Ruth Tipton
While studying education at Malone College (Ohio), Ruth met a representative of Wycliffe Bible Translators, and he suggested that she get some training in linguistics in order to do Bible translation. Ruth became fascinated with the study, and she earned a master’s degree from Wycliffe’s Summer Institute of Linguistics. When CCCU appealed for translators to go to the new work in PNG, she knew that God had been the orchestrator of it all.
Ruth’s first love was for translation, but like many missionaries, she found herself doing more than that at different times. She served in field accounting, teaching, leadership, women’s ministries, literacy work, and more.
But the reason Ruth went to PNG in the first place was for Bible translation. In 1986, the task finally started: translating the New Testament into the Angal Enen dialect of the Nembi Valley of the Southern Highlands Province. This project took 16 years of concentrated work. The translation was completed in 2001, and it was dedicated in 2002. During the process of translating the New Testament, Ruth also developed an alphabet, a dictionary, and grammar for the Angal Enen language.