This is sad:
It took Richmond theology student Alpheaus Zobule nearly a decade to make the New Testament available to the people of the tiny South Pacific island where he grew up. But in one April day, a magnitude 8.1 earthquake dealt his work a powerful blow.
Zobule, a 38-year-old son of subsistence farmers from the Solomon Islands, came to the United States in his 20s and earned master’s degrees in linguistics and theology, all so he could find a way to make the Bible available to fellow islanders, whose language had no written form. …
It took him six years to figure out how to write Lungga, analyzing people’s speech patterns and creating two fat books on grammar. Then he translated the New Testament. …
But since the April 2 quake, which killed 50 people and destroyed 6,000 homes — including the two where Zobule’s library was — the fate of his religious and literacy materials is not known.
Here’s the full story.