The Luke Video in Isnag
“Oh, no!” I gasped, seeing Jesus and His disciples fly off the screen.
With a sickening thump the projector hit the earthen floor, plunging us into darkness. As I groped for my flashlight and ran to pick up the pieces, the dog that had snagged a wire to the projector ran yelping out of the church.
We had come to the mountain village of Dibagat (di-BAH-gat) in the northern Philippines to show the Luke video for the first time in the Isnag language. The Bible was a closed book to the Isnags before the first portions were translated into their language in the 1960s. When the Isnag New Testament was published in 1982, the Dibagat Bible Church was born.
But the Isnag culture and daily life allowed little time for reading. Most traditions and important news continued to be shared orally, as they had been for hundreds of years.
Now the Luke video was available. We hoped its visual and oral form would fit in well with the Isnag cultural traditions.
We were showing the video in a church packed with nearly 200 people. Many had walked all day in the rain and mud to get there. Rain continued to drizzle from the roof as night fell, and people crowded inside to sit on slatted benches on a dirt floor. Some latecomers leaned though the windows to watch. A few flashlights provided some light, and a little generator hummed quietly to power the projector.
For weeks prior to this night, a team of Isnag Christians had worked hard dubbing the sound track of this powerful portrayal of the life of Christ. When it was finished, I prepared the equipment to take to Dibagat, where I would train several Isnag men to operate and maintain the generator, VCR and video projector. These men would then take the video to other Isnag-speaking communities up the river and through the mountains.
But now these plans might all have to wait if the small video projector, dangling from the table by its power cord, had been broken.
Members of the video team hurried forward to help me pick it up. Using my flashlight, I searched for dents or obvious damage, but all I saw was just a little dirt on one corner. Brushing it away, I placed the projector back on the pulpit we were using as a projection stand.
After re-attaching cables, I aimed the projector at the screen, held my breath and flipped the power switch.
The screen lit up with images of Jesus proclaiming God’s truth in the Isnag language. The audience relaxed, captivated immediately by the man on the screen who spoke the language of their hearts.
As for me, I breathed a prayer of praise to God for undamaged equipment.
Nard Pugyao and his son Phillip, along with Rudy Barlaan, co-translator of the Isnag New Testament, had returned with us to Dibagat for the premier showing of the Luke video. Each evening when we pushed the play button, all eyes focused on the screen up front. They wanted to see and hear Jesus talking and teaching in their language.
Intent on catching every word, no one spoke or moved until they saw the soldiers begin pounding nails into the hands and feet of Christ. Then many covered their eyes, and some moaned and wept.
When the video ended, they had many questions for Rudy. “Why did the temple curtain split in half when Jesus took His last breath?” “Did Jesus have favorites?” “Why was He so cruelly mistreated?”
Rudy answered them one by one. One night a former grade-school classmate of Nard’s spoke up. “I know it’s just a reenactment,” he said, “but watching the crucifixion reminds me how much God loves me. That is what this gospel video is all about.”
One of Nard’s nephews told him, “Jesus said to take the Word of God every place. Don’t take shoes; go without food. That’s what I want to do with the Luke video. I’m going to tell people. We have to do what He says.”
We showed the four-hour video for six nights and even a couple of days. Then the eight-member Isnag video outreach team traveled to other villages throughout the region.
One man in Kumao said, “Usually in church I find it hard to sit still, but during the showing I did not even want to chew betel nut.”
In Dangla, a man said, “I read the Bible, but I learned more from what I saw in the video than from what I read.”
The video has caused renewed interest in the Isnag New Testament. In two villages, the people asked a couple of the team members to stay behind to help them in their Bible study, and people everywhere asked for Bibles.
What a privilege to be part of God’s work through Bible translation and media technology. How thrilling to watch God speak to the Isnag people through His Word in their language.
As Nard Pugyao says, “YES! That’s what it’s all about.”
—Roger Green, with Kristin Elkinton. Roger has served in the Philippines with Wycliffe Bible Translators for more than 20 years. He began his missionary career performing language surveys and working with the Ayta Mag-Indi Bible translation project. Since 2004, he has promoted vernacular media and other creative presentations of Scripture, such as storytelling, in Southeast Asia.
