Florida was the name given to a small group of about 50 islands in Central Melanesia by Spanish explorers who first visited it in the late sixteenth century. Today the major island of this group, formerly called simply Florida Island, is known more accurately as Nggela Sule. About 12,000 people here, most of them Anglicans, speak a major local language called Nggela or Gela or Florida.

Both David Griffiths, in his Bibliography of the Book of Common Prayer, and Muss-Arnolt identify the translator of this book incorrectly as Edward Gorton Penny (1824-1891), an English priest who served parishes in New Zealand. The translator was in fact Alfred Penny (1845-1935), a priest of the Melanesian Mission from 1875 to 1886. The latter Penny’s Ten Years in Melanesia (1888) gives a first-hand account of his missionary and educational work on Florida island; his translation of the Gospels and Acts into Florida is available online through GoogleBooks. Penny spent the last 50 years of his long life as a parish priest in western England and as canon of Lichfield Cathedral. This translation was published in 1882 and is listed as 39:3 in David Griffiths’ Bibliography of the Book of Common Prayer 1549-1999.

Subsequent Anglican liturgical translations into Florida/Nggela have been published in 1906, 1939, 1943, 1949 and 1964.

 
Thanks are due to Richard Mammana, who provided and transcribed the text.