Alex & Karla Watt | Wycliffe

Alex & Karla Watt are given over to spending and being spent upon the Word of God. Working with Wycliffe Bible Translators, they help to develop lanquage and literacy in Papua New Guinea. They work with the local people and translation teams to bring the Word of God to previously unreached people groups. To learn more about their work, visit Wycliffe at wycliffe.org .

Launched in 2005, VITAL (The Vernacular Initiative for Translation and Literacy) is a multi-language translation strategy designed to meet the needs of language communities and dialects of the East Papua Region that have no other way to begin a program in the near future. Training courses are held three times a year—February, June and October at St. Paul’s Pastoral Center near Alotau, the capital of Milne Bay Province. With a declining number of translation teams coming to PNG, our goal is to help language groups from the Province to translate Old Testament portions and a complete New Testament in a workshop setting that makes the most of our limited personnel resources and to assist them in establishing a literacy project in each community. We provide mentors, consultants, translation and literacy expertise and equipment, while the participants provide expertise in their languages so that “together we can” accomplish this goal.

To date VITAL has helped 14 language groups print books in their languages including literacy materials, AIDS materials, trial dictionaries, portions of Genesis, a Mark Bible Study and first editions of Mark. VITAL published and dedicated a micro-Bible for three languages in late 2009—Kakabai, Maiadomu and Taupota. Anuki, Ghayavi, Topura and Wedau will be dedicated in 2010. The micro-Bible includes the Creation, Fall and Flood stories in addition to the Gospel of Mark.

In partnership with Gospel Recordings Network Australia (GRN), VITAL has recorded portions of Genesis and Mark’s Gospel on cassette and Saber players for distribution in each of these language groups. These recordings are also being aired on the local radio station. GRN plans to continue working with VITAL to make the Scriptures available to these communities in an alternative format.

Alex and Karla can be reached via email at Alex-karla_watt@wycliffe.org