobby for ushers in my church to wake up dozers?

“They laughed because they

understood it. . . . For the first

time, really, the Scripture

was theirs.”

mailto:[email protected]





https://www.wycliffe.ca/

3Word Alive • Fall 2015 • wycliffe.ca

Contents

Features Stories by Dwayne Janke and Nathan Frank Photos by Natasha Schmale

6 Movie Night in Bambalang Through the Luke film, a previously “foreign” Jesus comes to villagers as a countryman speaking their language.

12 Group Mentality Wycliffe personnel share their expertise with locals in a seven-language, simultaneous Bible translation effort gaining momentum in northwest Cameroon.

20 Flames Turned to Hope In the midst of war, Pastor Pius Mbahlegue courageously brought the peace of Christ to his village.

26 Whole-hearted Commitment Trusting God’s radical call of obedience leads a couple to linguistics work in Cameroon’s Ndop Plain.

30 Bright Future for the Next Generation Mother-tongue schooling is setting the foundation for the youth of Cameroon’s Ndop Plain.

Departments2 Foreword Waking Up to God’s Word

By Dwayne Janke

4 Watchword 7,000 Words in 10 Days

33 Beyond Words Ears—or Ears That Hear?

34 A Thousand Words On the Outside Looking In

35 Last Word Unexpected Weapons Against Human Trafficking By Roy Eyre

6

12

20

26

30


ITALYSPAIN

PORTUGAL

TURKEY

GREECE

CYPRUS

KENYA

ETHIOPIA

ERITREA

SUDAN

EGYPT

NIGERMAURITANIA

MALI

NIGERIA

SOMALIA

NAMIBIA

LIBYA

CHAD

SOUTH AFRICA

TANZANIA

ZAIRE

ANGOLA

ALGERIA

MADAGASCAR

MOZAMBIQUE

BOTSWANA

ZAMBIA

GABON

CENTRAL AFRICAN REPUBLIC

TUNISIA

MOROCCO

UGANDA

SWAZILAND

LESOTHO

MALAWI

BURUNDI

RWANDA

TOGO

BENIN

GHANA

IVORY COAST

LIBERIA

SIERRA LEONE

GUINEA

BURKINA

GAMBIA

CAMEROON

ZIMBABWE

CONGO

EQUATORIAL GUINEA

WESTERNSAHARA

DJIBOUTI

SENEGAL

GUINEA BISSAU

Canary IslandsJORDAN

ISRAEL

LEBANON

KUWAIT

QATAR

BAHRAIN

U. A. E.

YEMEN

SYRIA

IRAQIRAN

SAUDI ARABIA

MALTA


Continuing on After Tragedy

As the team approaches the end of translating the Old Testament into Kifuliiru, it is encouraged by the impact

Scriptures are already making among the 400,000 speakers.The New Testament has been feeding the people since it

was released in 2000 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Africa.

“Many are already saved through the Word of God transmitted in the language of the heart,” reports the team.

“Especially our old people who do not understand other languages. We have young men doing open-air and one-to-one evangelism producing similar results.”

Church choirs everywhere are singing Kifuliiru hymns, the team adds.

“Our language was in danger of being gobbled up by Swahili and French. Now it has life. Praise God!”

7,000 Words in 10 Days

A new way to gather many words in a short time is being used to produce first-ever dictionaries in language groups,

a key product of Bible translation and literacy programs.Conceived by Ron Moe, a linguistics consultant with SIL

International (Wycliffe’s key partner organization), Rapid Word Collection (RWC) is a brief two-week workshop that usually collects 7,000 words or more. It brings together diverse groups of mother-tongue speakers—men and women, seniors and young people.

RWC is based on the idea that humans organize words in their minds in a giant network of relationships, clustering them as groups around topics, called “semantic domains.” RWC workshops use a series of questionnaires, which prompt participants to note words in their language that are related to 1,800 different domains. In the household equipment domain, for example, questions are asked about objects used for various functions in the home.

In Burkina Faso, the Kaansa translation and literacy team (pictured below) surpassed its 7,000-plus word goal, thanks to several dozen participants in a 10-day workshop. The team hopes to offer printed copies of a completed dictionary at a ceremony to launch the Kaansa New Testament, tentatively planned for later this year. The Kaansa dictionary will help sustain the language, support the creation of literacy materials, and bridge generations as young people learn traditional terms and concepts.

Kifuliiru Scriptures Embraced

Watchword

The Wapishana New Testament project continues in Guyana, despite the tragic deaths of Wycliffe translators

Richard and Charlene Hicks in 2005 (see story in Word Alive, Spring 2014). Faith Comes by Hearing, a partner organization of Wycliffe, has recorded the Wapishana New Testament in the South American nation. Before the recorded New Testament is distributed to Wapishana villages (such as those pictured below), people will be trained to lead Bible studies.

Stuart Showalter

Natasha Schmale



Hope at the MorgueAIDS-awareness Book Gets Signed

The New Testament in the Oku language ministered to hundreds

of mourners at a morgue in Cameroon, Africa, recently. Following the local custom, they were waiting for the release of the body after a colleague of Wycliffe’s David Anderson lost his wife.

The Oku Scriptures were read by one of the women attending so others could listen and be encouraged. The woman had never read in her Oku language before but agreed to try.

“As we sat under the overhang outside the mortuary,” Anderson recalls, “she had her first literacy lesson in Oku.”

The woman began by reading 1 Corinthians 15:20, which in English says, “But in fact, Christ has been raised from the dead. He is the first of a great harvest of all who have died” (NLT). It was a great encouragement to the mourning Christians gathered around—a reminder of eternal hope in Christ.

The woman then read Revelation. 7:17: “For the Lamb on the throne will be their Shepherd. He will lead them to springs of life-giving water. And God will wipe every tear from their eyes” (NLT).

Finishing the verse, she said, “Reading this took away my tears.”

As sign language Bible translation efforts for the Deaf around the world continue to grow, translation of

other important materials is also advancing. In Africa, for example, staff from Wycliffe Benin

and the Global Sign Languages Team (GSLT) of SIL International (Wycliffe’s key partner agency) recently taught translation principles to Deaf translators from Benin and Togo (pictured below). To gain hands-on experience at the workshop, participants translated Kande’s Story, a popular AIDS-awareness book created by SIL (see Word Alive, Summer 2012) for use among minority language groups.

The Deaf in the two African nations can understand each other well, but there are some important vocabulary differences. As key terms from Kande’s Story were translated at the workshop, it was discovered the Deaf in each country use a different sign for AIDS. In Togo, the Deaf use the generic word for “illness” and modify that sign with the hand shape indicating “s,” the first letter of the French term for AIDS (SIDA). The sign used in Benin is based on the international symbol for AIDS, a red ribbon. Since this term is central to the story, the group decided that two separate translations were needed.

It’s estimated that up to 400 sign languages are used by the Deaf throughout the world.

Word Count2014Commemorative year for SIL, key partner organization of Wycliffe, dedicated to training, language research translation and literacy.

80The number of years SIL has been serving minority language groups.

1934 Year of SIL’s first linguistic training camp.

1,600Number of language groups with which SIL personnel have worked.

34,000Documents containing language and culture data in SIL’s online archive (representing 51% of the world’s languages).

Source: SIL Annual Update 2014

SIL Photo

Michael Janke


http://wordalive.wycliffe.ca/

Movie Night in Bambalang

Like a glowing orb of glass in some fiery furnace, the late afternoon sun hovers in the smoke and dust over the horizon of the Ndop Plain in northwest Cameroon, Africa. Far above the village of Bambalang, this light of the day’s slow farewell casts an orange-red tint on the

vapour trail of a jet. In that tube of transport at 10,000 metres, passengers are no doubt peering into monitors on the seat backs in front of them. They are watching one of dozens of movies or TV shows, available in multiple languages.

Here on the ground, locals will soon gather for a movie of their own. But unlike the wide-ranging video menu in the soaring airplane, this flick is the only one available in these villagers’ mother tongue (which takes the same name as their village).

On this movie night in Bambalang, the Luke film will tell the story of Jesus.

