Morihara grew up speaking pidgin.

He’s so good at talking “la dat” that in 1985 he and linguistics professor Joseph Grimes of Wycliffe Bible Translators started translating the New Testament of the Bible into Hawaii pidgin.”We just started to translate a few verses, and for me it spoke to me,” he said.

Turns out, it spoke to a lot of people. Other pidgin speakers pitched in and Da Jesus Book was born. The New Testament in pidgin was released in 2001.Then the translators went to work on the Old Testament. It turned into a 20-year project.

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