It takes five or six plane rides to get to the Nggem tribe. You might need to go through Australia first, then Bali or Jakarta. You’ll need to apply for permission to travel inland once you’ve landed at Jayapura on the coast of Papua – the easternmost province of Indonesia. The final trip is on a Mission Aviation plane, which lands on a small airstrip surrounded by bush.

The Nggem tribe makes up a population of around 4,500 people, living in small, remote communities in the central highlands of Papua. Their first contact with the “outside world” was in 1938, when an expedition passed through the area. The airstrip at Kobakma was opened in 1968.

It’s here that Paul and Pip Etherington, a fresh-faced couple with big ambitions, landed in 1992.

The plan was to spend fifteen years here, translating the New Testament into the Nggem language. 

Thirty years on, and they’ve just celebrated the publication of the first New Testament ever written in Nggem – a truly momentous feat.

The journey begins

From the start, the Etheringtons knew they needed to be fully invested in the Nggem community. If the Nggem people were going to be interested in reading this translation, Paul and Pip would have to build relationships with them first. Pip’s first impressions were of a people suffering both physically and spiritually.

“We were very naive and green,” Pip says. Early on in their mission, they decided to hold a pig feast to invite all their friends to.

“We spent most of the feast trying to pacify everyone and not have a war because we didn’t realise these different clans within the tribe don’t generally mix together!”

“They’re very gracious to us and our cultural blunders,” Paul adds.

Health was dire throughout the tribe, with poor living conditions, a rampant outbreak of HIV moving through the teenagers, and more infants dying than surviving past two years old. Paul and Pip can’t think of any Nggem friends who hadn’t lost a child. The Etherington family also suffered a lot from sickness, especially malaria and respiratory infections. 

Pip trained as a nurse and opened a clinic for people to walk to “or be brought in by a wheelbarrow,” she laughs. The couple also started a clean water programme in the area. “We have seen many healed with medicine and prayer, but also the heartbreak when others die despite doing all we could to bring healing.” 

One Nggem man approached them and said, “Because you’ve done this for us, the people will accept the translation when you do it.”

But before the translation could be made, the Nggem language had to be written down. It was a completely oral language.

Inventing an alphabet

The first step was for the Etheringtons to learn Nggem. It is not an easy language to pick up! For one thing, the verbs do more than just describe actions. They describe the speaker's perspective, whether an action is happening or not, who’s performing it, what things or people are affected by the action, and details about how different events are connected. Many verbs have hundreds and even thousands of different potential forms! Paul ended up doing a Master’s thesis on the grammar of the language which helped him decipher more of the complexity of the language.

The next challenge was to create a written alphabet for the language.

Paul, skilled in linguistics, worked alongside people from the tribe to develop an orthography – a set of conventions that determine how to write, spell and punctuate the language. It took about ten years to settle on the final orthography.

Then the work of translating the New Testament could begin. Not only did this require studying the original Greek text, but also English, Indonesian, and two neighbouring tribal language translations were used as resources – even more languages to navigate! Paul meticulously examined each Bible passage and worked with his local team to find the most accurate way of phrasing it in Nggem. Many concepts in the Bible that might be expressed by a single word in English or Greek need several words to express in Nggem. For example, “redeemed” is “paid our price to untie us”. Other concepts are expressed idiomatically – “having a firm jaw” means merciful, and “to have a tall heart” is proud or uncaring. To encourage someone is to “prop up their heart with a tree fork”.

“They bring the expert knowledge of the language,” Paul says about his Nggem team, “and I bring the ability to do exegesis and find out what it’s really meant to be saying.” Each verse went through several checks and revisions, with a final check by a translation consultant to give it a seal of approval.

Reciprocated understanding

All the while, Pip and Paul continued to invest themselves in the community around them. Paul offered spiritual support and pastoral care alongside Pip’s clinic.

The tribe has an animistic background, saturated with ideas of the spiritual nature of all things. The gospel was brought by evangelists from the neighbouring Dani tribe in the late 1960s, and in the early 70s they received the gospel with great joy. But in the late 70s they were caught up in an uprising against the government which resulted in a lot of suffering and death, leaving them deeply scarred and the church discouraged. The Etheringtons worked hard to show the truth and love of Christ. Paul met with pastors from different villages who gathered every week to discuss church life and sermon preparation. Over the years, the gospel sunk further into the hearts of the Nggem people. Today, many young people are doing Bible training and enthusiastically taking up leadership positions in the church. 

