Photo courtesy of NTM.
Papua New Guinea (MNN) — The Siawi people of Papua New Guinea came to Christ in 1992.
They were a tribe of newborn believers for years afterwards until they received deeper teaching in New Testament books like Romans and Ephesians in 2009.
Through it all, the Siawi’s desire for God’s Word in their heart language was insatiable.
The New Testament was recently finished for the Siawi tribe, but now they have their sights set on a new Bible translation project.
Linda Kreig working on translation for the Siawi tribe. (Photo courtesy of NTM)
That’s where Linda Krieg with New Tribes Mission (NTM) comes in. Krieg was a part of the translation efforts on the Siawi New Testament that took nearly four years to finish.
Krieg will be returning to Papua New Guinea in the next few weeks to begin converting portions of the Old Testament into the Siawi heart language as well. This translation project for parts of the Old Testament is really a gift in itself since there were obstacles from the start.
“The Siawi’s wanted the whole Old Testament, and I kept telling them it’s not going to happen. I know they need it; I know they want it,” Kreig shares. “The last six months I was in the tribe [before September 2012], I was there by myself. I couldn’t leave the house because my knee was so bad. It turned out I needed knee replacement. My hearing was going; my eyesight was going, and I just didn’t see any way we were going to get anymore done…. Now I’ve had a knee replacement and kind of rejuvenated through that.”
Krieg talks about the upcoming translation efforts, “We will work on the Exodus portions that we have in teaching drafts, and Jonah. [We’ll] get those ready and then print a waterproof Bible.”
Why waterproof? “It rains almost every day,” says Krieg. “Everything molds and mildews. Cockroaches eat paper; termites eat paper. This waterproof Bible is printed on a plastic-based paper. If you drop it in a river or a water puddle, if it rains on it, it doesn’t damage it.”
Regular paper doesn’t react the same way in Papua New Guinea as it does in drier countries. “You scrunch up a piece of paper, and it doesn’t crinkle. It kind of sods together. You can’t really squeeze water out of it, but you feel like you might! One of the things when I come home from furlough would be to take a piece of paper and just scrunch it up and hear it kind of crinkle, because it just doesn’t happen there.”
The Bibles are already fully funded, but Linda shares how you can help. “I would really appreciate people praying for the Siawi believers as they have…the Bible, that the Lord would enable them to really take these truths and stand on them.”
