John's new blue whiskers

Early Monday evening was proceeding like one of our normal days – I was in the kitchen starting supper preparations, and Adam was out on our front porch with John and Sam. Suddenly, I heard a cry from the porch. I hurried out to see what had happened, and saw Adam holding John who was bleeding.

John had fallen face first out of the swing onto the cement porch, and split a deep gash in his chin. We decided pretty quickly that we should take him to Gamboula, a town west of Berberati, where we knew a doctor who could determine whether or not John needed stitches (and who could do them!)

So after hurriedly packing a few bags, we set out on a bumpy dirt road, just before sundown. As the last rays of light were disappearing from the sky, and we were bouncing crazily along the (very bad) road, our headlights (only the high beams were even working at that point) suddenly went out! Adam was able to figure out an ingenious way to have light, by turning on the left turn signal which also turned on an extra headlight to illumine the side where the vehicle would be turning. We had enough light to continue our journey and finally, about three hours after leaving Berberati, we finished the 40-mile trek to Gamboula.

Dr. Wester took John right into his house and decided he needed stitches. So he and another doctor put John on the kitchen table and right there put six neat stitches into his chin. We spent the night in a guest room at the center there.

The next morning, before leaving the large center where the hospital is located, we visited an amazing garden called “The Garden of Eden,” which has been planted by some missionaries whose focus is on agriculture. The garden is a huge expanse with paths running through it, and filled with all types of fruit trees imaginable. In fact, as John and I walked through it in the morning, I saw many fruits that I had never even seen pictures of before, and have no clue what they are! But it was amazing. After spending about half an hour walking through the Garden of Eden, I decided I have definitely found the ultimate CAR vacation destination.

Here is John with his new blue whiskers. He is doing just fine.

the Gbaya translation team gets going

I thought you might like to see a picture of Adam and the two Gbaya men, Anatole and Alexi, who will be helping translate the the Gbaya O.T. Actual translation work hasn’t started yet, but important groundwork is being laid. Right now, Adam is working through a translation principles course with the men. When our colleague Esther gets back to CAR, she will be doing linguistic research, vital for laying a good foundation for the translation.

Alexi, Anatole, Adam and John

Anatole and Adam

Anatole and Alexi are really excited about starting translation work, and Adam’s already enjoying working with them. A third translator is currently in Bangui getting Bible training. Eventually, he will join the team back here in Berberati.

banana bread - more charcoal baking experiments

I am trying to hone my baking-over-the-charcoal-fire skills. I am getting better over time. Please feel free to share any ideas with my that you might have about baking without a traditional oven. I am eager to collect new methods and tips.

I have been experimenting with making good banana bread, and I think I’ve finally figured out a good method.I get my coals hot on my charcoal cooker. Then I put a tall stock pot like this over the coals with about an inch or two of water in the bottom of the pan.

I pour the banana bread batter into two of these big cans, and set each of the bread cans in the water on two of these little cans, in order to keep the bread “pans” from touching the bottom of the pot (the little cans need to have both top and bottom cut out so that they will not float on the water).

After covering the pot, I just check every once in a while to see if the bread looks done. Once it looks close to done, I pour the water out of the stock pot (the “oven”) so that the bread can finish baking and get a little browned around the edges (the steaming cooks the bread well, but it needs to cook a little while without steam to get a good crust).

The bread comes out of the cans very easily, and then I cut the whole loaf in half lengthwise so it doesn’t roll right off the plate! 

Then, people like this help eat the bread:

$1 of organic produce -- and "death by coffee"

Most nights, I go shopping at the small market really close to our house, where women start to gather around 4:00 p.m. to sell the vegetables and fruits they have brought from their gardens. The market is a great place to practice my newly-learned phrases in Gbaya, and to receive plenty of encouragement from the women who are glad to help me learn to speak their language.

For about $1, I got a couple papayas, a pineapple, some freshly-roasted and ground peanut butter, and spinach. Not too bad for locally grown organic produce, right? Fresh from the garden too!

