My husband, a missionary translator in Papua New Guinea, was murdered while sitting at his desk translating the love chapter into the Nabak language. As the first witness on the scene, I soon learned that the murderer was a Nabak man. We had grown to love the Nabak-speaking people and were endeavoring to translate the scriptures into their language.
This memoir tells the story of my four children and me wrestling with grief and disorientation. It speaks of our quest for spiritual answers and of the difficulty of meshing two different worlds—the culture of the Nabak people on the island nation of Papua New Guinea and of my Christian heritage from the United States. We faced the challenges of forgiving the murderer, rocks thrown onto our roof and through the windows, eviction notices, and twenty months later a court case.
Then we discovered that God is orchestrating an amazing story of redemption. I, even in my most creative and spiritual moments, never could have conjured up the story that came from this tragedy and our family’s forgiveness.
Endorsements:
. . . An account of the outworking of the gospel itself: forgiveness, faithfulness, joy in the midst of suffering, and the sheer triumph of God’s outrageous grace.
-D.A. Carson
. . . In the caldron of her suffering, Grace has come to know ever more fully that nothing can befall us without first passing through the filter of God’s love.
– Hank Hanegraaff
About
Grace is originally from a farming community in upstate New York and the daughter of a pastor. She served with Wycliffe Bible Translators, first in Mexico and the last thirty-five years in the island nation of Papua New Guinea. Now Grace resides in Pennsylvania where she speaks, teaches and writes, hoping that others will be inspired to join in the work of reaching Bibleless people groups around the world.