By Philip J. D. Hopkins, Senior Editorial Consultant (Projects)

Preparation

TBS has had a long association with Africa, with Bible translation and distribution endeavours taking place from the nineteenth century until this day. The preparation, publication, and distribution of Scriptures in languages read and spoken in Africa continue apace as the recent Annual Report (QR 648) made plain. In 2023 it was agreed that it would be good for me to undertake a trip to Kenya and Liberia in connection with our Bible translation projects in those places. Considerable preparation was needed for this trip, which was my first both to inland Kenya in east Africa and then to Liberia in west Africa, including the mandatory yellow fever vaccination for Liberia. Although TBS staff had undertaken visits to Nigeria in recent years, this visit was to be the first of a TBS staff member to Liberia. 

The outward journey

In the Lord’s goodness a favourably priced direct flight was found from London Heathrow to Nairobi’s Jomo Kenyatta International Airport. The outbound flight on Friday 9 February 2024, with the advantage of a window seat, was fascinating. Crossing the snowbound European Alps is always a privilege, but given the time of year snow was also to be seen on the mountains of the Greek islands. Owing to the civil war in Sudan the flight continued further to the east of Africa than it did on my visit to Kenya two years earlier; this change in flight path afforded an excellent view of the Red Sea, reminding me of the miraculous crossing by the Israelites in the Exodus. After several hours of flying down the eastern side of Africa, my flight arrived in Nairobi around 9.00 p.m. About an hour later, Dale Money Director of firstBible International, arrived on another flight. Dale and I then travelled together for the rest of the time in Africa, which was helpful and profitable both practically and spiritually.

A weekend in Nairobi

Photo: A Rendille tribe

On Saturday morning, I was able to meet with a contact from the Rendille tribe. According to the Atlas of Humanity ‘The Rendille tribe is a Cushitic tribe that inhabits the climatically harsh region between the Marsabit hills and Lake Turkana in Northern Kenya’.¹ The tribe are known for their strikingly elaborate and colourful clothing and jewellery. Many of the Rendille are pagans, with prayers to the moon, animal sacrifices, and ancestor worship. Thankfully in recent decades a small but growing number of the tribe have been soundly converted to the Christian faith, in part due to the instrumentality of a long-serving missionary from Canada who lived among the tribe for several decades and had a long association with TBS. Not long after I returned from Kenya, she passed away, having served the Lord there for more than fifty years. Nevertheless, the Lord’s work goes on among the Rendille people. 

On the Lord’s Day, Dale and I were able to worship at a Baptist church in Nairobi led by Kenyans. It was encouraging at both services to hear the Word of God ably preached by younger men, one of whom was shortly leaving, with the church’s blessing, to plant a church in another part of Kenya. We were also pleased to participate in the reverent singing of traditional hymns in both English and Swahili, in stark contrast to many other places of worship in Kenya, which has been overrun by the charismatic movement and the prosperity gospel, and the associated modern contemporary music style.

Arrival in Eldoret

Monday morning found us once more at Kenyatta International Airport, from where we took an internal flight to Eldoret. The modern plane took us over a patchwork of fields to the high Rift Valley, and the growing ‘village’ of Eldoret. Since our visit it has been afforded ‘city’ status, making it the fifth city of Kenya. Eldoret sits at high altitude, varying from about 2,100 metres (6,900 feet) at the airport to more than 2,700 metres (8,900 feet) in nearby areas. It is particularly well known for being home to some of Kenya’s famous long and middle-distance runners.  

It was a joy to be warmly welcomed to the home of a local pastor whom I have known for many years, and who was a close friend of my late father. We were thankful for the help of the pastor’s son during our time in Eldoret; he ensured we were well cared for and helpfully arranged many things, including transportation and food.

Early Tuesday morning we headed out of the dust and noise of Eldoret to a very well-situated Bible college in the nearby countryside. There we enjoyed the hot African sun and the gentle breeze amid relative stillness. The college was the location of the four Bible project meetings that were held from Tuesday to Thursday. The meeting room also doubled as the library, an excellent setting in which to discuss the vital work of Bible translation!