Pastor Novethan Shanui, from the Bambalang Bible translation team, has shown the film about 10 times since it was released in 2013, as have others numerous times. On this Thursday evening, Novethan leads the set up and projection of the movie. It visually portrays the entire Gospel of Luke, a four-hour (originally English) epic, from which the more well-known “JESUS” film was produced.


Through the Luke film, a previously “foreign” Jesus comes to villagers as a countryman speaking their language.

By Dwayne Janke Photographs by Natasha Schmale

Movie Night in Bambalang

A crowd watches the Luke film outdoors along the village of Bambalang’s main street in Cameroon. Portraying the entire Gospel of Luke, the movie is an engaging evangelism and discipleship tool because the narration and voices of characters, including Jesus (inset in larger photo), are in the local people’s mother tongue.


The thoughtful, 37-year-old pastor has picked a strategic spot beside Bambalang’s main road. Tonight’s theatre is by a compound of mud-brick homes, a short distance from the congregation Novethan pastors—Central Baptist Church, of the Cameroon Baptist Convention denomination—and down the street from the local bar and brothel.

More Public locations“We projected it one time outside of our church, because some people have been skeptical of coming inside the church,” explains Novethan, earlier in the day during a break from checking the Bambalang draft translation of the New Testament. Showing the film in neutral, more public, locations is now the norm.

Novethan and others from his church choose the outside wall of a house as backing for a bedsheet screen, pulled tight by nylon ropes. He slides an electrical cord through the wall’s window towards a power plug inside the house. Ndop Cluster supervisor Dan Grove (see related story, pg. 12) helps hook up a Toshiba laptop computer to a white Epson video projector and large, black speakers. Meanwhile, young women carry 24 wooden benches from their church, for seating on the hard dirt ground that has been swept clean by a woman with a grass broom. She also trims large, overhanging leaves that might obstruct the view for those in the back rows. Someone tests the microphone: “The Lord is good. All the time!”


(LEFT, ABOVE) Young women carry benches from their Central Baptist Church for seating at the outdoor theatre location. (ABOVE) Men from the church help Pastor Novethan Shanui hang up a bedsheet screen on a home’s outside wall for the Luke film’s projection. (RIGHT) With the sun setting, Pastor Novethan boots up a laptop computer, which is connected to a video projector. He plays some Christian music videos that attract a crowed before the main feature begins. (FAR RIGHT) Public viewings are not the only way to see the Luke film in the Bambalang language. The movie is also distributed for more private use on cellphones, which are widely used on the Ndop Plain.


“So these are the types of things that they are teaching in church. Then why would I not want my children to be church people?”

challenging ProductionThe Luke film for the 25,000 speakers of Bambalang is the first in an eventual 10 languages of the Ndop Cluster slated to get the movie after the Gospel of Luke is translated in each one. Producing the film in such languages is no simple chore.

“It went well, but it was more complicated and challenging than I thought it would be,” recalls Novethan.

Local churches—Baptist, Presbyterian, Full Gospel, Apostolic and Catholic—were asked to choose 40-plus people to be the voices for each of the different characters in the book of Luke. Sentences of dialogue from the translated book in Bambalang were extracted and organized by character.

A media team from the Cameroon branch of SIL International (Wycliffe’s key partner organization) came to Bambalang for an audio recording session. They created a studio inside a bedroom of the large column-fronted house owned by the landlord from whom Ndop cluster supervisor Dan Grove and his wife Melody rent their house. A small cubicle was made with mattresses to serve as sound-proofing. During the recording, a prompter read to each person what they should say, so they would not sound stilted.

beyond the audioIt took about three weeks to do the recording and a few months for it to be finalized in the U.S. The goal was to have words lip-synced as closely as possible to match the mouth movements of actors speaking English in the original film.

Editing didn’t just involve the audio, notes Novethan. In one scene, Jesus wears a traditional Jewish phylactery, a small leather box containing strips of parchment inscribed with biblical quotations. The few Bambalang speakers first reviewing a rough cut of the film noticed a problem, says Novethan, who voiced Peter the apostle.

“The practice here is that when people are afraid of something, they will go to a sorcerer and they will produce some charms . . . to wear on your arm or waist or neck,” he explains. “So when somebody that doesn’t know what a Jewish phylactery is, they would think, ‘Does this mean wearing charms is correct? Even Jesus went to the sorcerers—that is why he’s wearing what he is wearing.’”

Wisely, those video frames were removed.

it’s showtiMeAs the Luke film begins just after 7 p.m., it’s quickly apparent that the dubbing is good. The audience is immediately engaged with biblical characters who seamlessly speak their Bambalang heart language. One woman momentarily turns on a small flashlight, lifts up her T-shirt and begins nursing her baby, settling in for a long night. Around her, benches are quickly filling.

A few minutes into the film, a power failure abruptly halts the video. Novethan has prepared for this possibility, quickly starting a gasoline generator he brought earlier on his motorcycle. The power of the Word is restored and the show goes on.

Jewish priest Zechariah asks an angel how he could father John the Baptist (Luke 1:18) because of his and his wife’s old age. Some in the audience might recognize the voice as that of a community elder, “90-something”-year-old Thomas Ndiwago. The



prominent coffee farmer in Bambalang says he had to repeat his lines four or five times in the recording studio before it sounded just right.

“I understood that Zechariah was a believer and that is why he is featured in the film with Jesus. So I tried to speak as somebody that would be looked upon as a God-fearing person.”

Thomas was honoured to be chosen by the Catholic church he attends to lend his voice at the recording sessions.

“I had zeal to go,” he says, “so that when the film came out, those who do not even like God’s Word will hear it and, through that, become Christians.”

Thomas has not been disappointed by the film. “When I saw it the first time after it was done, I knew that God

. . . is mighty and has been in control and has helped the whole thing to be realized. When I saw it, I was really thankful to God.”

snake aPPearanceThe darkness grows deeper. Now the only light is from a three-quarter moon overhead, and the projector’s triangular light beam. Filled with dancing dust particles, the beam projects onto the bed-sheet screen and reflects back onto pensive front-row faces.

When Satan tempts Jesus in the wilderness in Luke 4, he is portrayed as a snake, drawing “oohs” from an audience that lives daily with the danger of poisonous serpents on the Ndop Plain. (Ironically, a boy who was bit earlier in the day is brought to Dan during the movie and he treats the youngster with an electrical anti-venom zapper back at his house.) The voice of Satan is that of Novethan’s Bambalang translation partner, Pastor Ezekiel Sancho. He was chosen because his well-known Christian

reputation in the community fends off the potential stigma of portraying God’s great enemy.

All of the seats are filled now. An audience of about 250 spills out onto the roadside, where viewers stand three or four deep. Some casual passersby, walking or riding motorcycles, have stopped and stayed to watch the film. Novethan has seen this many times before, recalling one showing outside his church months before.

“One father came around,” he remembers. “He doesn’t go to church. He was going somewhere—he wasn’t coming to watch—just walking by.”

Novethan discovered that the man had been opposed to his children attending church, thinking they would stubbornly turn against Bambalang traditions.

After watching the entire Luke film, the father changed his tune. “So these are the types of things that they are teaching in church,” he said. “Then why would I not want my children to be church people?”

Explains Novethan, “There are so many good lessons that he never knew are found in Scripture. Now sitting there, he heard those lessons directly himself. And then he invited me to come and talk with him about what he watched.”

reverent and aMusedWhen tonight’s audience watches Jesus heal the demon-controlled man in Luke 8, several express joy at Christ’s power and mercy. “Jesus! Jesus!” they say aloud. To a people so familiar with oppressing spirits in day-to-day life on the Ndop Plain, sending demons away into a herd of pigs is an impressive miracle.

“They can’t help but be enthralled with Jesus. They are just drawn to Him. It’s really neat.”



At other times the viewers laugh heartily. The short tax collector Zacchaeus’ frantic scramble up a sycamore tree in Luke 19, to get a good view of Jesus, prompts a burst of chuckles. But the crowd seems even more amused at the wisdom of Jesus. When he cleverly answers Jewish chief priests and teachers of the law, who are trying to entrap him with trick questions, audience members giggle with glee.

In like manner, Jesus in the Luke film is challenging local religious leaders in Bambalang.

Dan says the film has been shown in predominately Muslim sections of Bambalang, outside mosques where local imams take chairs right up front.

