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Nearly 40 years after Bible translation work began in the delta region of Papua New Guinea’s (PNG) Gulf Province, the Kope people of the area can now read the Gospel of Luke in their own language.

The first New Testament book to be completed in the Kope language, it was dedicated and launched in late October in Ubuo village by Rev Tiramu Aia, the remaining translator from the 1980s team which began work on the text. The original Kope translation team completed the books of Jonah, Ruth and Esther, but while they drafted some parts of Luke in the 1980s and others were done for the local language version of the Jesus Film released in 2015, the gospel book translation was unfinished when Australian Lutheran translation advisor Hanna Schulz arrived in the Gulf Province that same year. She began work with the local translation team in 2016.

Hanna said finishing the lengthy and complex community-based project, having the book printed and published and being part of its launch and dedication with several hundred people from the seven Kope villages, were all occasions of great joy.

‘The day of the dedication was almost surreal – that we really were holding this book in our hands’, she said of the translation team, which was made up of members from more than 19 local households. ‘There were feelings of joy, satisfaction, a sense of a job well done, and a sense that there is still so much more to do! There is also some trepidation, as book sales were slow, and many a prayer that this work will bear a harvest.

‘During the dedication, when someone did a reading from Luke, I enjoyed watching the faces of our worship team, guys who love the Lord and have been on the edge of the translation work. They had huge grins as they listened and gave me a big thumbs up.’

Now working with the Kope team on drafting and checking translations of Acts and Genesis, Hanna, who works with Wycliffe Australia, a partner of LCA International Mission, said she prayed that the Luke publication would lead to ‘changed hearts, changed lives and changed communities’. ‘What I hope to see from this publication is people knowing God’s love in Jesus and walking with Jesus as his disciples every day’, she said. ‘I hope, too, to see disciples who make disciples.’

In addition to the current Bible translation work, Hanna is preparing for the second in a series of six Oral Bible Storying project workshops in February 2023 and the SALT (Scripture Application and Leadership Training) Course in May. To support participants for these and future Christian leadership, literacy and Scripture-use events at the Oroi’io Madei (Living Word) Training Centre in Ubuo village, a new dormitory is planned to accompany the classroom at the site. The project will cost AU$180,000. Donations can be made to Wycliffe Australia at https://wycliffe.org.au/projects/ubuo-training-centre-png/.

While there have been times of challenge and frustration as well as joy in her work in PNG, Hanna said it ‘has been a time of huge personal growth and of being welcomed and loved’. ‘God is doing exciting things in the Gulf, and I am privileged to be able to be part of it’, she said. ‘It is exhausting work, but it is also wonderful. There are many fine Christians who I get to work alongside, as well as a desperate need for real discipleship and understanding of who God is.’

Members of St Paul’s Lutheran Church Choir Shepparton in Victoria have seen the extremes of Australia’s climate in recent months. The choir’s members, who are originally from African nations including the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Burundi and South Sudan, left the flooding Goulburn Valley where they live to head for the dusty outback of Central Australia. There the choir, which sings in Kiswahili, Kirundi and English, collaborated with fellow Lutherans from the Central Australian Aboriginal Women’s Choir at the 10-day Desert Song Festival in and around Alice Springs. The Central Australian Aboriginal Women’s Choir, whose members are from Hermannsburg and other remote Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory, sing in English, Western Arrarnta and Pitjantjatjara, and will tour Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne this month.

In the first conference of its kind, 20 German Lutheran pastors and ministry workers who serve congregations in Australia met in Adelaide recently.

The EKiA, or the Evangelische Kirche in Australien, is a collaboration of Lutheran congregations with German-language services and ministries across New South Wales, Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia. Some of these congregations are part of the German Lutheran Church EKD (Evangelische Kirche in Deutschland), some are independent, while others are German-language ministries connected to LCA congregations. There is an agreement of altar and pulpit fellowship between the EKD and the LCA.

The five-day conference in mid-October provided ‘a very fruitful and insightful space for exchange, encouragement and learning from each other’, said Maria Rudolph, who leads the German-language services and ministry at St John’s Lutheran Church in Perth. ‘We were doubly blessed by the presence of EKD Bishop Ute Hedrich and LCA representatives Dr Tania Nelson, the executive officer for Local Mission, and Craig Heidenreich, the Cross-Cultural Ministry facilitator, who enriched our sessions greatly.’

Gerhard Ruediger of the Evangelical German Language Congregation in South Australia said Tania also highlighted the Memoranda of Understanding between the LCA and EKD, reaffirmed in 2001, for the mutual recognition and support of German-language ministry in Australia.