“In the past, if you asked how you can tell somebody’s a Christian, they would say, ‘they don’t smoke and they take communion’,” Paul reflects. “Whereas now they’ll say, ‘you love God and other people’.”

It wasn’t just the tribe’s understanding that changed, though.

Paul’s never been into black-and-white thinking, but his perspective on life came from a western dualistic worldview – good and bad, spiritual and physical, sacred and secular. He trusted in science to explain many things. 

“In the west, we tend to dismiss a lot of the spiritual stuff,” he says, “while over there, they tend to think everything’s linked to something spiritual. The truth might actually be somewhere in the middle.”

The Nggem pay attention to souls of their dead, and take special care to avoid any curses cast by disgrunted spirits. Paul continues, “If a person came saying, ‘my baby’s crying at night, and these are the names of my dead relatives’, initially I would be more inclined to dismiss it as superstition. But now I’m more open to the idea that there may be both physical and spiritual issues.”

Hardships

Amidst the challenges of translation work, cultural differences, spiritual battles and poor health, Pip and Paul stayed remarkably faithful to the mission. Raising a family of four kids among malaria and dengue fever with limited backup was sometimes overwhelming. Pip remembers feeding the family and schooling the kids while at one point being so sick with malaria that she couldn’t even walk in a straight line. Yet God never took away their calling, and they never gave up.

There was always the potential of danger too. Early on, the family kept an evacuation list on the back of a cupboard door in case of hostile outbreaks. In more recent years they occasionally  hear gunfire from the airstrip, not even a hundred metres from their home. Political tensions are often high between authorities and locals.

Sometimes Paul would be invited to gatherings he would only later learn were political. He would try to remain neutral, even as political candidates came to him for prayer. 

During one particular demonstration, amidst crowds and burning buildings, Paul sought people at the edge of the mob to find out what was going on. To his surprise, the person addressing the crowd handed him the microphone. He tried to calm the crowd, advocating against violence and talking about everyone’s value in God's eyes, urging them not to throw their lives away in the dispute. Then, in an effort to remain impartial, he went to find the opposing crowd to share the same message so he wasn’t seen taking a side.

"With stuff like that, you’re walking on a bit of a tightrope,” Paul says. 

"Harmless as doves and wise as serpents," Pip adds.

Black, white and red

Paul pulls out a copy of the Nggem New Testament. He transliterates the title: “God’s word that was later hit with a pointy object.”

“Hit with a pointy object means to write,” he clarifies. 

It’s got a hardy black cover to keep bugs and moisture out. The text is large, as many Nggem people need glasses but don’t have them. Illustrations are scattered throughout, provided by the Bible Society.

The dedication of the Nggem New Testament in August this year marked the pinnacle of Paul and Pip's three decades of hard work.

Over roaring fires, stones were heated up and the tribe cooked 153 pigs in a similar fashion to a hangi. Traditional songs and dances, along with new ones crafted for the event, filled the air in celebration of the richness of Nggem culture. The Etheringtons, along with supporters, prayer partners, missionaries and members of the Mission Aviation community were all enthusiastically welcomed by the locals with dancing.

Paul proudly cradled the Nggem New Testament as he spoke to the crowd, a symbol of their efforts. In the month that followed, 2,000 of the 3,000 copies that were printed were carefully distributed.

“We saw the Nggem tribe as a whole, with all the different clans, coming together in unity like we’d never seen in our thirty years,” Pip says.

The Nggem tribe is small, compared to some of the neighbouring tribes. They would often feel unimportant and insignificant. Receiving the Bible in their indigenous language, the Nggem people felt profoundly seen, loved and valued by God. They were so thankful that God saw fit to give them Scriptures in their own language.

The tribe flew colours of red, white and black, adopted to match the Bible. They symbolise coming out of darkness into the light through the blood of Jesus, and the people consider them “their” colours now.

There was one baby born on the day of the dedication, aptly named "Nggem Baibel".

One old man shared how he has prayed for Paul and Pip every day since they arrived, and is so happy to have lived long enough to have the New Testament. 

The work isn’t done yet. Paul and Pip are based in Nelson now, but travel to Papua regularly to retain strong relationships with the tribe and help the Nggem people with literacy, Old Testament translation, producing the Jesus film in Nggem, and doing an oral recording of the New Testament for people who cannot read. The journey isn’t over, but the Etheringtons have already made an immeasurable impact on a community that won’t be forgotten.

“To see how the Nggem people celebrated, and are now using the Nggem Scriptures,” Paul says, “it’s been worthwhile.”