“They’ve probably been told that the Bible isn’t true . . . or that very much of it has been corrupted,” he says. “But when they actually see it and hear it, they can’t help but be enthralled with Jesus. They are just drawn to Him. It’s really neat.

“They want to understand and they want to know what this message is and how it affects them.”

Feeling what he didChapter after chapter, hour after hour, the audience watches the Luke film. Men and women don’t budge from their hard bench seats or their crowded standing places beside the busy road. Kids aren’t fidgeting in the front row, either.

A few scenes after Jesus feeds the 5,000, the film stops for a short intermission with tea and a snack supplied by the family lending their home’s wall for the bedsheet screen.

As the film portrays Jesus being arrested, whipped and crucified, the audience becomes noticeably more solemn.

Though not here tonight, Thomas, the voice of Zechariah, says he is still deeply impacted by these scenes, despite watching the Luke film more than 10 times.

“I like to watch it again and again because I see Jesus. I see His work and suffering here on earth—suffering to die for me and to die for all the people. It is not just in my imagination. When I see it, I feel it. I feel what He did in the suffering He went through, and that encourages my faith.”

Like Thomas, many Bambalang people watch the Luke film multiple times, says Novethan. It is not just a tool for evangelism, but also discipleship.

He gives the example of an illiterate Bambalang mother he visited in her home, who was talking to her misbehaving son.

“The mother said, ‘This thing you are doing, have you not heard Jesus saying that we should not do it?’ That is because that mother has the film on her mobile phone.”

The woman obtained the movie on a phone SD memory card, distributed by the Ndop Cluster team, says Novethan. “She will listen to it, the children will watch it. When they work their farmland and sit and rest, they listen to it.”

Jesus is baMbalangIt is late, well past 11 p.m., when the movie ends. Pastor Novethan takes the microphone and encourages the crowd to come to Jesus, before praying to close the evening.

He is encouraged that three-quarters of this night’s crowd are not churchgoers. Just as the prophet Isaiah asserted in the Old Testament, the pastor knows God’s Word in Bambalang will accomplish what the Lord wants it to. Over the next days and weeks, he says, the impact of this night’s movie will become evident. Bambalang villagers will contact him with questions or commitments to follow Christ.

“He is no longer a foreign Jesus,” the pastor says of the Saviour presented in the Luke film. “People are saying, ‘Jesus is speaking Bambalang.’

“They see Jesus like He is their countryman, because He is speaking their language. He cares about them.”


Whether it is youngsters (ABOVE) or adults and kids (OPPOSITE PAGE), Bambalang speakers are attracted to Jesus as he speaks their mother tongue in the Luke film. Each language in the Ndop Cluster will have the film dubbed in their mother tongue after the Gospel of Luke is translated. Audiences sit for four hours to watch the movie, engrossed by a Saviour who sounds just like them. As they do, local villagers are realizing that God speaks their language.



GROUP M E N T A L I T Y



Dan Grove, from New Brunswick, sits at the back of a praying congregation at Mbamong Baptist Church in the village of Bambalang on Cameroon’s Ndop Plain. As supervisor of the Ndop Cluster, he and other Wycliffe personnel give behind-the-scenes logistical support to train and mentor a community-led effort of Bible translation, Scripture use and literacy among seven language groups in northwest Cameroon.

Wycliffe personnel share their expertise with locals in a seven-language, simultaneous Bible translation effort gaining momentum in northwest Cameroon.

By Dwayne Janke

GROUP M E N T A L I T Y



“I WANT TO MAKE JESUS MY KING.”


Zimbabwe

Zambia

Ye m e n

Uzbekistan

UnitedKingdom

U. A. E.

Ukraine

R u s s i a

Uganda

Turkmenistan

T u r k e y

Tunisia

Togo

Tanzania

Syria

Switz.

Swaziland

S u d a n

Spain

South Africa

Somalia

Slovenia

Slovakia

SierraLeone

Serbia

Senegal

S a u d i A r a b i a

San Marino

Rwanda

Romania

Qatar

Portugal

Poland

Oman

Nigeria

N i g e r

Neth.

Namibia

Mozambique

Morocco

Western Sahara(Occupied by Morocco)

Moldova

Mau r it an ia

Malta

M a l i

Malawi

Madagascar

Macedonia

Lux.

Liech.

L i b y a

Liberia

Lesotho

Lebanon

Kuwait

Kenya

K a z a k h s t a n

Jordan

Italy

Israel

Ireland

I r a qI r a n

Hungary

GuineaGuinea-

Bissau

Greece

Ghana

Germany

Georgia

Gambia

Gabon

France

Ethiopia

Eritrea

Equatorial Guinea

E g y p t

Djibouti

Czech Rep.

Cyprus

Croatia

Cote d'Ivoire

Congo

Democratic Republic of the Congo

Comoros

C h a d

CentralAfrican Republic

CAMEROON

Burundi

Burkina Faso

Bulgaria

Botswana

Bosnia &Herz.

Benin

Bel.

Belarus

Azerbaijan

Austria

Armenia

Angola

Andorra

A l g e r i a

Albania

Mont. Kosovo

South SudanNdop Plain

Yaounde

Ask Dan Grove about the impact of a multi-language Bible translation, literacy and Scripture-use effort in Cameroon’s Ndop Plain, and he may tell you the story of his neighbour, Taapro.

“He was a bad man—committed what we would call fraud,” says Dan, supervisor of this field effort known as the Ndop Cluster. “He lied, he stole. He would threaten people with machetes. I don’t think he killed anybody, and I think he figured he was okay because of that.”

“But he was our neighbour. He was our adopted father,” stresses Dan, who lives in Bambalang village with his wife Melody. “I prayed for him a lot for 12 years.”

One day, Dan went to visit the old man in his 80s; he looked tired. Taapro had slept poorly because of hooting owls. When Dan remarked that he liked the birds, Taapro was shocked.

“They call them witch birds,” said Taapro, revealing his deep fear of owls. “They are sorcerers who have changed into birds. They will come and eat your belly and kill you.”

Dan realized again that Taapro was steeped in the beliefs of African traditional religion, like most residents of the Ndop Plain. “I remember sitting there thinking, How is this old man ever going to change his worldview?”

Power of the wordIn March of 2014, Taapro came over to the Groves’ house for breakfast. By this time, Ndop’s first version of the Luke film (see story, pg. 6) had been produced in Taapro’s mother tongue of Bambalang. Melody played the first part of the movie and the elderly man was eager to watch more. Over the next eight nights, Dan went to Taapro’s house and showed the rest of the four-hour film. God’s Word in his mother tongue, portrayed in visual form, touched Taapro’s heart. He began asking about sin.

When local Baptist pastor Pius Mbahlegue came to the Groves’ home the next week to work on the Bambalang New Testament translation (see related story, pg. 20), Taapro was there too.

“He said, ‘Pius, come here. What are the bad things that keep us out of heaven?’ ” Dan remembers. “I’m sure he was thinking, I’m not too bad because I haven’t killed anybody.”

Interestingly, Pius specifically mentioned lying and stealing. Taapro pondered for a few minutes. Then, putting his hand on his chest, he declared: “I want to make Jesus my King.”

“For me, that’s what the Word is,” says Dan. “It’s the power for salvation to everyone who believes. It’s the change of a worldview of an old man who’d grown up afraid of owls, and sorcerers and ancestors and spirits. And the most prominent thing that changed for him was that he was no longer afraid.”

This past December, Taapro passed away with the peace of salvation in Christ.

white Man’s BookExperiences like Taapro’s are still too rare in Ndop’s 13 villages, which stretch over an area 100-150 km at its widest point and are bordered by mountains on three sides. Traditional religion, with its animal sacrifices, manipulating of ancestral spirits and wearing of charms, has a grip on most of the 250,000 residents living as subsistence farmers. Minority Muslim and Christian populations are not immune. Dan says the Muslims practise a “folk Islam” and many professing Christian believers, attending a half-dozen or so different church denominations, also mix their faith with traditional practices.

Boys take a break from rolling their toy tires with sticks in front of a mosque on the Ndop Plain. Like Christians, Muslims are a minority among the 250,000 residents in the region, most of whom practise traditional religion. The followers of Islam here are surprisingly open to hearing about Jesus as presented in Scriptures translated into their heart languages.