Swahili Bible project meeting

The first meeting on that Tuesday was with our lead Swahili Bible translator in his home, before we headed to the college library to meet with him and the rest of the Swahili Bible team, who had travelled from other parts of Kenya and in one case from Tanzania. Swahili has official language status in Tanzania and Kenya and is also widely spoken in Uganda, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and the Comoros Islands. It is also spoken by smaller numbers in Burundi, Rwanda, northern Zambia, Malawi, and Mozambique. This means that it is important that team members come from both Kenya and Tanzania and from different parts of those countries, as regional variations exist and we want the translation to have widespread use. This was the first time that the team had been gathered in one room, and it was a profitable meeting. It is hoped that we can hold a Swahili Bible translation conference in Nairobi in late November, if the Lord will. We are thankful for progress made towards revising the draft translation of the Gospel according to John, and it is hoped that the text can be finalised at the November conference. 

Cultic influences in Kenya

On our return to Eldoret we were greeted by very loud, fast-paced speaking from a building not far from the pastor’s home where we were staying. The incessant row was being produced by a religious cult leader, who each day gathers a considerable number to listen to her rantings and false prophesying and to witness her so-called miracles of healing. It was a stark reminder of the challenge facing Godly pastors and Bible-believing churches in Kenya, a land where cults and sects run rampant with a false gospel, and where anyone with a veneer of Christianity and a microphone can swiftly gather a crowd of hearers. How we need to pray for the true voice of Christ to be heard in Kenya, but for that to happen faithful preachers with faithful editions of God’s Word are essential. ‘Therefore said he unto them, The harvest truly is great, but the labourers are few: pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he would send forth labourers into his harvest’ (Luke 10.2).

Pokot Bible project meeting

Wednesday morning began with a useful informal meeting in the home of our lead Swahili Bible translator, before the arrival of the Pokot Bible translators who travelled about one hundred kilometres south by car from their tribal lands to the north. The Pokot people live in West Pokot County and Baringo County in Kenya and in the Pokot District of the eastern Karamoja region in Uganda.²

Our lead Pokot translator is in his eighties, and it is our prayer that he will be spared to oversee the translation of at least the entire New Testament. Following the publication of the Gospel according to John some years ago, the text of Matthew to Romans has been finalised and the team are currently working on Paul’s letters to the church at Corinth.

The Society has had a long connection with the Pokot people and language going back more than sixty years. It is our earnest desire that we would be able to publish the second edition of the New Testament soon, as there is a great need for it. The Pokot, like other northern Kenya tribes, are coming under increasing pressure from Islamic missionaries, who are labouring assiduously to make converts to Islam. The reality of Islamic zeal in Kenya and other parts of Africa is a warning to the Christian church and reminds us of what the Lord Jesus Christ said in John 9.4, ‘I must work the works of him that sent me, while it is day: the night cometh, when no man can work’. If the enemies of Christ are labouring fervently, let us who are of the light not be slack in our work, whilst we constantly look to the Lord to bless our endeavours.

Kalenjin Bible project meeting

The start of the Kalenjin project meeting was delayed whilst I spent several hours in Eldoret dealing with Kenyan officialdom over a consignment of English Bibles granted to our lead Pokot Bible translator. After shuttling from office to office, we eventually obtained the release of the consignment, but not until we had paid a newly imposed tax on imported Bibles. The Kenyan government under President William Ruto is grappling with a parlous financial situation, with international debts in the region of $82 billion. More than half of government revenue goes towards debt repayments, so it is not surprising that they have introduced new taxes.

After dealing with Kenyan bureaucracy, it was a joy to meet with almost the whole Kalenjin Bible translation committee; several of them are based in Eldoret, though most live in Bomet from where they travelled that morning. When we met, the Kalenjin team were proofreading the typeset Kalenjin New Testament. It is a joy to report that at the time of writing (early September), the New Testament is finalised and ready for printing. God willing, 10,000 copies will be printed in Europe and then the majority will be shipped to Kenya, where they are eagerly awaited by Kalenjin-speaking Christians. The team are currently engaged in revising the draft translation of the Old Testament, and it is hoped that this work will be finalised in 2025, with the aim of publishing the complete Bible in 2026, if the Lord will. 

Kikamba Bible project meeting

The final meeting in Eldoret was held on Thursday 15 February with four members of the Kikamba Bible translation team, who had travelled a considerable distance overnight by minibus from Mwingi in eastern Kenya. A profitable meeting followed, with excellent discussion on the intricacies of Kamba and the challenges of, and the need for translating the Scriptures into this language. If the Lord wills, by the time this edition of the Quarterly Record is published, the printing of 15,000 copies of the Gospel according to John in Kenya will have commenced. 

