Music and Scripture cassette promoting
From SPARK
Unpublished
Music and Scripture cassette promoting the use of vernacular Scripture
In February -05 we had Dan Bauman coming from Ukarumpa’s Non-Print Media department to our area (Mende language that is spoken in northern part of Papua New Guinea in Sandaun Province by about 6.000 people). We recorded five cassettes of hymns and Scripture reading in Mende language. After a short furlong in our home countries we returned to the Mende area in August this year. We got the cassette tapes in September and within three weeks we had sold out all (250) expect the cassette that contained the Elementary School children’s songs.
It was fun to see the people gathering outside their houses and listening to the cassettes. Tape recorders are quite common in our area, but not more than 10% of the population would own one. So every evening when the owner of the tape recorder up on his cassette, soon there were about 10 to 20 people gathering around the player. Everybody was listening attentively. If a small child cried, he was hushed up quickly. People just loved the songs and to my surprise they listened to the Scripture reading as well and commented to it agreeing and nodding their heads in approval. Some people brought their Mende New Testaments and followed the text that was read in the cassette from their New Testaments.
Some people loved the cassettes so much that they carried their tape recorders with them everywhere were they went. They had the tape recorder on in their string bag that they carried hanging from their head! One person commented that now if he is sick and cannot go to church, he can just play his cassette and listen to the God’s word and sing his favorite hymns and be encouraged. He thought that the recorded cassettes would be a great comfort to the old people that might be too weak to walk a long distance to the church. Another person told me that we should send the cassettes to Radio Sandaun (that is the main radio station in the province), so they could broadcast Mende Scripture reading from their radio station.
It was a great encouragement to me to see how enthusiastic and keen people were to listen to the cassettes. The word of God promises us that it will not go in vain, but will accomplish what God desires it to accomplish (Isaiah 55:10-11).
Tarja Ikaheimonen Papua New Guinea
Internal notes:
12/22/05 JVD see if author will write a case history, also can this be published?