Cameroon: At a GlanceName: Republic of Cameroon

Area: 475,440 sq km (slightly smaller than the Yukon).

Location: Central Africa, bordered by Nigeria, Chad, the Central African Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Gabon, the Republic of the Congo and the Atlantic Ocean coastline.

Geography: Diverse, with coastal plain in southwest, dissected plateau in center, mountains in west, plains in north, vast rainforest in southeast.

Population: 23.1 million.

Capital: Yaoundé (2.4 million).

People: Cameroon Highlanders 31%, Equatorial Bantu 19%, Kirdi 11%, Fulani 10%, Northwestern Bantu 8%, Eastern Nigritic 7%, other African 13%, non-African less than 1%

Economy: Largely based on agriculture (coffee, cocoa, cotton, rubber, bananas, oilseed, grains, cassava, livestock), timber and oil exports.

Religion: Indigenous beliefs 40%, Christian 40%, Muslim 20%.

Languages: 285; French and English (official languages) plus many other indigenous languages.

Bible Translation Status: 15 languages have Bibles; 54 have New Testaments; 105 have Scripture portions.

Literacy: 63% (age 15 and over) Sources: World Factbook; Ethnologue; SIL.

“I WANT TO MAKE JESUS MY KING.”


(ABOVE) Wycliffe’s Cam Hamm, from Alberta, joins two speakers of the Bafanji language, reading materials in their own language (see related story, pg. 26). (RIGHT, TOP) A portion of a page showing a draft translation done by the Bamunka language Bible translation team. It has been back-translated into English for review by Wycliffe translation consultant Greg Beyer (see related story, pg. 33). (RIGHT, BOTTOM) Greg’s wife Annette binds booklets that tell the story of Christ’s birth for speakers of the Bangolan language. [OPPOSITE PAGE] Women sell fish and produce in a village market on the Ndop Plain, with a tall stone sacrificial altar looming large behind them. As God’s Word becomes available in the local languages here, villagers are learning of Jesus’ supreme sacrifice on the cross for the sins of all people.

“People will go to church in the morning and then they’ll go home and sacrifice a chicken in the afternoon to help something work better in their lives. You see a lot of children with a charm around their necks to protect them.”

Christianity came to the people of the Ndop decades ago, but it has been treated as a foreign religion. “It was added onto their traditions just like another layer on an onion,” explains Dan. “The Church . . . has been very shallow and weak.”

The Bible is considered by many as a white man’s book. In this English region of Cameroon, the Bible used by the churches is in English or Pidgin, not the languages that people know best.

training and suPPorting To break through this barrier, initial work began in Bible translation and related ministries, such as linguistics, literacy and Scripture use, in 2003.

Today, a small, international team of Wycliffe personnel from Canada, the U.S., Ireland, Romania, the U.K. and Cameroon bring their expertise in linguistics, translation and literacy. They have been training and/or supporting several dozen locals, who are serving their own people in seven of the 10 related

languages forming the Ndop cluster. Each one is named after the village where it is spoken (“ba” means “people of”): Bambalang, Bamunka, Bafanji, Bamali, Bamukumbit, Bamessing and Bangolan.

Wycliffe personnel in the Ndop Cluster have a group mentality, following a strategy to equip and support locals in all of the languages simultaneously.

“We’ve always wanted to be community-led, community-oriented, and seeking to train and mentor,” says Dan, who calls New Brunswick home. “Our goal has been to do what we need to do, not just to get work done, but to help others in that process to be able to do the work.”

The expats on the Ndop team have trained local speakers, often church pastors, to do Bible translation. At present, 24 translators are working part time in the seven languages, most with backing from local inter-church committees. In terms of progress, Bambalang and Bamunka are out in front, with Luke’s Gospel published and all of the New Testament translation drafted. The Luke film in Bambalang (as well as Bamunka) is being shown with great acceptance, and mother-tongue literacy is offered to adults and children at church-run schools (see stories on pages 6 and 30).



staying awakeLanguage work isn’t as advanced in other languages, such as Bangolan, where Americans Lance and Abby Freeland are serving. But momentum is building.

After translating about half of Luke’s Gospel, the two pastors on the Bangolan team no longer need encouragement from the Freelands to preach in their mother tongue. “They’re just doing it because they see the difference that Scripture in the mother tongue makes,” says Lance, originally from Michigan.

Most noticeable by the pastors is that people in church are not habitually dozing off or unresponsive, says Lance. “When they’re preaching in English or Pidgin, several of the ladies in their churches would fall asleep because they didn’t understand. When they’re preaching in Bangolan, they’re listening, their eyes are open, they’re sitting forward, they don’t fall asleep.”

Adds Abby, a Washington state native: “I think they’re starting to see now that this [translated Scripture] is for us to grow. People need to be discipled, need to see change in their lives. It’s not just a tract in our language to hand out to people. It’s the Bible. It’s the Word of God.”

read the whole thingThe Freelands are eager to see the Luke translation finished so it can be used to prepare the Luke film, as well as an audio version of the Gospel.

“My dream would be that the churches start using the Luke video and recordings, and people come to Christ through that,” explains Lance. “And then they’re able to be discipled because they can understand the Word when they read it.”

The couple is excited to see God’s Word also make inroads among Muslims, who account for up to half of Bangolan speakers. More than a year ago, a translation team member was testing a translation of the Christmas Story with villagers in the marketplace. Several Muslim leaders questioned the accuracy of the Bible because of its many versions. The local translator shared what he had been taught in translation training—how historically, Bible translation has been carefully based on manuscripts in the original languages, Greek and Hebrew.

“And then he said, ‘And soon there will be a version in our language,’” Lance recalls. The pastor read some of the Christmas Story to them in their mother tongue. “Two days later, they came at night to his house and they said, ‘Read us the whole thing.’ These Muslim leaders came, like Nicodemus [in the Gospel of

“WHEN THEY’RE PREACHING IN BANGOLAN, THEY’RE LISTENING, THEIR EYES ARE OPEN, THEY’RE SITTING FORWARD, THEY DON’T FALL ASLEEP.”



(ABOVE) Ndop Cluster supervisor Dan Grove checks in with pastors Pius Mbahlegue and Novethan Shanui (see related stories, pgs. 20 and 6 respectively), Bible translators in their Bambalang mother tongue, which is spoken by about 25,000 people. The translated Scriptures have been available in audio form for use on cellphones. Unchurched taxi boat drivers [OPPOSITE PAGE] on Lake Bamendjing memorize large sections of God’s Word while waiting for customers on shore.

John, chapter 3] at night, hiding, but wanting to know more. So now, he does regular testing with these Muslim guys.

“The English Bible would never cross that barrier, but the Bangolan will.”

review Bottleneck With two dozen translators pumping out drafts of God’s Word in their mother tongues, a big challenge facing the Ndop Cluster is getting them consultant-checked before publishing. That huge job falls to Greg Beyer, a Wycliffe Bible translation consultant, who, with his wife Annette, call Pennsylvania home (see pg. 33).

The various translation teams need longer and more frequent checking sessions with Greg, but he just can’t give any one team all of his time. “Here, with the Ndop Cluster, because I’m working with seven languages, I’m not able to give them much more than a few days a month,” he says.

This creates a bottleneck in the translation process, but the Ndop Cluster is not unique in this. Consultants are in short supply around the world.

“We could probably have a couple more consultants, at least one more, if not two, and our work would be going a little faster,” says Greg.

In a few years, help will be on the way. Bambalang translators (and pastors), Pius Mbahlegue and Novethan Shanui (see related stories, pgs. 20 and 6), already have bachelor degrees in theology

from Cameroon Baptist Theological Seminary, and will start MA translation degrees this fall.

“I’m impressed with their abilities already,” says Greg. “They just need to deepen that a bit more, particularly on the linguistic side. I’m confident that they’ll be able to do a good job [as translation consultants] and will be able to help finish up these languages here on the Ndop Plain.”

Past the oBstaclesDan acknowledges that consultant-checking is not the only challenge facing the Ndop Cluster. A steady source of funding is needed, which is why Wycliffe Canada’s sponsorship of the work is so crucial (see back cover). More specialists in linguistics, literacy and Scripture use are required to bolster the efforts of existing Wycliffe personnel. And the Ndop communities, who never before had books in their languages to value, must develop a greater vision for using their translated Scriptures.