Journey to west Africa

Dale and I departed Eldoret on an internal flight to Nairobi on the Thursday evening, and after a short night were back at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport early Friday morning for our initial flight to Lome, Togo. A window seat offered several fascinating sights in the initial part of the flight, including sight of Mount Kenya to the east, then an extinct volcano in northwest Kenya and various lakes across Kenya and Uganda, after which a heat haze obscured the ground from view as we headed west on a flight path just north of the equator.

As Lome hove into view, a series of red dirt tracks radiated out from the city, capital of Togo, one of the series of small west African countries that have a short border with the Gulf of Guinea, which further from land merges with the South Atlantic Ocean. The heat (around 36°C, 97°F), and especially the high humidity in Lome, were a shock to the system, even after spending nearly a week in Kenya!

Our flight to Monrovia, Liberia, with a stop in Accra, Ghana, was about the last to depart the airport. The plane was packed, and lively political discussions were going on around us as we headed west. The arrival in Roberts International Airport, Monrovia, presented us with a further taste of west Africa. We emerged from the chaotic, noisy, and yet somehow functioning airport to a warm welcome from our Dan-Gio Bible translators, who rejoiced to see us. 

Monrovia, Liberia

Our long Friday evening journey from Roberts International Airport to our lodgings in Paynesville, on the east side of Monrovia, was somewhat eased by being able to listen to sound preaching on the car radio, broadcast by a local FM Christian radio station.

The poverty we saw on route from the airport was striking, even compared with Kenya. Liberia is one of the poorest and least developed countries in the world. Its GDP per capita in US dollars ($754.53 in 2022) is one of the lowest in the world.3 After travelling for more than twenty hours door-to-door, we were grateful to arrive at our spacious guesthouse lodgings in Paynesville, although the guard tower in the courtyard was a sobering reminder of the challenges of life in the locality.

Journey to Bahn, Liberia

On Saturday morning we were collected from the guesthouse and taken nearby to the church where the translation team meet to carry out their work. After that, we embarked on a long, slow car journey to the interior of Liberia and the town of Ganta, which is close to the border with Guinea.

The four-hour journey to Ganta was full of interest as we passed through various towns and villages, each with their own marketplace crammed with people buying and selling, some carrying their wares on their head. It was astonishing to see how people loaded their cars, with goods piled high on the roof and/or hanging out of the back. Large vans and lorries were few and far between, and so people used their cars as transport in a way that would swiftly draw the attention of the police in more developed countries. Similarly, there were few buses or minibuses, with the result that people were often seen crammed in their cars; and typically three or more people would ride on a moped, with five the highest number seen, although a local missionary recalled an instance of six! Crash helmets for the riders and their passengers were at best an optional extra. Heartrending poverty was visible in most settlements on the way. Villages were separated in some locations with vivid green jungle flora and in other places with banana plantations. 

At Ganta we paused for a break at a café and were met by a brother whose church had some years earlier received a grant of English Bibles and Metrical Psalters from TBS. He had ridden three hours to meet with us on red dirt tracks; his outer clothes were covered in red dust, but he was full of smiles in our meeting. 

From Ganta we headed to Bahn, where we would be staying overnight. The paved road soon petered out and turned into a red dirt track. The trip was deliberately made during the dry season in Liberia, which meant that the roads were passable but that everything within twenty metres of the road was coated liberally in sticky red dust. At one point dust was even entering the vehicle, but opening and closing the boot (trunk) addressed that problem. 

Arrival in Bahn

As we neared Bahn we were met by a funeral procession, with the agitated mourners briefly surrounding our car. In the town itself we turned off into a narrow side street and drove into the jungle about one mile. The small dirt road led to the community hall where we were greeted enthusiastically by about one hundred of the Dan tribe waving palm branches and shouting their welcome: it was one of the most humbling experiences of my life! 

In the community hall we were introduced to more of the Dan Bible translation team and local church leaders. Several welcome speeches were made, after which I was invited to speak. In my response I mentioned the long connection of roughly sixty years between TBS and the Dan people, which for about thirty years was brokered by long-serving missionary Tom Jackson, who was instrumental in preparing the first edition of the TBS Dan New Testament. I then spoke about TBS and the work on the second edition of the New Testament, which was nearing completion.

After the initial welcome, we were taken to the mission complex, which the late Tom Jackson was instrumental in establishing. The array of buildings on the site was testament to the enduring labours of this pioneer missionary and to the support he received from his first wife, Billie, and then after she died from his second wife, June. Further information on Tom’s life is to be found in the excellent article by Adrian Stoutjesdyk, our former Canadian General Secretary, in QR637. Tom’s memory is still revered among the Dan people, and the next morning we were lovingly shown his grave and then the place where he was killed in a rebel ambush on one of the roads out of Bahn in 1990.

