More than thirty years ago, Roger Mohrlang moved into a mud hut in the desert corner of Nigeria. He had fallen in love with the Bible, and as a missionary in Africa, he wanted to share the book that had changed his life.

A handful of people with leprosy and a blind man shared the gospel with the Kamwe people in northeastern Nigeria, and many in the community accepted Jesus. Today, up to 95 percent of the Kamwe profess to be Christians. This year, 30,000 copies of the entire Bible are being printed for the first time in their native language.

In this interview, Roger Mohrlang an American who spent 38 years as a theology professor at Whitworth University shared how he got involved.

Why and how did you decide to get into this work originally?

It all began with my conversion to Christ during my college years. I was a physics student at what is now Carnegie Mellon University. I had an engineering professor who asked me one day, “Are you a Christian?” He was the one who encouraged me to use my college years to get into Scripture. I spent endless hours reading, studying, memorizing Scripture, and that, more than anything else, changed my whole life.

I realized my life was not going to be centered on physics. What can I do that would be significant in the work of Christ? I didn’t see myself as a pastor or an evangelist, but I was drawn to Bible translation, in large part because of the effect that reading Scripture had had on my own life.

Can you share a brief timeline of the translation project since it first began?

I arrived in that village, Michika, in northeastern Nigeria in 1968. My job as a missionary linguist was to learn the language, analyze the language, form an alphabet, and produce some basic literacy materials, and especially to work with the Christians on the translation of the New Testament. I left in 1974. The New Testament was dedicated in January 1, 1976, with a huge celebration.

For years, I didn’t hear anything at all from them. I was away doing graduate study and continuing teaching. Then in the late 1980s, I got this letter saying, “All 5,000 copies are sold out. We want another 10,000.” And I was euphoric. A colleague reminded me it’s time to get it onto the computer. All of that up to that time was by pencil and typewriter. So, volunteers in England spent 1,000 hours keyboarding the whole thing, and then I proofread it. I realized we could do better, and that led to a revision project that I coordinated while I was teaching at Whitworth. The revised New Testament was dedicated in 1997.

Ten years later, I heard that they were beginning work on the Old Testament, that they wanted the whole Bible in their language. The last 30 years of work has been done together with the Kamwe Bible Translation Committee. They have done the whole first draft of the Old Testament. I served as a consultant checker. It’s really been their project. A second New Testament revision and the translation of the Old Testament were completed in 2021, and the Kamwe Bible is being printed in Korea.

How do you feel having finished such a lifelong project? And how has this project changed you personally or spiritually?

I feel relief, joy, and gratitude. One of the things I’m doing right now is writing about stories in my life and God’s hand in it. It’s just been wonderful to see all the good gifts of God and the way that made all of this possible. Part of the gratitude is the fact that my eyes have held out right to the end. I have macular degeneration. That has slowly decreased my vision.

How has it changed me? It’s given me a more comprehensive grasp of the Bible as a whole and of its complexity. My hope and my belief is that spending so much time in all of these words is that these words will be written more deeply in my heart, that I would become more and more the person that God wants me to be.

Have you had moments where you wanted to quit? And if so, what refreshed your spiritual joy to press on despite obstacles and difficulties?

I don’t think I ever had any desire to quit. What sustained me were two things. One was a sense of commitment to the Kamwe. I thought of it like a marriage commitment. You don’t break that vow, you honor it. Along with that, there’s a sense of calling. I realized I am the one person that knows these languages, the culture, the world of Bible translation. So in some ways, I would be the obvious person to assist with all of this.

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