But Dan looks past the obstacles, envisioning the future potential of God’s Word throughout the Ndop Plain, based on what he’s already seen happen in the village where he lives.

“When we first came I could probably count on one, maybe two hands, the number of strong Christians in Bambalang.

“I would need an awful lot more hands to do that now.”

“THESE MUSLIM LEADERS CAME, LIKE NICODEMUS AT NIGHT, HIDING, BUT WANTING TO KNOW MORE."

Get Involved!See the back cover for details on how you can help the Ndop Cluster effort grow and advance in Cameroon.



In the midst of war, Pastor Pius Mbahlegue courageously brought the peace of Christ to his village.

By Nathan Frank

FLAMES TURNED TO

HOPE



Everything in Bambalang, Cameroon has a fiery tint. Blame it on the community’s red soil. In the dry season, dust films the landscape, covering palm trees and grass with a dark salmon hue.

This red dirt also gathers in the creases of Pastor Pius Mbahlegue’s black dress shoes as he tours the wreckage of homes in Bambalang. Memories of a devastating attack by a neighbouring village flood the mind of the pastor and Ndop Cluster Bible translator. About 400 homes in the village of 25,000 people were burned in the land-grab assault four years ago—yet Pius speaks calmly of the event. This wasn’t an ordinary war, because from those ashes came a powerful hope this community had never seen.

DesperationThey had bullets, they had gasoline and they had trucks. Without hesitation, they came and burned more than 400 Bambalang houses to the ground. It was simple. These men from the neighbouring community wanted more land and this was a way to get it. For many in Bambalang, everything was gone: no food, no house, no clothing, no pots to cook in. There was nothing left.

Naturally, villagers were angry. As one young woman told Pius: “I had a plan in my heart that I was going to go to that village and look for a very big house and set it on fire. I would burn the house even with the people inside. Then they would come out and they would kill me. I wouldn’t have to suffer. They would just kill me.”

Revenge would have been easy, but this girl found hope instead. By God’s providence, the Bambalang Gospel of Luke dedication was scheduled six days after the war was halted by the government’s rapid intervention battalion.

“The Scripture was coming at that time—when something so disastrous, so terrible was happening,” Pius says of the dedication where the king and many nobles of the language group were in attendance. “Nobody in the village shall ever forget the first words God spoke to them [in their heart language] because those were the first words spoken to the whole village after the terrible disaster.”

A short time later, Pius taught two trauma workshops, where he shared a message of hope in the face of desperation, perplexity, confusion and anger. In the following days and months, the Bambalang team of the Ndop Cluster put roofs on nearly 100 homes, with primary care given to widows and those most vulnerable.

By boldly following Christ in word and deed, Pius and his colleagues gained the respect of the community. Because of Pius’ commitment to Christ, more and more people are seeing the true power and trustworthiness of Christ.

Pastor Pius Mbahlegue brings the fire of God’s Word during a sermon to his congregation in Bambalang, Cameroon. Pius preaches to his congregation from the Bambalang New Testament, which will be ready for printing in 2016.



It’s Good to Be CuriousPius himself didn’t personally see Christ as trustworthy until he was a young man. As he tells his life story, his contagious smile is present even during a serious conversation. With his sharp eyes, gapped teeth, and deep voice, he captures your attention. He has a curious and polite manner just like he had as a kid.

Growing up the oldest of 11 children, Pius’ first love was science. He would spend hours memorizing diagrams in textbooks and dreamt about one day becoming a doctor. When he was in Grade 5, his father converted to Islam and introduced him to the Qur’an.

“I used to ask lots of questions. I was often told, ‘You have to learn! You don’t have to ask questions,’ ” Pius says. “But to me asking questions was part of learning. When they were stopping me from asking questions, something in my heart [told me] that this is not the right place for me.”

Pius was curious. He couldn’t help it. Soon though, he and his family left Islam and instead attended church. Despite the change in worship, Pius says going to church—just like going to mosque—was simply something people did. It didn’t really intersect with home life where traditional religion, such as ancestor worship and other African spirituality, was practised.

“Ninety-nine-point-nine per cent of those who were going to church were still really participating in those things,” he explains. “They were living in two worlds.”

Pius says he went to church for “a very long time without knowing Christ.” God hadn’t yet grabbed his attention. But he would soon—in a big way.

No RescueAfter graduating from high school, Pius moved to a Bambalang island, where he farmed a piece of land and fished the waters alongside Novethan Shanui, who wasn’t yet a Christian. (Today, he is a fellow pastor and Bible translator.)

“This is the time for you to quit all your Christian stuff and take a break,” Novethan told Pius.

“You did not save yourself. You are not alive because you know

how to swim. I saved you to come back to me.”



(ABOVE) Pastor Pius (centre) laughs as Canadian Dan Grove (right), the Ndop Cluster supervisor (see story, pg. 12) tells an animated story. Pius is gaining a bigger role in the cluster. He is attending seminary so he can become a much-needed translation consultant.

(OPPOSITE) Pius’ wife Delphine stirs fufu, a staple food for Cameroonians made from corn flour. It is often served with a sauce containing fish or greens.

Caught off guard, Pius initially rebuked Novethan’s suggestion, intending to maintain his faith by reading his English Gideon New International Bible each Sunday. However, after two weeks on the water, Pius had abandoned his Christian tradition and focused his attention on catching fish and making money.

One day Pius was traversing the open waters on his canoe, singing at the top of his lungs as he floated along. Approaching the forest in the distance—which had been partially submerged by the lake—he got so caught up in song that he lost his concentration. Losing his balance, he struggled to regain his composure before the canoe hit a tree. While his canoe floated

away in the distance, Pius found himself in the water like a frightened dog thrown into a lake for the first time.

As Pius grappled for something to hold on to, so he could pull himself out of the water, a man floated by in his canoe—totally ignoring him. That evening, after he retrieved his canoe and dried off, Pius was deeply troubled.

“Why did this man not want to rescue me?” he questioned. “How terrible of a man who sees a man dying and he will not want to rescue him?”

As he lay in bed, meditating on what had happened, suddenly he heard a voice: “You did not save yourself. You are not alive



because you know how to swim. I saved you to come back to me.”Feeling confused and frightened, he reached for his Gideon New

International Bible, opening it up to Romans, his favourite book.“No one is righteous, not even one,” he read from Romans 3.

“All have gone astray like sheep and goats . . . the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life.”

It pricked Pius deep in his heart. Deeply moved, he asked God to take complete control of his life. The next morning he immediately went to the owner of the island and told him he was leaving his plot of land and was done fishing. Pius returned to Bambalang and would become a pastor.

Fishing Through ScriptureIn 2002, along with current translator and old fishing buddy Novethan, Pius was chosen by the chairman of Bambalang’s traditional council to develop a writing system for the Bambalang language. By 2008, they began the translation of the New Testament, which is expected to be finished by next year.

“That is just so wonderful, so big to me,” says Pius of translating the New Testament. “It’s not everybody that will have the privilege to go through Scripture verse-by-verse, taught fully in context and try to know the meaning of each word, each phrase, each sentence, each paragraph.”

With a deeper understanding of Scripture in his mother tongue, Pius is able to offer his congregation a greater comprehension of Scripture in their first language. Instead of falling asleep in the service because the pastor is preaching in a language they struggle to understand, the congregation is learning the truths of the gospel. Rather than church being only a village social club, it has become a place of restoration.

“Now they are hearing the truth in their language. . . .They are actually growing deep in their faith.”

Fisher of MenIt’s market day in Bambalang. Pius shuffles through a hectic scene. A large truck forces its way through a tight walkway and, in the distance, a man tackles a desperate, squealing pig with a rope. In the midst of the people scrambling and struggling to sell goods, Pius reflects a radical, different economy and a new way of life. In the chaos of the market, he is a calming presence. He is reached out to by villagers for direction and counsel. He is respected and honoured. As he shakes the hands of villagers, he realizes how much his place in the village has changed and how Christ has broken through the deep traditions and culture of his people.

He hasn’t always been so respected, though. When he was a young pastor he took his stand, refusing to participate in traditional religious practices. For instance, he refused to make sacrifices to “the god of rain” when there was a crop failure.

