Kirk & Yolanda Rogers Translating the Bible and planting a church among the Landumas of Guinea, West Africa “You’re sitting shaman style”
“Would you mind giving a ride to this young lady here?”
The question came from a soldier at a checkpoint. These checkpoints are common here along the major roads. Usually we are waved through after a friendly greeting and a quick explanation of my identity – “I’m a pastor with La Mission Evangélique de Boké.”
I (Kirk) was on my way to the capital city with my daughter, Kayla. We needed to visit the embassy so we could get her passport renewed. We were also taking along a Landuma fellow, Mamadu, who was returning to school.
We had room for the young lady. “Does she have baggage? Not much? Okay, no problem.”
She climbed in, and we were on our way.
We found out her name is Hawa. She is 18, and lives with her father (a soldier) and her younger sister. Her mother died several years ago. She is beginning 10th grade for the second time. If she isn’t able to make it to 11th this year, she said she will drop out and look for work. For the next several hours we visited off and on.
At one point, Hawa, in the back seat, looked over the front seat to see Kayla seated cross-legged. “You’re sitting shaman style,” she remarked.
I glanced over at Kayla to see what she meant. Okay. So “Indian style” to us is “shaman style” to her. Interesting. Maybe this could be a good conversation starter.
“So what do shamans do?” I asked.
“Well, they can put curses on people, and heal people.”
“So, is that good?”
“Yes, it can be good.”
“Where does their power come from?”
Now Mamadu was getting interested.
“From demons,” they both said.
“Well, is it good when people deal with demons?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because it means you have two gods.”
“That’s right! God is the one who created us. Why did he create us? What does He want us to do?”
After a bit of deliberating on that one, they both answered, “We are supposed to worship Him!” Wow. These kids were onto something.
As the conversation continued, we talked about how people can’t worship a holy God as they should because of sin, which separates us from Him.”If you sin, who must forgive you?”
“The person you offended has to forgive you,” they replied with much conviction. “God can’t forgive you if the person doesn’t forgive you. If the person forgives you, then God will forgive you.”
We have heard this line of reasoning many times before. It really turns Matthew 6:14-15 on its head! The common belief here is that the unforgiven person won’t be forgiven by God. But Jesus says it is the unforgiving one whom God won’t forgive.
“Actually, God’s Word says that God can forgive even sins that the person we have offended refuses to forgive. And only God can forgive our sins if we are to be reconciled to Him. But God won’t forgive sins based on the so-called good works of a sinner, because He is holy, clean, perfect. Nothing unclean or sinful can come into His presence. So we must be separated from Him forever in Hell. So if we can’t save ourselves, and everyone else is also sinful, and so they can’t save us, who can save us? Who can help us with our sin problem? Is there anyone who never sinned?”
They seemed at a loss to name someone. But Kayla couldn’t hold back. “Jesus Christ!” she exclaimed.
“That’s true. Even those of your religion, and your holy book, say that Prophet Jesus never sinned. You can go and ask your prayer leader. He will tell you it is true.”
Mamadu said, “In the village I saw someone listening to one of those audio players with the lessons from the Word of God. But I didn’t have time to listen to all of it.” Then he turned to Hawa and said, “They teach God’s Word on the audio player.”
“I sure would like to have one of those so I could listen,” she said.
By this time we had arrived at our destination. I just happened to have with me one audio player with the evangelistic firm foundations Bible lessons in Landuma, as well as one with a similar set of lessons in French. So each of these young people received one.
Please PRAY for Hawa and Mamadu. PRAY that they listen carefully to the lessons, and share them with their friends. PRAY that God works through the preaching of His Word to bring about salvation for these two young people.
Our neighbor Beles listens to Bible lessons on an Ambassador audio player
The Missionaries’ Big Dilemma – The Rest of the Story
Picture yourself as a missionary
Picture yourself as a missionary, ready to teach the Bible to an unreached people group for the first time.
Yolanda with Landuma women and kids
You have worked for years preparing for this moment. You have trained for this, studying the Bible, learning principles of Bible translation and church planting. You have learned the national language, and then moved to a remote location to live among people with incomprehensible customs and unintelligible speech. You have spent years living among them, learning to know and love them, as they learned to know and love you.
