Edwin’s Journey to Bible Translation
We believe God writes some of the most remarkable stories through the most ordinary moments. For Edwin, a torn page lying on the ground outside his family’s house became the beginning of his story.
Edwin was 15 years old, living in Namibia and tasked with the daily responsibility of tending his family’s goats. One ordinary morning, as he stepped out to begin his chores, he noticed a sheet of paper lying near the main house. He picked it up and began reading as he walked. By the time he reached the field where the goats grazed and settled in to rest, he read it again. The paper was a page from a Bible on which the passage of Matthew 10:34–39 was written in Otjiherero, his father’s heart language and also his own.
“The verse that changed my life is verse 39. I don’t know how it happened and what happened, [but] when I came home, I realized everything had changed with me,” Edwin recalled.
As soon as he walked into the house that evening, his brothers noticed immediately and asked what was different about him. It was December during the school holiday, and Edwin could not stop reading Scripture. He began talking about it with his brothers and parents. Soon they were gathering each evening to read the Bible and pray together. Edwin found himself praying and singing “without fear,” a new sensation for him.
When January came and school resumed, the transformation continued. Edwin had never cared much about his studies before; school had simply meant food, soccer, friends, and “nice things.” But now he paid attention in class, applied himself, and grew in subjects like English that had once meant nothing to him. He joined Scripture Union, a Christian fellowship at his school, and the Lord used him to preach to classmates and teachers alike. Students and staff stopped calling him by his given name altogether. He became known simply as “our school pastor.”
Looking back, Edwin reflects on how the torn page found its way to him. It had come from the Bible of his grandfather, the same grandfather who raised him and was the only member of the household who could read Scripture. How it wound up on the ground outside the house remains a mystery. But Edwin believes it was no accident.
“I believe today that the Lord Jesus used his own way to save me,” he shares.
Today, Edwin serves as a translator on the Himba Bible translation project. His mother was Himba, and because Edwin speaks that heart language as well, he joined the project to ensure his mother’s people would also have the Bible in their language someday. He recently completed a master’s degree in linguistics and Bible translation. And as a Global Translation Leader with Seed Company, Edwin is part of a new generation ensuring God’s Word continues to reach Bibleless communities in their own mother tongues, the very way God reached him through a single page on the ground.
