‘One day, when I was still a young man, I had a dream,’ recalls Lonh, who translates the Bible for the Bunong people of Eastern Cambodia. ‘Back then I didn’t go to church much, I was not doing the right things, I drank and smoked a lot. I was a rebellious young man and I didn’t have much faith.
Bunong Bible translator Lonh and his wife Din ‘I was at my friend’s house having a rest. I noticed a Bible in Khmer [the national language of Cambodia] and read a little to make me sleepy. Then suddenly I was fast asleep. As I slept, I had a dream, and I heard a voice telling me: “You will do that work of translation.” And I protested and argued and woke up from my sleep. I didn’t comprehend. I wanted to cry because I didn’t know anything about doing translation. Here I was a bad person, and I wasn’t in the habit of reading the Scriptures.’
Many years later, when he did become a Bible translator, Lonh remembered this dream.
He also remembered all the ways that God had been at work in his life, shaping him into the man of faith and hope he is today. A man playing a central role in building up the Bunong Church. And a man whose work as a Bible translator will leave an incredible legacy of hope for future generations of Bunong people.
Lonh’s journey to becoming a man of faith and hope began before he was born in 1973.
During the Vietnam War, in an attempt to flush out Viet Cong soldiers hiding across the border in the Cambodian jungle, the American Air Force dropped more bombs on Eastern Cambodia than the Allies dropped during World War Two. The Cambodian landscape is still shaped by the craters left behind. Lonh’s mother Leun was a teenager when she fled Cambodia with her family in the early 1970s. She would remain in Vietnam for over 15 years.
‘How the Bunong people of Cambodia came to know Jesus Christ was a result of our fleeing into Vietnam,’ Lonh explains.
Cambodia with the Bunong area marked Lonh’s mother remembers how ‘almost immediately when we arrived missionaries shared the gospel with us, and those of us who were refugees became believers.’
The faith that was planted among the Bunong people in Vietnam has grown since then. Now, Lonh estimates, around 10–15% of Bunong people follow Jesus. Most other Bunong people still follow traditional animist practices of making sacrifices to the spirits that they believe live in the landscape around them.
While living in Vietnam Leun met Lonh’s father, who was a soldier with the South Vietnamese army which fought alongside the American army. ‘Lonh’s father died before Lonh was born,’ Leun says. ‘He died of sickness. Not of a war.’ So Lonh was born as a refugee in Vietnam – but it was as refugees his family had found faith in Jesus.
In late April 1975 the Vietnam War ended. But earlier that month the Khmer Rouge, under the dictatorship of Pol Pot, took power in Cambodia. In the following years between 1.5–2 million people – around 25% of the Cambodia population – were killed in the Cambodia genocide.
A room used by the Khmer Rouge to torture prisoners, now part of the Genocide museum in Phnom Penh ‘The Khmer Rouge forced those Bunong people who weren’t already in Vietnam to leave their homes and move,’ Lonh explains. ‘So during that time there were no longer people living in the villages here.’
The Khmer Rouge were ousted in 1979, but it wasn’t until 1985 that Leun returned to Cambodia with Lonh. But returning home wasn’t easy. Most Bunong people were poor and worked long, hard days farming their rice fields.
‘I was 12 when we returned to Cambodia, but I didn’t have the opportunity to study,’ Lonh says. ‘There weren’t really any schools.’
A number of years later the Cambodian army was recruiting, so when he was 16 Lonh became a soldier. During the decade he was a soldier, Lonh learnt to read and write Khmer. Learning to read meant he was able to read the Bible – and that changed everything.
‘There were no Bunong Scriptures at that time, so I read the Khmer New Testament,’ Lonh explains. ‘I read about how God forgave our sins, commanded us to follow him and have faith in him. It was then that I believed and followed him.’
While he was in the army, Lonh married Me Kha and he moved to the village she was from. ‘We had a son, but he died after two months. Then we had a daughter, but after giving birth, my wife was continuously sick,’ Lonh recalls. ‘So I stopped working as a soldier to take care of her. But there wasn’t medicine like we have now, so she didn’t recover and then she passed away.’ Lonh’s daughter survived and is now married and has three children of her own.
