The Bible We Never Dreamed We Would Have

Pastor Daniel Mose Mtambo never thought he would see the Bible translated into Lambya in his lifetime.

“It wasn’t even in our dreams that we could have the Bible in our language,” he says. “We thought maybe it would come in some distant future; not in our time.” Today, Daniel holds that Bible in his hands. It is written in Lambya, the language of his family, his community and his childhood.

For years, churches in his community relied on Scripture in Ngonde, Tumbuka, Chichewa and sometimes English. “We just had a borrowed language from another part of Malawi,” Daniel explains. He and other pastors would read Scripture in one language, then preach and teach in Lambya. That shaped the whole work of ministry. People depended on someone else to bridge the gap between the language of the Bible and the language they understood. “It was very difficult to go and share the good news to my neighbor because they don’t really understand the other language,” Daniel says.

The challenge extended beyond Sunday preaching. It affected evangelism, Bible study and discipleship. People could hear God’s Word, but they could not easily open it, study it and share it for themselves in Lambya.

Long before Daniel held the Bible in Lambya, God had used His Word to transform his own life. Daniel began drinking alcohol when he was just five years old. By his late teens, he had left school and was moving further from the faith he still encountered at church, where he sang in the choir. “I was a drunkard and an ancestor worshiper,” he says.

Yet Daniel knew he did not want to continue living that way.

In October 1995, a friend named Bernard came to see him and invited him to a Bible study and crusade in a nearby village. Daniel went. He arrived late, when the first message was almost over, but when an invitation was given for those who wanted to know the Lord, he stepped forward. His “heart was already ready,” he remembers.

Five days later, on Sunday, 22 October, Daniel returned. This time, he heard a message about salvation through Jesus Christ, centered on Acts 4:12: “Salvation is found in no one else.”

For Daniel, those words marked a turning point. “I felt, you know, that this is the time,” Daniel says. “I don’t want to live this kind of life.”

Many who knew Daniel doubted that anything had really changed. They expected him to return to the tavern and beer hall. But when the weekend came, Daniel did not go back. Another weekend passed. Then month-end. Then November. By Christmas, he was still walking a different road.

But Daniel was not left to walk that road alone. The people who had shared the Gospel with him stayed in his life. Every Tuesday and Thursday, he attended Bible study, where they opened Scripture with him and taught him how to follow Christ.

“What makes you become strong in the Lord,” Daniel says, “is the follow-up after you have received salvation.” By mid-December, Daniel had been baptized. In the months that followed, he returned to school, began praying and fasting, and started sharing the Gospel in his community. “I began to learn what it means to be a disciple,” he says. “They taught me the Word of God, and I began to live a life of integrity.”

What began as a personal encounter with the Gospel was becoming a calling to take it to others.

Daniel later spent many years in South Africa, where he served in ministry and was equipped by pastors and leaders. He married his wife, Glory, and together they raised their family. In June 2017, he returned to Malawi and established Divine Hope for the Nations Ministries, with a vision reaching into Malawi, Tanzania and Zambia.

Yet one burden remained close to his heart: his own people still lacked Scripture in Lambya.

Then, during a visit to South Africa in 2024, Daniel saw Lambya represented in Bible translation work. “This is my language,” he said. “This is where I’m from.”

For Daniel, it was a remarkable moment. The language he had used for years to explain Scripture aloud was becoming a language in which his people could finally read it for themselves.

Today, the Bible Daniel once thought might only be possible for a future generation is a Bible he can carry home. God’s Word can now be opened in Lambyan homes, studied in churches and shared throughout the community in the language people know as their own.

Daniel is already translating discipleship lessons from English into Lambya and praying for a training center in his hometown. His vision now extends beyond receiving the Bible to equipping others to know God’s Word and share it, with a particular focus on the next generation.

Three decades ago, Bernard came looking for Daniel and invited him to hear the Gospel. Others stayed with him, opened Scripture with him and helped him build a life around the Word he had heard. Now Daniel is the one going back - to the same kind of villages and families where he once walked a different road. “God has called us for such a time as this,” he says. “We are not going to be silent.”

The boy who began drinking at five is now a man devoted to helping others know and follow Christ. And the Bible he never dreamed he would see in his lifetime is now in the hands of his people; in the language they call their own.