Something we've been wanting to encourage living here is more playing between our children and the Kovol children. There have been a few hurdles that have made playing together with Kovol kids hard for our own children.
Bible translation is a challenging task. It's not just a case of finding the right words to translate the words in the original. I asked one of the LLMs (Large language model), to translate Genesis 3:1-6 for me to see what it came up with. It had access to our Kovol lexicon and grammatical notes. It came up with this for Genesis 3:1 (translated back into English): "The wild Satan python was big big bad. This python God will make, that all the wild animals skin was big bad. Python here to the woman I will speak he said "Did God say which garden trees all i will not count them?" he said." Genesis 3:1 LLM version
Writing evangelistic Kovol Bible lessons is a huge task. The Gospel has never been presented in the Kovol language before. Where do you start? Well, we start at the beginning. Our lessons start in Genesis 1 and tell the story of the Bible to the end. We aim to pick up the big themes of the Bible and use its narrative to teach them. Doing so has several advantages. Firstly in an oral culture like we find ourselves in stories are important. The Kovol people are used to hearing and retelling stories and using them to make points. Teaching chronologically allows us to do just that.
5 Comments
Lois S. · 12/05/2026 at 1:12 pm
Thanks for sharing! It is great to see them working on a classroom building and then learning! I am glad for their motivation. We try to teach literacy to immigrants, But they are in our country rather than we in theirs, and it is very difficult for them to learn to read and write in a language they don’t really know. The women were never allowed to go to school, so they have never learned to read or write their own language before starting on ours. I am glad you are able to teach the Kovol people their own language.
Colette Harding · 12/05/2026 at 4:54 pm
How wonderful to see their enthusiasm and resolve to learn these totally new things to them. Praying each one will be encouraged every day as they master new letters and sounds.
J E GROENVELD · 12/05/2026 at 7:08 pm
Amazing guys. Thanks for being so patient with your students. Remember part of the fruit of the Spirit. Keep up the fruit and the work. May the Lord Who gave us His Word bless you.
Josephine Owen · 02/06/2026 at 5:53 pm
It is wonderful to see the Kovol people so enthusiastic to learn. I look forwards to hearing about them learning about God’s word. I pray that many Kovol people will receive Salvation!
Mandy Caley · 12/05/2026 at 11:33 pm
Woo hoo go Kovol people learning to read. Super 🙂 Long process, so worthwhile 🙂