When the village fon (king) decreed that all Bambalang pastors should pray publicly for the success of the annual religious festival, Pius instead preached the gospel.

“People said, ‘No one has the authority to call the nobles in the village to repent,’” he explains. “They said that it is not fair and that I was going to die.”

With Pius under spiritual attack, churches fasted and prayed for him. Many in the community believed he would be cursed for his belligerence. But no harm came to him.

“Wow, nothing happened to Pastor Pius. He must have the Lord behind him. His God must be real,” people concluded.

God’s power was on display through Pius’ stand.

“It’s not everybody that will have the privilege to go through Scripture verse-by-verse, taught

fully in context and try to know the meaning of each word, each phrase,

each sentence, each paragraph.”



Pius tours Bambalang homes damaged in a brutal attack by a neighbouring village in 2011. Hundreds of homes were destroyed, yet in the devastation many found hope through Christ presented in mother-tongue Scriptures.

A New SeasonAs Pius looks at Bambalang’s countryside, perhaps he sees a parallel between the red dust that tinges the landscape and the hearts of the villagers. For many generations, local traditions and customs have clouded the hearts of the people from the touch of Christ’s gospel, their view obscured like the dust that fills the Bambalang air.

Pius, however, can now see beyond the dusty red tinge in the air. He sees hope. The rainy season is coming and it will wash away the dust. With a bright smile, he looks in the distance. He knows that Christ brings rebirth and trusts that a new season is just around the corner.


WHOLE COMMITMENT


Trusting God’s radical call of obedience leads a couple to linguistics work in Cameroon’s Ndop Plain.

By Nathan Frank

Some people have a way of brightening up a room. Valerie Hamm is one of those people.

It is noticeable as she first steps through the doorway into a full room of Ndop Cluster staff gathered for a team meeting. With an endless smile and wearing a colourful flowered dress, Valerie greets her friend, Patricia.

“You are looking so beautiful,” Valerie says sincerely as she approaches the hired cook for Ndop Cluster supervisor Dan Grove and his wife Melody, who is the Cluster’s literacy specialist.

Entering behind Valerie is her husband Cam and their three rambunctious children: Noah, Elizabeth and Jojo. Cam, who is a linguist for the Ndop Cluster in northwest Cameroon, watches as his kids disappear in different directions to play with their friends. The goateed Canadian father has a calming confidence. He’s a focused man who chooses his words carefully.

“He’s a man of faith,” says Valerie. “He trusts God for the future; he’s not a worrier, and I like that about him.”

The popular theory is that opposites attract. That is certainly true for these two, who met in 2000 in Chad, Africa, when they were both new to SIL (Wycliffe’s key field partner).

“Well, there was a 60-year-old single, a 40-year-old single and an engaged single,” explains a laughing Valerie about Cam's competition for her attention in Chad.

Although the two are opposites in many ways, their God-given personalities match God’s call on their lives. It’s a call that led them both to Bible translation work before they even met.

MISSIONS MINDEDAs children, Valerie and Cam were separated by a few borders and more than 1,200 km. Cam grew up on a grain farm near Edmonton, Alta., while Valerie was raised in Richland, Wash., a community known for its nuclear power plants. Although many miles separated them, the couple had a similar upbringing—both growing up in Christian homes and attending missions-minded churches.

“I was interested in missions from a very young age,” Valerie explains. “I was interested in people from other cultures in my classroom and enjoyed any projects I had that were intercultural—even in Grade 2.”

As a teenager, Valerie met a missionary from Peru, who told her about Wycliffe and the desperate need for Bible translation across the globe. A missions trip to Peru when she was 15 years old convinced her that this was the path God had for her.

“I don’t feel I am a strong evangelist, but having a way where even the process of Bible translation—if not evangelism—is at least discipleship, that excited me,” she

“I was interested in people from

other cultures in my classroom

and enjoyed any projects I had that were intercultural

—even in Grade 2.”

HEARTED



(ABOVE) Valerie Hamm (centre) reads a book to her children, Noah and Elly, and a few Bafanji children. Valerie says tutoring children is her most satisfying task. (LEFT) As a linguistics specialist, Cam Hamm spends a great deal of his time working on his computer.



(ABOVE) The Hamms, who have raised

their family in Cameroon, say grace before enjoying a delicious

meal. (BELOW) Cam checks the battery life of a handful of phones in

his Bafanji office. Cam charges phones for those in the community who lack their

own power sources.

says. “You’re walking through the Word of God with people of God and getting it out where evangelism can happen.”

After graduating with a degree in computer science, Valerie planned to jump straight into the mission field with Wycliffe. But that never happened.

“I filled out an application and I had no peace about sending it in,” she says. “I had a little debt to pay off and I was offered a permanent job which I took. I quickly paid off my debt and I still had

absolutely no peace.”She worked in a financial processing position for a

research company for six years, often crying because she felt like her work was meaningless. Valerie wanted to be working in the mission field. Although she felt dissatisfied with the job, she believed that was where God wanted her at that time.

“For me it’s not what I wanted to be doing, but that’s where God had me and I knew it. I like knowing where God wants me.”

Finally, however, after six years of working in computer science, she felt God said it was time for her

to join Wycliffe.

WILLING AND ABLECam’s calling to missions with Wycliffe began a little bit later

in life than Valerie’s—but not by much. He first felt God was moving him to overseas missions work when a missionary to China spoke at the chapel of Prairie Bible College, where he was attending.

“Is God worthy of whole-hearted commitment?” asked the missionary. “He will take care of us no matter what. We just need to be willing and available for God to use us.”

“He will take care of us no matter what.

We just need to be willing

and available for God to

use us.”



Cam was convicted and took a commitment card that the missionary handed out after he shared. At the end of

the year when Cam was cleaning out his dorm room, he found the card lost in a shuffle

of papers. Staring at the card, he took stock of his life and his future.

“I found the card and I didn’t want to throw it away because I knew it was something significant,”

he says. “I looked at it carefully and realized that I was willing to go anywhere and do anything at any time for any

cost because Jesus Christ is Lord. He knows what I need.”A short time later, God directed him to linguistics work. Cam was

looking for an easy class to add to a busy class schedule. A friend recommended he take an intro to linguistics class designed by Wycliffe missionaries. Cam had fun in the class and looked forward to attending. After the class finished a Wycliffe representative spoke to the students and shared how linguistics and a Bible education could be used in Bible translation. Cam was convinced.

“I knew that God wanted me to do something other than stay in Canada,” Cam explains. “I thought about it in my mind, What is the worst thing that God could want me to do? The worst place, the worst job? If that were true, and God wanted me to do it, would that be okay?”

Cam decided that following God’s call on his life was most important—more than his own comfort. He was going to be a missionary.

With such similar obedient hearts, it’s no surprise that Cam and Valerie met after they joined Wycliffe. Although on the surface they appear very different from one another, it’s their obedience that has made them perfect partners in ministry.

The couple married in 2001 and three years later were assigned to the Ndop Cluster, where they have been working in linguistics ever since.

WHAT IS LINGUISTICS, EXACTLY?Cam is a linguistics specialist for the Bafanji language, spoken by about 20,000 people on the Ndop Plain.

He also serves half-time as linguistics co-ordinator for SIL Cameroon, Wycliffe’s key field partner in the nation. From the outside looking in, what he does seems like the average desk job in Canada. He spends many hours in front of a computer screen, studying the language in written form.

Cam’s job is to help local translators translate the most accurate yet understandable Bibles possible. Specifically, he is trying to determine the way that Bafanji people write down what they speak, so that translated Scripture can ultimately be written clearly for the people.

The first task for Cam and Valerie, when they began more than a decade ago, was to develop a Bafanji alphabet, before creating a dictionary and studying the grammar of the language. Today Cam is a consultant for Ndop translation teams—including Bafanji and others—who have begun translating the New Testament (see related story, pg. 12). One major way he has helped them is by leading a series of courses for leaders representing six languages, to discover the grammar of their own language.

The Hamms aren’t the ones doing any of the actual translations though. That is best left to trained local speakers of the languages. A straight-faced Cam says that if he and his wife were doing the translation, it would sound like something generated by Google Translation. Or, like the instructions that come with a cheap item bought from a dollar store, “obviously translated into English by someone who didn’t master English or who has never lived in an English-speaking country.”

