Sam is One!

Sam turned on on May 31! (I can't believe it's been nearly a month already -- it took this long to get the video at the end uploaded). We are so thankful for our sweet little one year old. He finished his first piece of birthday cake looking remarkably clean:


Our friends Daniel and Ceci, and their children Laurent and Audrey Esther, came over to celebrate Sam's birthday with us:

The turtle birthday headband I made for Sam stayed on for a total of about three seconds:

On his birthday evening, Sam enjoyed playing with new found companion, our neighbor's kitten Tommy:

To be sung to the tune of "12 Days of Christmas"

Never one to miss an opportunity to contemporaneously compose a song when an appropriate occasion comes around, Adam sang this one for us at the supper table tonight (it's not really a whole song, just part of one):

"Fou-r cases of pinkeye,
three cases of malaria, *
two fungal infections,
a-and one peritonsillar abscess!"

Yes, it has officially been "not the healthiest week in our African lives" at the Huntley household. But today we actually all had a really nice day, other than when John started out the day by throwing up voluminously (subsequently we got a positive lab result for malaria and got him started on treatment for that). There have been some rather unhappy moments during the course of the week, but at the moment everyone's feeling pretty well. Thank you, God, for your healing hand!

(* There were actually only 2 malaria cases in our family this week, but I think Adam got confused, and I couldn't change it afterwards or it would mess up the song)

Eternal Life.

Jesus clearly states that after any human dies you live eternally either in the blessed presence of God and His saints in a perfect state of perfect love, joy, and honor called the new heavens and the new earth…or…you will in a place characterized by an intense physical and emotional torment as Jesus describes it five times in Matthew “a place of weeping (emotional pain) and gnashing of teeth (physical pain) Like, what sound do you make when you get a pin poked in the end of your finger, you suck air through your teeth, right?, There…that’s the meaning of this imagery).”

Both realities are real, unavoidable,  will be experienced consciously, and will be eternally experienced consciously.  And will be coming soon to you.  It is always interesting to see how modern folk inside (and outside) the church like to deny that there will be an eternal experience of judgment (some say that lost people will fall out of existence somehow), but those same people never seem to have any qualms about God giving people an eternal blessedness and joy.  Interesting, huh?   

Well, here is a quote by Jonathan Edwards talking about the same (as we see now…un-modern) disdain for the biblical doctrine of hell that people had three hundred years ago.  I guess people really don’t change that much over the centuries.

“God aims at satisfying justice in the eternal damnation of sinners; which will be satisfied by their damnation, considered no otherwise than with regard to its eternal duration. But yet there never will come that particular moment, when it can be said, that now justice is satisfied. But if this does not satisfy our modern free-thinkers who do not like to talk about satisfying justice with an infinite punishment; I suppose it will not be denied by any, that God, in glorifying the saints in heaven with eternal felicity, aims to satisfy his infinite grace or benevolence, by the bestowment of a good infinitely valuable, because eternal: and yet there never will come that moment, when it can be said, that now this infinitely valuable good has been actually bestowed.”

What a joy it is to know that you have eternal life!  Think about it….eternal life!  Eternal life!  A life that is a permanent display of the goodness of God.  As Paul says in Ephesians, “so that in the coming ages he (that is, God) might show the riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”  A prize and joy obtain only by faith in Son of God, Jesus Christ, the Righteous One.

 

Down to the river

Growing up close to the Mississippi, rivers have always been special to me. So it is nice to once again live in a city on a river -- this time, the Oubangui River (henceforth to be referred to as "the river," in the same way a true Minnesotan would talk about "the lake.")

Last Sunday, we took an afternoon outing and found a beautiful little playground overlooking the river. Here are a couple photos...John with the river behind him...and a couple men traveling down the river by boat...

Cat, Fish and Giant Bug

We have definitely come across some interesting little animals since being here. Today, walking through the doorway into the center, I realized the ground was alive with tiny little hopping things! They were miniature frogs, about the size of crickets.

The other day, we found this large bug on the porch. He was moving along quite slowly and so we were able to take some pictures of him.

Our neighbor's cat has basically taken up residence with us since our neighbor is out of town for a couple of weeks. "Lucythecat," as John calls her, has taken quite a liking to us and I think it is mutual. John learned the important lesson of letting the cat smell your hand to know that you are okay before you try petting her.

A less lively animal I got to experience last Friday was a large carp. Our Sango teacher Marie-Claire brought over two fresh (but dead) fish: another fun cooking lesson experience she wanted me to have! So, following her example, I did my first whole fish preparation, including scale removal. It was actually interesting and kind of fun, to my surprise. I would have expected to be really grossed out by the whole thing, but I decided to just overcome my gag reflex and enjoy learning. I now feel more confident that if someone handed me a whole fish, I could make something tastey out of it.

You Know You're A Nerd When...

Maybe the thousands of dollars used towards paying tuition on an advanced degree in linguistics was not a complete waste. J

 

The linguistic discovery itself is not the indicator of the nerdy-ness…just the unparalleled joy of the discovery.

So…here it is

 

A nominalization morpheme in Sango!

 

Now, I most certainly did not “discover” it in some “no-linguist-has-ever-noticed-this-before-kind-of-thing” discovery.  But it was the kind of discovery that would be that kind if I was working here several decades before and it was done through principles that I learned in school!  Yeah!

 

Well, anyways…here it be…

 

You take a verb in Sango like ga which means “to come”

And

You add the morpheme “ngo” at the end of it and it makes the verb a noun so gango is translated something like “the coming”.

That is not too interesting as in English we use “the coming”  like “The coming of Jesus is at hand. Etc.”

 

But they also do this with the verb te meaning “to eat” so tengo means something like “the eating”

So, Tengo ayeke nzoni  is literally translated “The eating was good.”

But in English we do not say it that way.  Although “The eating was good.” Kind of makes sense, it sounds more like a caveman talking.  The translation just is not natural.  The word-for-word translation just does not work. You must translate meaning-for-meaning.  We would say something like, “It was a pleasant dining experience.” or something like that.

 

So I went through every verb I knew and added the ngo morpheme to see whether or not this was used on these particular verbs and each time our language helper said,  “Yes, we use that a lot.”  And many times the verbs are like the example above of “the eating” where it would be impossible to translate it from Sango into English word-for-word. 

 

Neat, huh?

four good hours

Tomorrow is Tuesday, and I am looking forward to it, especially because we get to have a lesson with our Sango teacher!

For four wonderful hours each week*, one hour each on Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday, we get to learn Sango with Marie-Claire. She is truly a blessing to Adam and me. We look forward to her arrival these weekday mornings. We know that the time we spend doing our "Sango language sessions" with her will be started off with prayer, and filled with heart-felt conversations, discussions of culture, explorations of language, and like-minded fellowship.

We couldn't ask for more in a language helper. Here is Marie-Claire holding a picture of her family; this particular day, she taught me how to talk about family in Sango:


And here is "Ata" (the Sango word for Grandparent, which she likes John and Sam to think of her as) with Sam. He has warmed up to her over the weeks, and now, when he sees her walking towards the house, he gets very excited!

* We each have our lessons separately, one hour per day for each of us, so that one of us can watch John and Sam while the other is learning Sango.