Finally you are ready. Together with your local helpers you have translated the needed Bible portions, covering the key events and doctrines from creation to the story of Jesus and His death and resurrection. You have written Bible lessons based on these Scriptures, and you are confident that if only some of the people would listen, God would use this Scripture and these lessons to flood their souls with Truth, the truth of Jesus. And, God willing (and He is willing! See 2 Peter 3:9), some would believe and be saved!
No religious vacuum
But one more detail remains before you may begin teaching in the village.
You aren’t operating in a religious vacuum. The people belong to a powerful religious system which won’t give up ground easily. The people must obey their religious leaders. As a guest in their land, you must show those leaders respect and obey them to some extent as well.
Village elders
It is the custom that religious teachers who teach publically must obtain permission from the powers that be. The civil powers have already given you their permission to teach. After all, freedom of religion is guaranteed in the constitution, and the government supports your right to carry out your mission work. But what about the religious leaders? Will you ask their permission? What if they say, “No!”? What will you do then? And if you don’t ask permission, what will you do? Will you teach anyway? If you do, you might get kicked out of the area. Then how will the people hear the Gospel? How will a mature church ever be planted among them?
This is the dilemma we faced in 2002, when we were ready to teach the Landumas publicly. What do you think we did? What would you have done?
Interview with the big boss
Landuma religious leaders
We really only had one choice. If we were to teach the Bible to the Landumas publically, we had to ask permission from the top religious leader of all the Landumas, really of almost all the Africans, in the region. So it was with a measure of fear and trepidation, but prayerfully and with boldness and trust in God, that we went to see Ali.
We had had some limited contact with Ali in the past, but had never had a prolonged conversation with him. We found him to be a talkative and interesting man.
Ali’s bibliology
During our discussion with Ali, we explained that we had translated portions of the Bible. There is no Landuma word for the Bible as a whole, so we listed the parts of the Bible which they have heard of, that is the Torah, the Psalms, and the Gospel. We also added “the books of the prophets” to cover the rest of the OT. We said we wanted to teach the Landumas what God says in these books, so they could know God’s Word. We told him that since he was in charge of the region, we felt it was important that we inform him about our work.
In his reply, Ali asserted some things he wanted to make sure we understood:
- “God sent down 104 books. Initially he sent 50 books to Adam, 30 books to Enoch, 10 books to Abraham, and 10 books to Moses. That makes 100 books so far. Then he sent the Torah, the Psalms, the Gospel, and the final book to the final prophet.
- “Since you didn’t mentioned the final book (the book of Ali’s religion), as one of the books you intend to teach, it appears you don’t intend to teach the same religion as we profess.
- “All the books from God are in agreement. We know that because all the prophets asserted that God is one, and they told their followers to worship this one God only. None of them commanded people to worship the prophet himself.
- “When you believe the final prophet, you have believed also Moses, Jesus, Abraham, etc.
- “The final book snuffs out (erases, supersedes) all the other books. If you only obey the former books, you are abandoning the final book, and you have rebelled against God.”
Is that your final answer?
Wow. How do you answer that? Well, if he would have allowed us to sit there and teach him the Bible, as we wished to teach all the Landumas, from Genesis to the ascension of Jesus, we could have provided an adequate answer.
Instead we reminded him that there are already many Landuma religious teachers who teach the final book. They know it better than we do. We just want to teach the former books.
After more discussion, Ali told us that he wouldn’t stand in our way, we could teach our books to the people. Big sigh of relief! (And no, we did not ask him if that was his final answer.)
Give honor to whom honor is due
Some might suggest that we are commanded by God to preach the Gospel, and therefore we shouldn’t have to ask permission of anyone. After all, the apostles didn’t ask permission of the religious leaders before they began preaching Jesus on the day of Pentecost.
This is a valid question. But it’s not the only consideration. Jesus also told his disciples, “I am sending you out like sheep among wolves. Therefore be as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves” Matthew 10:16. Though Jesus boldly confronted the religious leaders of His day with His verbal and even offensive attacks on their doctrine, attitudes, and practices, He didn’t do that all the time. He chose the right moment, and then had His say. For much of His ministry He tried to avoid stirring things up, to operate under the radar, as it were.
One fascinating thought to ponder is the degree to which Jesus accommodated to the culture into which He was born. When God came to earth He didn’t totally vaporize the sinful world with what we might call “God’s culture,” as it were, which is what would happen if the Holy God ever really appeared on earth in all His glory and splendor. No, He “emptied Himself” (Philippians 2:7) to the point where He could adapt to a human culture, functioning in it and as part of it as any other man, yet without sin.