ONLY A FEW COMMITTEDIf a plant is going to grow, it must be watered. If it’s not watered, the plant doesn’t receive important nutrients. Quickly it will bake in the sun, dry out and one day die. The same goes for Bafanji. The people aren’t being “watered” at church, so they aren’t being nourished. At this point, interest in Christianity is still minimal. Church is just another social club.

“It is not always clearly taught to people how to respond to a situation where their tradition says to do one thing and the Bible teaches another,” explains Cam.

Bafanji is a community saturated with traditional animist beliefs. The people worship their ancestors and are committed to cultural customs for marriages, deaths and births. Someone may go to church or a mosque, but they will also go home and make a sacrifice to a local spirit in the evening.

Without a strong church, finding committed, passionate Bible translation partners has been a challenge. It has been difficult to get people from all the different churches to work on the translation team. So far there are only three locals who are committed to having the Bible translated in the Bafanji language—two of whom are pastors in another community. For the Bafanji Bible to have any impact, the Hamms believe the community has to be awakened to Christ.

“We’ve seen other places where missionaries have come in and done all the work and left them a Bible and it’s just sat on the shelf,” says Cam. “Even if we stayed here our whole life, [one day] we will die. So, we need people from the village who speak the language to take charge.”

GOD CHANGES EVERYTHINGA group of Bafanji children stampede toward Valerie as she opens a story book on a calm January evening. Kids love a story when there is a good storyteller and Valerie is certainly one of those. A small child with baggy pants pushes his way to the front and grasps onto Valerie’s knee. He desperately wants to see the pictures. He wants to see what the other children see.

The Hamms are praying that the Bafanji people become eager like this child. They believe once the people hear the story and see Jesus, they will cling to Him like this child clings to Valerie’s knee.

This is why the Hamms gave their lives to Bible translation work many years ago. The couple knows once the Bafanji people hear The Story in their own language, their lives will never be the same—and they, too, will whole-heartedly commit their lives to God.



Mother-tongue schooling is setting the foundation for the youth of Cameroon’s Ndop Plain.

By Nathan Frank

Bright Future for the Next Generation



(OPPOSITE PAGE) A group of playful Bambalang children show off their personalities outside of Bambalang’s Cameroon Baptist Convention (CBC) primary school. (RIGHT) Emmanel Tambakwi, who is training to become the Ndop Cluster’s literacy co-ordinator, believes mother-tongue education will lead to a deeper understanding of Scripture and an exciting future for the next generation.

Green school uniforms adorn a crowded classroom of attentive Grade 1 students in northwest Cameroon. Eager voices fill the air as they rambunctiously learn the

alphabet with their playful teacher, Irene Nchongwa. In the back row, a boy waves his hand over his head while

leaning against the red dirt wall. “Madame! Madame!” he squeals, with a huge grin on his face, trying to get the attention of the teacher. The boy’s desire to learn is vibrant, and overpowers the noisy energy and enthusiasm of the rest of his classmates.

Light shimmers through an opening in the roof and onto these blessed Grade 1 students, with such bright futures. They are some of about 100 students ages 6 to 8, attending the school that uses the multilingual education program in the bustling village of Bambalang. This is the only school in the Ndop region to teach Grade 1 and Grade 2 in the mother tongue.

The classroom next door has a much different atmosphere, with students who have a year of school under their belts, and have learned how to listen in class. Emmanel Tambakwi ( who is in training to become literacy co-ordinator for the Ndop Cluster) helps the teacher, Margrette Mbah, by occasionally teaching the reading and writing part of their daily learning. Sitting upright in their chairs, they are quiet and attentive as Emmanel asks for a volunteer to come to the chalk board to write the Bambalang word “vu'u” on the board. Emmanel chooses a petite girl—perhaps the youngest in the class. She gingerly walks to the board, carefully writes the word, turns to Emmanel, hands the chalk back to him before walking back to her seat and sitting back down.

The personality of the class is strikingly polite, just like its teacher. Perhaps one day one of them will be a teacher, just like he is. Maybe this possibility crosses Emmanel's mind as he sits next to a student after class, giving the child the extra attention she needs to thrive.

What Is Multilingual Education?Bambalang’s Cameroon Baptist Convention (CBC) primary school opened its doors to the multilingual education (MLE) program for Grade 1 students in September of 2013 (adding Grade 2 in 2014, and Grade 3 this fall). It is the first of its kind in the Ndop Plain. Don’t let the name fool you, though; multilingual education is not schooling where the students are taught in multiple languages, but rather it’s an education where students

are taught in one language—the language which they are most familiar with—their mother tongue of Bambalang.

Other schools in the Ndop Plain are taught in English, because this is the English part of Cameroon (English and French are the national languages).

At Bambalang’s CBC school, in Grade 1 and Grade 2, oral English is confined to a subject alongside math, science and social studies. The students are taught from lesson booklets based on the Cameroon government curriculum, first developed in Kom (another Cameroonian language group) by Wycliffe personnel in 2009. It was translated from English into Bambalang in 2013.

“These books present the information in an understandable manner using short stories or descriptions, all in the mother tongue,” explains Melody Grove, a Canadian who is the Ndop Cluster literacy specialist. “They don't have to memorize anything. . . . In the English school, the children would struggle to memorize what the teacher had said so they could say it back, but not understand much about what it meant.”

Emmanel says it is crucial for the students to learn first in their mother tongue.

“It’s the language they grew up with,” he says. “It’s the language they know. It’s the foundation of everything. And so you start them with something they know [their mother tongue] and take them to something they don’t know [English], and they will learn very well. But, if you start them in English it would disturb them.”

The MLE program works on the premise that by being taught in the language they know best, the children will be able to learn more effectively. This belief has been proven by the good test results throughout the year. In Grade 4, with a strong base in reading and writing in their mother tongue, the students are ready to transition to full-time classes in English. Developing fluency in English will broaden the students’ career options.

Literacy Is the Great CommissionAs these children look up at their gentle-spirited teacher, they don’t know how lucky they are. Well, luck really has nothing to do with it. They are blessed by God. Not everyone feels called to a particular vocation, but their teacher was.

The truth is, Emmanel's childhood was quite rare. His childhood was not like that of kids in most church-attending Bambalang families, who are often involved in both church and traditional ancestral worship. His family was devoutly Christian and his father was a lay pastor.

As early as Emmanel can remember, he had a strong faith in Christ. And it was this devoted trust in God that shaped two God-rooted desires in his heart—first to be a teacher and another to become a pastor, so he could win souls for Jesus Christ.

After graduating from high school he found himself back in Bambalang, teaching mother-tongue literacy to people in the

“It’s the language they grew up with. It’s the language they know. It’s the foundation of everything.”



(ABOVE) Emmanel gives a student a little bit of extra attention at Bambalang’s Cameroon Baptist Convention (CBC) primary school. Since his childhood, Emmanel has felt a calling to be a teacher. He says he has found that literacy is a part of the Great Commission.

community. When he saw an old church lady reading the Gospel of Luke in her heart language, he realized suddenly the power of education.

“The woman came to class and expressed how her life had been changed,” he says. “I decided that doing literacy will also win souls for Jesus Christ.”

Emmanel was convicted to follow the original desire of his heart—to be a teacher. He realized that teaching children how to read and write opens a gateway to the Word of God in their heart language.

Energetic FutureTeachers can only expect a child to sit still for so long in class. During recess at the CBC school, students flood the green grass that is nearly the size of a football field. As much as these children appear to enjoy the gift of learning, recess is where they are in their element. Fifteen minutes can feel like an hour, and a game of tag with friends like an Olympic competition.

Soon, there will be more energetic students like these in the region who are privileged enough to attend school in their mother tongue. This fall the neighbouring community of Bamunka will begin mother-tongue schooling, while other schools have showed interest for the future. The plan is to have multilingual education in each language group in the cluster.

“We hope to see many teachers become involved,” says Emmanel, when asked about the future of literacy in the region. “I want to see people embracing their own language. Cherishing their own language, not cherishing English—their second language.”

When people are able to read for themselves, he explains, they no longer rely on their pastors to learn from God. Instead they can learn and connect with God through the life-changing Word of God in their hands.

