Gbaya Learning, More Caterpillars, and Brownie Experiment

We are into our second week of Gbaya language learning. We got connected with a really neat guy, André, who is helping us learn Gbaya three times a week. 

André’s mother tongue is Gbaya, but he also speaks Sango, French and English. He is a teacher by profession, so helping people learn languages is his specialty. Despite the fact that learning a new language is a monumental (and sometimes daunting) task, we have enjoyed diving in to the new sounds and new words. This is going to be a fascinating language learning journey for sure.

I have spent almost two out of my first three lessons with André talking about Gbaya beliefs about the spirit world. As André has explained what people believe about evil spirits, and about people’s interactions with the spirit world, it is becoming all the more clear to me how much people need God’s Word in their language so that its light can dispel the darkness and fear that many of them live in.

The other day André was telling Adam how he has enjoyed reading a copy of the Gbaya NT which Adam gave him; even though he speaks other languages well, he found that he was able to understand the meaning of a particular passage better when he read it in his own language.

André loves the Lord and has a desire to preach the truth of God’s Word to them. Some mornings he rides his motorbike out into Gbaya villages as early as 4:00 a.m. and preaches before he has to go about his daily work. Adam has had the opportunity to go with André twice and preach in nearby villages (with André translating into Gbaya). They have been encouraged to see how God seems to be working in people’s hearts as a result of hearing His Word presented and explained.

Plenty has been going on around our house. John has made a new friend, Tishik, who has been spending much of every day playing at our house. Tishik is four, and is just as talkative as John (can you believe it?) I think John is going to pick up a lot of Sango from Tishik. The boys are good little helpers; recently they have given me a hand at planting beet seeds and making tortillas.

Tishik also really enjoys John and Sam’s alphabet movie. It seems his is now learning the ABC’s in English, right along with Sam. It’s pretty cute to hear them shouting, “A! B! C!” together.

By the way, when I went to the market with John last week, he was begging me to buy him some caterpillars to eat. So I did. The lady selling them broke one crunchy little caterpillar in half, and handed it to me to eat. So I have eaten my first caterpillar. It was peppery tasting, and very crunchy. Here is a picture of Esther, also eating her first caterpillar (look closely and you can see how very caterpillary it looks):

Today I baked something for the first time in almost a month! My makeshift oven consisted of a heavy pot I borrowed from a friend, with hot coals above and beneath.

I thought things were going pretty well when I finally pulled the first pan of brownies from the “oven,” and it was just about perfect (if a little doughy in the middle). But the second pan burned to a black crisp in a matter of minutes…and the inside of the brownies were still soggy. I guess I need to figure out how to regulate the heat better.