In July 2007, Bible translators from a dozen Nigerian languages gathered under a steel-roofed school shelter in the town of Bayara, Nigeria. For the next three weeks, the translators and a few Nigerian, American, and British consultants would work around the clock to begin translating the Gospel of Luke.
On Friday, July 27, they had wrapped their first week of work and made plans to unwind. Multilingual collaboration is exhausting, and everyone was eager to eat dinner and watch a film together.
The translators gathered their papers and books into bags. Some slung laptops over their shoulders. One of them grabbed a USB thumb drive attached to a purple lanyard, which they used to pass files back and forth and store backups of their work.
They walked half a kilometer through the warm evening air to the guesthouse where they were staying. The cooler rainy season had just begun, but this day had been neither cool nor rainy.
The group finished eating around 7:30, and Veronica Gambo, the wife of one of the translation consultants, made popcorn. She began filling a large bowl, readying to carry it out to the others in the living room who were setting up the film.
But as she picked up the bowl, the kitchen door burst open, and men with automatic rifles poured in.
Veronica stood frozen. The lead gunman pushed his barrel between her shoulder blades and marched her, still bearing the popcorn, into the living room.
“Get down!” the men yelled.
“They were shooting inside the room,” said Danjuma Gambo, a Nigerian translation consultant—and husband to Veronica who carried the popcorn.
The men fired into the walls and ceiling. They forced everybody to the ground, including the translation project’s leader, a silver-haired British woman in her late sixties.
Andy Kellogg, an American working as a Bible translation consultant, remembers lying on the floor. Would the men rob them and leave quickly, or something worse? “If you’re in a remote place, and it doesn’t seem like help will be coming quickly, you can take your time as a robber. And we were in a remote place,” Kellogg said.
Andy considered that he may never see his wife again. His children. Then he remembered his colleague in the adjacent room. She was young. Female. The men hadn’t searched that room. Not yet.
Unarmed and lying prostrate, Andy wondered, if the men go into that room—if something happens to her—what are my next steps?
Fortunately for the translators, the men were not religious terrorists. The brigands had spotted the laptops as the team made their commute on foot. That’s what they came for. They stole nine in all, along with personal belongings, passports, and credit cards.
And somehow, by the grace of God, the robbers never checked that adjacent room with the young woman. It was as if they were blinded to it. The young woman inside was left alone.
When the thieves left, the elderly project leader arose from the ground. She dusted off her clothes. After checking with each translator to make sure they were okay, she spoke in that most British way:
“Right… Well, we’re not going to let this stop us.”
Her name was Dr. Katharine Barnwell.
What followed is one of the most remarkable testaments to faith and perseverance in modern missions. Under Katy’s leadership, every translator stayed. They didn’t even postpone the workshop. Nigerian believers and churches replaced every stolen laptop—before the weekend was over.
The real miracle? The only backup of the translation work—on a purple-lanyard USB stick—was left untouched by the thieves. “Had God opened their eyes to it,” one translator said, “they would have taken that also. But in His providence, they didn’t.”
By week’s end, the translation work resumed. The Gospel of Luke was completed. The Jesus Film script followed. And today, more than a million people from those language groups now have access to Scripture in their heart language.
That attack should have stopped them. But it didn’t. Because Katy Barnwell was there. And she’d faced worse.
Six times robbed at gunpoint. Twice stormed by armed men. Fled a civil war on foot and by river. Slept without food so others could eat.
But she never stopped working to bring God’s Word to every nation, tribe, and tongue.