We, too, are called to adapt to the culture of the people we live among – not just we missionaries, but we Jesus believers, wherever God may have called us to live – becoming all things to all men to whatever extent necessary (1 Corinthians 9:19-23) in order to effectively do what God has called us to do (disciple all ethnic groups – Matthew 28:18-20), yet without sin, without being morally or spiritually tainted by that culture (Romans 12:2). And that is why we sought permission of the religious leaders to teach the Bible publicly the way we did. Honoring the leaders in this way is what was expected of us, it was the right thing to do in this culture, and the right thing to do biblically. Praise God for giving us favor before this leader!
Our Prayer Card
Below is our latest prayer card. Please feel free to save the photo to your hard drive (right-click on photo and choose “Save picture as”, or something similar, from the menu), and print it out. It fits well on 4×6 photo paper. 
Some have told us they would like to know who the Guineans in the photo are. They are those who regularly attend the Landuma church meetings. The adults are, from left to right, Salu, Masalu, Abulay, Sajo, Dave, Abraham. Masalu’s sons Bagar and Bunyamin are in the front row. Below we have given a little more information about each one (village names are not given in full for security reasons):
Beles’ Belief about Entreating the Eternal
ENTREATING THE ETERNAL
It is interesting and instructive to note that in the Gospel record, whenever Jesus prayed to God the Father, He nearly always addressed Him as “Father” (See for example His prayer in John 17). Nowhere is it recorded that Jesus addressed God simply as “Lord” (without first calling Him Father). And the only time it was recorded that Jesus addressed God as “God” was while He was on the cross, taking the punishment for our sins, when He cried out, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me” (Matthew 27:46/Mark 15:34).
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Kadi Goes Home
In a previous post we shared about Kadi, the old diabetic lady in our village who was listening to the Bible teaching. She was bedridden for a couple of months due to complications of the diabetes and high blood pressure. We have kept her insulin in a fridge at our house for the past two years, and one of her sons has given her the daily shots. But as you can imagine, it is very difficult for a diabetic to get a proper diet here, or proper medical attention.
One day recently we taught Kadi, and she was listening and seemed to be understanding what she heard. The next day she was just staring and mostly unresponsive. And the next day she could not sit up, but just lay still. A few days later she died.
Balanta Believers Visited by Landuma Missionaries
THE BALANTAS Read the rest of this entry »
Of the half million Balantas in West Africa, about 3,500 of them live in northwest Guinea, in a few villages scattered among other, larger people groups. The Balantas of Guinea are animists, having resisted for generations the pressure exerted by their neighbors to convert to the majority religion. In fact, the Balantas’ name means “those who resist,” and their obstinance regarding religion is proverbial. They are considered by their Guinean neighbors to be the lowest of the low, the supreme pagans. A common insult is to call someone a Balanta, which carries the connotation of “stubborn, obstinate, pagan, gross sinner.” (Similar to how the 1st Century Jews would call someone a Samaritan; see John 8:48.) Balantas have been known to laugh at the religious people as they bow their heads to the ground, asking derisively if they are worshipping the dirt!
Tags: Masalu Abulay Balanta
From Diabetes to Doctrine
Kadi (pictured second from left) is a Landuma woman in her 70s. She has diabetes, and last year we helped her when she needed a foot amputated due to complications of the disease. She and her daughter Ami were very grateful, and told us they know that no one else would have helped like that, not their family, not their neighbors, not their leaders, no one. They said they knew that God sent us and that they know that we missionaries really know the truth of God, that the message we preach is the truth.
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Spelunking with Spirits
Note: Click on thumbnail photos to enlarge!
LOST!
Alfa and Mamadu and their families were hungry. In these last few weeks before the harvest food was very scarce. But they knew that there was meat available for the taking. They would just have to go and get it. They knew what they were up against. The meat has wings. And the meat lives in the deepest part of a large cave. And the cave is inhabited by something other than the meat. They believe it is inhabited by demons. Mamadu’s father had gone into the cave many years ago, before Mamadu was born, to get some meat, but had been imprisoned by the demons for five days. In such circumstances, how hungry would YOU have to be before you would brave the dangers and go get some meat?
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