My name is Daryl Brenton and I am from the town of Kempsey, in New South Wales, Australia. I was born in the public hospital there on 13 November 1964.

My involvement in Bible translation began while my wife, Cecily, and I were studying in Bible college. I had been praying about what we should do when we finished our studies, and was concerned that God might have plans for me to become a pastor. Having seen how many congregations treated their pastors, I was very wary about becoming one myself. In fact, I remember praying like this: “Lord, I will go anywhere you want me to go, just don't make me a pastor.”

At the end of the first year of the course, two representatives from Wycliffe Bible Translators came to one of my classes and spoke about the value of Bible translation. I don't remember much about the presentation, but my wife later found the brochures while cleaning our house and became interested in visiting the Wycliffe office and borrowing some videos to learn about Bible translation.

One of the stories which really affected me was about an expatriate translator who was working in the Sepik province of Papua New Guinea in the 1970s. Once, after a three-hour canoe ride, this translator arrived in a village of another language group and she noticed that there was a church building in the village square. When she asked the people if there was a missionary staying with them, they replied that no, there was not. She asked if they had a pastor and again they said, “No.” Finally, she asked them why they had built a church and they answered, “We are waiting for someone to come and translate God's Word for us.” When I heard these words, I began to realise that English readers have dozens of Bible translations, and thousands of Bible resources, but many people do not even have scripture in their language, let alone commentaries, Bible studies, and other books that we take for granted. The tragedy of this story is that no one was available to take up the project in this particular village.

While thinking about these kinds of issues, we met the Executive Director of the PNG Bible Translation Association as he was passing through Brisbane. It occurred to me that if a time ever came when expatriate organisations would have to leave the country, a national organisation could still be effectively in place. So, I thought that helping BTA would be something important that I could do to support the Kingdom of God in Papua New Guinea.

We arrived in PNG in 2001. While we first thought that we would translate the Bible into one of PNG's many languages, we realised that investing our skills in the administration side of BTA would have more long-lasting benefits by helping to make the work of BTA more effective. We have helped in several administrative roles, and currently we are serving as the BTA representatives for the Madang, East Sepik, and Sandaun provinces.

My wife and I run the Madang BTA office, help the field teams in these three provinces to plan their work, help provide necessary resources to these teams, and encourage the team members. Without a hands-on management role such as this, many teams struggle to find their way and become discouraged. Another aspect of our work is the development of a library of materials that can be translated into the languages of many of these teams. People from developed countries often don't realise the value of libraries, for we take them for granted. But without a large range of materials, people often feel that learning to read is too much effort, therefore they never become fluent readers. Also, if useful information is not available, people tend to become blasé about reading. The library we are developing is designed to provide a wide range of information about many topics, and so to encourage reading and learning from books.

Having been involved in Bible translation for several years, I have become more certain that the Bible is truly God's Word to us. Reading it has helped us learn how to pray, and we have seen many answers to prayer in our work. We have been in dangerous situations, and in these times we have found that the Scriptures often come to mind, giving us courage and wisdom. Overall, I find the Bible to be the most fascinating book that I have ever read. It is an interconnected web of doctrines and following the links between them is the work of a lifetime and beyond.