“Literacy is something that opens the way for Bible translation. . . . If we invest more in literacy, I think the translated Scriptures will create a lot more impact inside people’s lives.”

Melody Grove, who began helping develop the literacy program in the Ndop cluster in 2002, sees the big picture of teaching children how to read in their mother tongue at a young age.

“Children who learn to read and write their language in Grade 1 and Grade 2 will always be able to read the translated Scriptures in their mother tongue, even when they are adults,” she says. “We know that using mother-tongue Scriptures allows people to understand God's Word and also makes them know that He speaks their language. He is not a foreign God, and He cares about them deeply.”

Today there is hope for the next generation of Ndop children. Perhaps more hope than at any other point in history. With the innocence of childhood, these children are unaware of their blessing. To them it’s all a game. Learning, playing and dreaming go hand-in-hand.

So, they will just keep on playing.


Beyond Words

As another checking session with the Bamunka translation team is nearing its mid-afternoon conclusion on Cameroon’s Ndop Plain, Wycliffe consultant Greg Beyer is wondering about something. In the Gospel of Mark, the team has translated Christ’s challenge to those

listening to Him as, “If anyone has an ear, let him hear” in their Bamunka mother tongue. The translators translated a draft of the Scriptures, then sent this to Beyer translated back into

English for his review. All the teams working in languages of the Ndop Cluster do the same (see related story, pg. 12). Beyer (and his wife Annette, who provides administrative support) have travelled to the Bamunka translation office on this day, ready with comments and questions based on his review of their work. Beyer proceeds verse-by-verse through the draft, arriving at the verse in question, Mark 4:9.

Everybody has ears, Beyer points out, so is Jesus just saying, ‘Let everybody hear what I’m saying’ or is Jesus saying something deeper? After all, English translations say “ears to hear.”

Beyer, who holds an MA in biblical studies from Biblical Theological Seminary in Pennsylvania, brings his experience as an exegete, sharing the original meaning of the biblical text with the translation team.

“Jesus was saying, ‘you need to have a willingness to hear, and then think more about what I’m saying in my parables,’ ” he stresses. “It’s a slight nuance, but I think it’s important nonetheless.”

Team members, including several pastors, mull over Beyer’s input. In the end, they believe their translation in Bamunka is a good one. They say it conveys Jesus’ concern that hearers needed a sincere willingness to hear and think about what he was saying.

Beyer says later that he isn’t entirely convinced the translation is the best that it can be. Since this phrase of Jesus is found several times in the Gospels, the team must be sure it clearly communicates the intended meaning each time.

“It’s something I want to explore a little more with the team,” he says. “If they persuade me that ‘Yes, this is how it’s understood in our language,’ then I’m fine. In the end, ultimately, this is their translation. I want them to be satisfied with what it says.”

As a translation consultant, Beyer’s role is to check translations to ensure they are accurate, clear and sound natural in the language. “I’m trying to make sure that what they come out with is the best it can be.”

Translating and checking the Scriptures verse-by-verse can indeed be tedious and tiring, but Beyer knows the value of translating God’s Word well into the mother tongue. So do the Ndop Cluster translators, like Pastor Zachary Umaru Lohnyefong of the Bamunka team.

“The joy is that the people are accepting it, the people are committed to it, they are receiving it,” he explains.

“The first day I read in the church in the mother tongue, one old man jumped up and said, ‘Pastor, we have understood everything.’ The whole church was quieter than ever before. From the first day we started reading it in church, more people are coming to Christ than ever before.”

“I’m trying to make sure that what they come out with is the best it can be.”

Ears—or Ears that Hear?Dwayne Janke

Wycliffe Bible translation consultant Greg Beyer reviews Scripture translation with the Bamunka team.


A Thousand Words

On the Outside Looking In

Children can sense when they are missing out on something. These two boys, overhearing Word Alive's Nathan Frank interview other students at Bambalang’s Cameroon Baptist Convention (CBC) primary school, desperately try to see what is happening. Too bad they can’t fit through these small windows. Ndop cluster leadership believe that the success of Bambalang’s CBC primary school multilingual education program (see story, pg. 30) will lead to more schools using the multilingual education approach across the Ndop Plain. Soon, they hope there will be fewer children like these two who are on the outside looking in.

Natasha Schmale



Last Word

Unexpected Weapons Against Human TraffickingRoy Eyre, Wycliffe Canada President

I got to know a Canadian university student while on a Wycliffe Canada vision-building trip to Peru in 2013. Tiffarah Gosman is a young lady with a passion

for justice, especially for preventing human trafficking. While many organizations focus on rescue and care for those caught in trafficking, she told me that few emphasize prevention. Her passion was to address the root causes. According to the U.S. government, human trafficking continues because it preys on the world’s poor, marginalized and uninformed peoples.

The answer is to make traffickers’ tactics—threats, manipulations and offers for escape from poverty—less appealing, less threatening and less believable. Educational programs and awareness campaigns have been tried.

However, these miss the communities most vulnerable to trafficking: illiterate, minority-language speakers.

Tiffarah’s passion led her to explore the role of women’s literacy during an internship in Cameroon. As she worked alongside Wycliffe staff in Africa, she could see that as women learn to read, they can access vital safety information and become aware of support systems. Moreover, they are empowered to take action.

When people are enabled to pursue their interests, provide for themselves and their families, and contribute to their communities, they are less likely to be persuaded by the tricks of traffickers or to

seek escape from their current situation.Take it one step further. Though literacy programs in

and of themselves have powerful social and economic impacts, when combined with the Living Word of God they gain even more transformative power. The message of deliverance, healing and hope found in the Bible lays a foundation for beliefs about human rights, protection of the weak and hope for the future.

Bible translation, mother-tongue education and distribution of Scriptures result in stronger and healthier communities and form a protective barrier against human trafficking and exploitation, both now and for future generations.

I saw this empowerment for myself a few years ago when I visited Cameroon. In the village of Bambalang on the Ndop Plain, I visited a literacy class, meeting in a home that was being rebuilt from a recent war (see related story, pg. 20). The mud block walls were still black with soot. In a marginalized part of a marginalized

community, vulnerable to attack from other ethnic groups, a literacy class was a shining light. The women there were eager to learn to read for themselves. But we know that women don’t just read for themselves. There’s an old adage that if you teach a man to read, you’ve taught one person. If you teach a woman, you’ve taught a village. These women are tired of being pushed around, tired of being caught in the cycle of poverty. When I watched their kids running around, I realized they have hope unheard of in previous generations, because these women are learning to read.

But it doesn’t end there. The building also housed a young, vibrant and growing church. Needing more space, it has since moved into its own building. The Sunday morning I attended, I saw that the first people through the door were the same women from the literacy class.

These women aren’t satisfied with literacy; they want life and hope for their children.

Bible translation, mother-tongue education and distribution of Scriptures form a protective barrier against exploitation.

Cindy Buckshon


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Wycliffe Canada Featured PartnershipInvest in the Ndop Cluster

You can help advance Bible distribution, literacy and Scripture use through your gift to the Ndop Cluster (featured in this issue of Word Alive). Here are the basic

details of this important partnership with the language groups on the Ndop Plain, which you can support through your gifts to Wycliffe Canada.

Name: Ndop Cluster

Location: Cameroon, Africa

Language Groups: 250,000 speakers of 10 related languages.

Overview: The aim of the Ndop Cluster is to advance Bible translation, Scripture use and/or literacy for 10 languages on the Ndop Plain in northwest Cameroon, so that after seven to 10 years each language will have:

• Appropriate documentation (including linguistic descriptions, mature writing systems, dictionaries, etc.)

• A New Testament available in printed and audio form.• The Luke film.• Self-supporting literacy and Scripture-use programs.• Trained, experienced and motivated local translators, literacy

teachers and Scripture-use promoters.

Help Spread God’s Word in Cameroon!Ndop Cluster Ends 2026

Funding needed until the end of this year: $64,103

• Become a monthly financial partner.• Give a gift of translation, Scripture use and literacy.• Leave a legacy of Scripture.• Commit to praying.

Respond through this magazine’s reply form (inside), donate online at donate.wycliffe.ca or call 1-800-463-1143

http://donate.wycliffe.ca/