While he was caring for his first wife Lonh began to work as the youth leader at the church in his wife’s village. Later, when the people saw his ability to teach, Lonh became the head pastor of the church. While he was a pastor Lonh married Din. ‘I knew my second wife because her house was in the village, so we saw one another often,’ Lonh remembers. ‘The elders agreed the marriage was a good marriage, so we got married.’
Leun, Lonh’s mother, in front of her village shop. She gets great joy from having the New Testament in her language.
‘When I hear it or read it, it just makes me love the Lord even more.’
Not long after Lonh and Din married, the door opened for Lonh to become a Bible translator. ‘Two Wycliffe people, Didi and MiMi, came to Eastern Cambodia,’ Lonh says. ‘They asked me to teach them the Bunong language. After that we worked on writing down the Bunong language for the first time. Then I started working on Bible translation with Didi, so the Bunong people could have the Scriptures in our own language.’
After many years of work the Bunong New Testament was completed in 2016. Having the New Testament in their language is making a huge difference for Bunong people. ‘Before I would persevere in reading the Khmer Scriptures, but it was difficult for me to really understand,’ Lonh says. ‘But now with the Bunong Scriptures, I can fully understand.’
Lonh’s mother, Leun – who remarried and had four more children after returning to Cambodia – gets great joy from having the New Testament in her language. ‘When I hear it or read it,’ she says, ‘it just makes me love the Lord even more.’
Lonh translating the Old Testament into Bunong ‘But only having the New Testament, I don’t think it is enough,’ Lonh says. ‘If we do not know about the things in the Old Testament, we will not understand the Bible clearly.’ So Lonh and the Bunong translation team, along with your prayers and support, are now deep at work translating the Old Testament, which is over 70% of the Bible. Their hope is that in the coming years the Bunong people will be able to understand all that God says in the Bible.
‘I would like to thank God, and to thank those who give funds to help with the work of Bible translation into Bunong,’ Lonh says. ‘And thank you to those who pray for us. On behalf of all the Bunong churches, thank you.’
Teaching people to read and write in Bunong has been a central part of the translation programme from the start. These literacy classes transformed Din’s life. ‘I joined a literacy class and I learned how to read,’ she explains. ‘My life has been different since then. I wanted to be able to read God’s word, but I wasn’t able to.
‘Now having the Scriptures in Bunong helps me to understand clearly what the word is saying.’
The ripple effects of Bible translation – writing down the Bunong language for the first time, children now learning to read and write – are having a significant impact on the wider educational and social development of the Bunong people. While Lonh and Din had no formal schooling, life is different for their children.
‘In our family so far only one person has been able to study at university,’ Din explains, ‘and that’s our eldest son Thomas.’ Thomas is now over halfway through his degree at the university in the capital city Phnom Penh.
Lonh and Din’s younger children are still in school.
‘In our family so far only one person has been able to study at university and that’s our eldest son Thomas.’
Thomas in the capital city Phnom Penh
After he started working as a Bible translator, Lonh had another dream about the difference having the Bible would make for the Bunong Church. ‘In this dream,’ Lonh recalls, ‘there was one field and there were coffee trees. But when I looked, the coffee trees grew, but were not growing properly. There were tree trunks and branches coming out of the ground, but no leaves.
‘And then a man told me: “You know why these coffee trees have no leaves? It’s because they have no water, no fertiliser. If you water them and add fertiliser, the leaves will grow well and there will be fruit.”
‘When I think about the Bunong Church, I see lots of believers, but a lot of their faith is weak, their knowledge of God is not that deep. But having the Bible in Bunong will make their faith deeper and cause them to have increasing fruit, just like the coffee tree that has fertiliser and water and then bears fruit well. This is the meaning I understood from my dream.’
Bunong Bible translators Lonh and Borat near the Vietnam border The Bible has been central to Lonh becoming a man of faith and hope, and he wants other Bunong people to be able to have the same experience. That is why – with your help – he works with such passion, so that in the coming years his people will have the complete Bible in their language.
‘Following the way of God – that’s what I want to see for the future generations,’ Din says when talking about her children. ‘That’s the inheritance I want to pass on.’ The faith that comes from having the Bible is the foundation Lonh and Din’s hopes for the future are built on.
‘I want the believers in the Bunong churches to have a deep, strong faith,’ Lonh concludes, ‘through reading the Bible in their own language. This is my hope for the future.’