Our lodgings, in one of the old mission bungalows, were simple. Dale and I each had our own bedroom, sparsely furnished with a plastic-covered mattress on a concrete floor, a mosquito net, a plastic chair, and a large fan, powered externally by a small generator. Encounters in the inside bathroom that evening and night with a huge black spider and a foot-long millipede reminded us that while we were far from home, we were not beyond the protection and help of the Lord. 

Throughout our time in Liberia, especially in Bahn, Dale and I were shown very warm and loving hospitality by a people who have so little compared with those of us who live in developed countries. Before retiring to bed, we had a meeting outside underneath the stars with the local church pastors and leaders, in which they asked Dale and me many questions, as well as urging us to come back and live among them. We promised to go back to the USA and UK and make known the need for a young missionary couple to come and give their lives to serving the Dan people just as the Jacksons had done.

The Lord’s Day morning arrived. Breakfast was a plate of delicious bananas and pineapple. We were then taken to the church building where Tom Jackson had ministered, which was largely full. As I waited my turn to preach, I was greatly encouraged to see four old TBS posters, which I remembered seeing in my childhood, on the walls of the church. Evidently Tom Jackson had ordered them from TBS and there they were, some forty or fifty years later, still proclaiming God’s Truth.

My sermon was translated into Dan, but about one-third of the congregation seemed to understand my English directly. Liberian English is the least standard version of the language that I have heard anywhere in the world. When two Liberians are speaking to one another in the local English dialect, it sounds like a foreign language and is hard to understand. With foreign English speakers they strive to speak in more standard English, but even so the accent can be hard to catch. It was a privilege and a joy to worship with the Lord’s people in inland Liberia. Please pray that very soon the new edition of the Dan New Testament will be in their hands because the remaining copies of the first edition are typically very worn.

On the way back we undertook the 190-mile journey from Bahn to Paynesville in about five hours. In the towns between Bahn and Paynesville, signposts for multiple kinds of churches were seen. In Liberia many would claim to be Christian, but the truths of the Bible are often poorly understood. As in Kenya there are established Protestant churches. However, in both countries many cults and sects have taken root, peddling a false gospel. One missionary described Christianity in Liberia as a mile wide and an inch deep; the same could be said of Kenya. Nevertheless, in both countries there are faithful men and women of God who love the Lord. Some of them are working with us as Bible translators, others labour in the church, and others have a burden to distribute the Scriptures. 

On Monday we were able to meet with four members of the Dan Bible translation team and to discuss the project with them. At the time of writing, the Dan New Testament is being printed in Europe and the bulk of the copies will then be shipped to Liberia. Please pray for the safe arrival of these copies in Liberia: the Dan people have waited so long for these Scriptures. In a land of great spiritual ignorance, the greatest thing we can provide is the Scriptures of truth, for as we read in Psalm 119.130, ‘The entrance of thy words giveth light; it giveth understanding unto the simple’.

Further meetings were held with local missionaries and pastors over Monday and Tuesday. Dan is one of over twenty indigenous languages spoken in Liberia; we were able to meet with a pastor who has a burden to see new Scripture translation work begun in the Mandingo language, which is spoken widely in other west African countries. 

Please remember the tribal peoples of Liberia and the surrounding nations, the vast majority of whom do not have faithful copies of the Scriptures. For most of them English is just a spoken lingua franca and not a language in which they can easily grasp the glorious truths of the Gospel.

The return journey

In the early hours of Wednesday I headed back to Roberts International Airport for a flight to Morocco, which stopped to refuel in Sierra Leone. The journey up the western side of Africa was enthralling. The vast tracts of the Western Sahara eventually gave way to the Atlas Mountains, and then the cultivated fields of Morocco. The flight from Morocco to London afforded a wonderful view of the north African coastline, which stirred the heart as I bade farewell to this fascinating continent so in need of sound Scriptures and faithful preachers. 

Then, as the coastline of Spain came into view, thoughts turned homeward. I arrived home full of thankfulness: for the opportunity to have undertaken this trip, for all the Lord’s help and blessing, for those who specifically prayed for us, and for those who showed such kindness and hospitality to us in Kenya and Liberia.

Our concluding desire and that of the faithful brothers in Africa is best summed up in words of the Apostle Paul, ‘Finally, brethren, pray for us, that the word of the Lord may have free course, and be glorified, even as it is with you’ (2 Thessalonians 3.1).