It was definitely not the reception Wycliffe's Martin and Beate Knauber expected.

The couple from Germany had just arrived in a small village in southeastern Papua New Guinea (PNG), where they would eventually begin a Bible translation project for the 3,000 Dawawa [DAH-wah-wah] people. It was July 1988.

Martin and Beate were beginning their new life after their first night's sleep in a grass hut there. Then came a hair-raising visit. The chief witchdoctor, from a hierarchy of shaman among the Dawawa, came calling. He arrived clutching a King James Bible, accompanied by two men he identified as "apostles" in the little English he knew.

"He was acting weird," Martin recalls. "He was acting strange. The way he breathed—it was just strange."

The visiting man was confident about this reason for coming: the Knaubers were under examination.

"He said, 'I hear you have come here to do Bible translation,' " recalls Martin. " 'I'm here to test you.' "

Noticing the large, machete-like bush knife the visitor carried, Martin reacted in a way that makes him chuckle now. "I said, 'I'd rather forego the testing!' "

But the visitor persisted, clarifying his involvement.

"I'm not going to test you," he continued. "It's the invisible man who is with me. He is going to test you. He is going to wield the bush knife."

Though the Knaubers had never seen demon possession before, it occurred to Martin that he was experiencing it now. Almost instinctively, he countered the witchdoctor's challenge with one of his own.

"Oh, this is interesting," Martin told him. "I have an invisible man too who is with me all the time. He's right here: Jesus Christ, Lord of the Universe."

At those words, though Martin never laid a hand on the man, the witchdoctor fell backward as if he had received a strong push. He began yelling at the top of his voice.

"I asked him, 'What are you saying?' " says Martin. "And he said, 'I don't know—the invisible man said that.' "

The witchdoctor then tried—or at least pretended—to strike Martin with the knife, whooshing it back and forth in front of his face. The German stood his ground and rebuked the evil spirit for several minutes so that the situation would go no further.

"This went on for awhile. And then the witchdoctor said, 'Okay, I know now I have to call you "my Lord." And he disappeared [left]."

In the Right Spot
"That was our introduction to the language group!" says Martin. "Everybody saw it, and that was quite a powerful testimony. It occurred to us later what an impact it had."

Adds Beate: "It was good that God showed us that the darkness was great in this area, but He was saying, 'Don't worry—I'm more powerful than that.' "

God's provision for the Knaubers was reiterated again and again. For example, the Wycliffe helicopter which had brought them and their initial set-up supplies to their assignment only days earlier, suddenly returned unannounced.

Included in the Knaubers' belongings was a new two-way radio so they could stay in contact with Wycliffe colleagues at the nearest centre. However, the radio didn't work when they unpacked and tried it. That was unnerving—alone and isolated by more than 600 kilometres, the Knaubers were without a way to contact anyone for help. "There was no way of getting in or out,' explains Martin, "except to go for very, very, very long hikes."

As they heard the whirring of a helicopter at daybreak, Martin ran out to meet it. He asked the pilot why he had come back.

"He said, 'I couldn't sleep all night, and the Lord impressed something on me. Is something wrong with your radio?' "

When Martin explained that it wasn't working, the pilot offered them a radio that was no longer needed by another team he was transporting out of another village.

"Many things like this happened," recalls Martin, "and we were encouraged by them, confirming that the Lord put us in the right spot."

A Thousand Confirmations
The Lord had already guided and confirmed His plan for the Knaubers for many years before they served in PNG.

They first met in the northern Black Forest city of Karlsruhe, at a Bible study led by a woman during the confirmation classes of an Evangelical-Lutheran (Protestant state) Church. Young people from a variety of denominations attended. Besides searching the Scriptures, they did outreach and street evangelism. Martin came to the group as a believer; Beate received Christ while attending it.

"It was pretty clear for us from the start that we wanted to give our lives for missions and be career missionaries," explains Martin. "We both felt the call of the Lord on that.

"When we gave our lives to the Lord, we had decided to tithe, each independently. We felt the Lord was going to show us what to do with it. We had saved up about 1,000 Deutschmarks each."

They heard about Bible translation at a talk at their church by Canadian George Cowan who was helping promote Wycliffe Germany. Interested in the first linguistic course that Wycliffe offered, the couple—by this time engaged—discovered that it cost 1,000 Deutschmarks each.

"And that for us," says Martin, "was like the Lord was putting this together. It sort of registered with us, "Wow, maybe that was what the 1,000 Marks were for."

Before going to this course they decided to attend a three-day introductory course at the German Wycliffe centre. Unfortunately, Beate had locked-in shift work as a nurse between Christmas and New Year's Day. It seemed like an obstacle to her attending the course. At the last minute, however, the head nurse told Beate that she wasn't needed after all. Martin, who had already registered to go alone, contacted the course organizers to see if they had room for another person.

"They said, 'Sorry, we are fully booked. But what's his name?' I said, "It's not a he, it's a she.' And they said, 'Oh, we have one more bed for a girl.' "