news

ATLANTA – For many Romany people living throughout Europe, the former Soviet Union, North and South America, and even South Africa and Australia, the Bible is unapproachable. With an oral rather than a written culture, Roma often must rely on what they hear about Jesus.

Keith Holmes and Mary van Rheenen, a husband and wife team living in the Netherlands, create Christian films, children’s cartoons, and audio recordings of the Bible in major Romany languages. Through their work as Cooperative Baptist Fellowship field personnel, Romany adults and children are learning, many for the first time, about Bible characters such as David, Paul, Luke and Peter.

"Faith takes the long view," said van Rheenen, a native of Fulton, Ill. "We sometimes don’t know the impact our work is having. [But] we establish relationships, see what projects are appropriate, and work with our partners – Wycliffe Bible Translators, our partnering Romany churches and our CBF team members – to make them aware of possibilities."

The Romany people, often referred to as gypsies, have more than 20 different languages and dialects. As a minority, they face discrimination not only socially but by government systems as well. The discrimination extends even into churches. Hoping to stimulate evangelism and discipleship among the Romany people, Holmes and van Rheenen feel called to minister as Paul did.

"Paul asked, ‘How can people believe without hearing?’," said van Rheenen, referring to Romans 10:14. "How can they grow in their faith? Romany Christians grow in their faith by praying, but many have no idea who Cornelius in Acts was. I think they, like us, have a lot to learn from scripture. This is one way they can hear."

One of their recent projects was helping to create versions of the film "Jesus" into two Romany languages – Sinti Romani, spoken in Germany, France, the Netherlands and parts of Italy; and Western Kalderash, spoken in Russia, Western Europe and North America. Holmes also facilitated the creation of a master DVD, which includes the film in five Romany languages, plus Russian, Romanian and French. More than 3,000 copies of the multi-lingual DVD have been distributed in the past year.

"Hundreds were sent to London, Paris, Romania," said Holmes, a native of Baton Rouge, La. "A hundred were sent to Yugoslavia. I took 150 to a church in Germany in February. They had heard of it but not seen it. They were very eager to have it."

Another project involves recording voices for a Sinti Romani version of the 1973 film "Acts," starring Dean Jones as the great physician Luke. The film, narrated by the character of Luke, follows the New International Version of Acts verse by verse. Holmes will soon start work on a children’s video, "David and Saul," creating a version in Kalderash with a church in London.

The recording phase of projects can be tedious, and often only 10 minutes of audio are completed in one day. Text is first spoken by a translator, and then a native speaker repeats it for the recording.

"I play a bit of an acting coach," said Holmes, who is trained as a linguistic anthropologist and certified as a vernacular media specialist. "As I watch the film, I may ask if we can say something a different way to make the intonation match the scene – loud, quiet, angry, excited. And sometimes we have to change the structure or the length of the sentence to match the lip movements."

There are also translation challenges. While recording "Acts," they realized that the Sinti phrase for "he drew some people after him" means "a lot of people were on his back." In instances such as these, the native speaker is able to help the translator rewrite the phrase with more appropriate words.

Holmes and van Rheenen encourage Fellowship Baptists to pray for their ministry and to give to the CBF Offering for Global Missions, which funds their work. While the finished media projects are sold, the sales do not cover the production costs.

To learn about partnership opportunities with Holmes and van Rheenen, contact Chris Boltin at cboltin@thefellowship.info or (800) 352-8741. To financially support their work, give to the CBF Offering for Global Missions at www.thefellowship.info/give.

CBF is a fellowship of Baptist Christians and churches who share a passion for the Great Commission and a commitment to Baptist principles of faith and practice. The Fellowship’s mission is to serve Christians and churches as they discover and fulfill their God-given mission.