His endurance and tenacity helped him to cycle around Australia, and led him to board an unseaworthy boat in the Solomon Islands because it was the only way to reach an island to help revive a stalled Bible translation.

The Dutch-born Bible translator recently took the reins as director of AuSIL – the Australian Society for Indigenous Languages – despite initially finding the idea ridiculous of starting a new job at the fine age of 78.

He believes the Holy Spirit directed him to change his mind – just as when he felt directed to take the leadership position at Wycliffe Netherlands in 1990.

“I realised that I’ve done a lot of different projects in many different places over the past 45 years. Each time we had to try and figure out what might work in order to come up with a good plan. And I thought I can draw on that experience with AuSIL,” Nico said.

Being Darwin-based was a key consideration in accepting this role for two years before handing over to a younger man who has already been identified.

“My goal is to streamline some things as much as possible before I turn it over to him,” he explains.

“We hope to find out who might be motivated and say – ‘This is not enough; we want more.’” – Nico Daams

Nico spent his first two months in his new job talking to people experienced in the Indigenous language sphere and learning from their insights. A key signpost was feedback from a translator of the Kriol Bible that while she has no trouble understanding Kriol, if she hears the gospel in her own language, it touches her heart.

The difficulty is that there are 150 small language groups and completing New Testaments in each of them would be a huge challenge. A Yolngu person from northeast Arnhem Land made another helpful comment. When given a choice between having a translation of the whole New Testament in his language or making sure several languages in his area each have some Bible stories, he preferred the latter.

“So, we want to see how we can help provide training and workshops for kinship languages and dialects on a regular basis,” said Nico. He hopes that a November 20-24 translation workshop in Darwin will help to identify people with a keen interest in continuing with Bible translation.

“AuSIL and the Australian Bible Society have organised this workshop, and have prepared the layout for a selected text so that participants can take home a booklet after the workshop,” he said.

“It’s only six or seven verses, but it is a start, and we hope to find out who might be motivated and say – ‘This is not enough; we want more.’ Then we can plan follow-up workshops translating the kinds of stories they would like.

“Perhaps people from other languages not attending this workshop will hear about it. They might see the booklets. So, the participants of this workshop can become recruiters for the next workshop.”

“Being persistent helped, but God also brought along people at just the right time when we were thinking of giving up.” – Nico Daams

Nico met his wife Pam right after he completed three big cycle journeys, once around Europe, then all around Australia, in 1972, and finally in South America on the way to Alaska; but he got sick in Peru, so he went home to Holland. They met in England at a school where they both learned about Bible translation. After many years working in the Pacific, they moved to Darwin three years ago to be near family. Nico continues to consult with several Bible translation projects in Polynesian languages in the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea.

They started their work in 1978 in the Solomon Islands. “Rennell-Bellona was the first language project, and the challenge in that project was that the two main church denominations found it difficult to work together. We asked our supporters to pray for wisdom in knowing how to deal with that issue, and God answered our prayers and helped us build a team of translators from both church communities.

“I knew one of the ships wasn’t safe, but it was the only way to get there.” – Nico Daams

“The next project was Tikopia, and I didn’t overcome the problems in that project. I tried everything under the sun to solve it, and finally found out, 20 years later, that someone had been boycotting it. But thankfully that project is going now, and it’s almost finished.

“Being persistent helped, but God also brought along people at just the right time when we were thinking of giving up. I made several trips to the home island on a very small ship. It’s a long way from Honiara, but I used to be a Merchant Navy Deck Officer, so I don’t mind going on ships. I knew one of the ships wasn’t safe, but it was the only way to get there. So, what do you do? You trust God. I kept trying, and it was great to finally see that project move forward. Now there’s a good Review team working in a Tikopian community on another island.”

Nico says the Kapingamarangi language group was another challenging project. It’s a Polynesian language in Micronesia.

“They had written a letter in 1982 – ‘Can somebody come and help us?’ We heard about that, but were asked to go to the Netherlands for six years. We visited the Kapingamarangi people in 1994 to see if they were still interested. They had been saving money for Bible translation for more than ten years. They asked, “What do we need to do to get you to come? Do we need to pay your way?”  We told them that we had people supporting us so that we could help them translate the Bible.

“The Kapingamarangi are an amazing group of people, and we learned a lot from them.  I found they had been translating daily Bible readings for their church services for many years – one man for 40 years. So, some of them had a lot of experience translating the Bible. I was able to help them work out a plan. Soon, we had 23 people working on translation, and their motivation was super high. I gave them more training. They often misunderstood the English in some of the key terms, like Christian or Grace. So, we talked together and came up with solutions. It was an amazing project.

‘We were only going to do part of the Old Testament, but they wouldn’t stop until they had the entire Old Testament as well.” – Nico Daams

“In the first project on Rennell, I had five translators and a large group of reviewers. The Tikopia project originally had only one man, but now has a Review Committee working. The Kapingamarangi project had 23 translators and 60 reviewers. It seemed almost the entire population was busy with that project. We finished the New Testament in four years, and they kept going. We were only going to do part of the Old Testament, but they wouldn’t stop until they had the entire Old Testament as well. How could I not keep helping them? The entire Bible was finished after 18 years. We’re grateful that we could be part of work in such a motivated language group.”