Oh, speaking of language learning...this morning when I approached the payote (grass-roofed place for sitting) where Adam was having his Gbaya language learning, he and the teacher were howling with laughter. I was approaching with a cup of coffee. Adam had attempted to say, "Ruth's bringing coffee." Instead, what he said was basically, "Ruth died by coffee." Death by coffee? I guess I could think worse ways to go.

planting the garden

The ground beside our house is all tilled, and we have started planting our garden. So far, we have planted pineapples, carrots, beets, sugar peas, a couple types of beans, sweet corn, a few varieties of tomato, and a couple types of pepper plants. We shall see what comes up.

There has been only one brief rain shower the whole time we’ve been in Berberati so far, but several days recently we have seen cloudy skies that seem to promise rainy season is nearer. Once the rainy season begins, we will not have to water our garden every morning and night, but in the meantime John and Sam help me fill up the watering can and make sure the garden beds get well soaked.

We planted herbs and flowers in front of the house about a month ago, and amongst the many weeds that have sprouted up, we also see some cilantro, Thai basil, Genovese basil and some flowers (cosmos, I think). John really likes seeing little plants just beginning to sprout out of the ground. He likes to bring green leaves to me and say, “Look, chlorophyll!”

After watering the garden this morning, John and Sam and I played a little soccer while Adam had his Gbaya lesson. I got a couple pictures of the boys while John took a rest (using soccer ball as pillow) under one of the palm trees in our front yard.

Your promise gives me life! (thoughts on Scripture use)

Tonight I’ve been considering, once again, how absolutely necessary God’s words are to me. How much I need to hear from Him in order to have any meaning at all to my existence. And how, when I do really consider what He has said to me, my existence does have meaning, and life starts to make a lot of sense (even the suffering that I see in the world around me).

The incredible thing about the Bible is that it is actually the message of a Creator for His created ones, the information that we absolutely need in order to know who we are, why we are here, and most importantly of all, who He is.

So, tonight I was reading a great article by Wayne Dye (one of our professors at GIAL) about the “Conditions Necessary for Scriptures to be Used.” In this article, he talks about the seven most important factors that must be in place if people are to actually use the Scriptures that are being translated into their language.

The whole article was so great that it got all the gears in my brain moving—so many ideas about how the Scriptures could be used by the Gbaya-speaking people (not only the NT which has already been translated, but also the OT which is going to be translated in the future).

There is a big gap here in this culture between what the Bible says, and how people believe and practically live out their beliefs (isn’t it like that everywhere in the world, though? )

One specific area here in which I am starting to understand this gap between God’s truth and people’s lives is in the spiritual belief system. I have been learning about Gbaya spiritual beliefs, and am going to try to keep learning, since of course people’s beliefs about the spirit world are such a crucial component of their lives. I am learning that in people’s perception, spirits and spiritual forces are involved in nearly every aspect of life. The result of this is that much of people’s lives are wound up in trying to protect themselves from evil spiritual forces, trying to obtain good things from spiritual powers that can give good stuff, etc. Ultimately, people live in a great deal of fear, and their desire is to manipulate spirits in order to get good things and avoid calamities. But very few people are aware of what the Bible has to say about spirits and related issues – and it says so much about these things!

With all these things bouncing around in my head tonight – the amazingness of the truth God has offered us in the Bible, the need for Scripture to actually be used as it is translated into languages (Gbaya specifically), and the spiritual belief system in which people here live – I asked myself, “What can I practically do to help people here actually use their Bibles, and to help them realize that God in fact offers truth about Himself that will set them free from spiritual bondage and fears?”

The conclusion I’ve come to, or at least a preliminary one, is that the best thing I can do is to be into the Bible myself, and through God’s help to be living out the truth I find there. I often find myself wanting to exemplify something good to others (my kids, friends, people around me) and then realize that the point is not to be an example of the thing, but actually to be the thing myself.

So if I want to help people around me find all the answers to life in the Bible, then the best way to do that is to find answers to my own questions there. And of course that (going to the Bible for myself, rather than just getting others to go to it for the help they need) – is the point after all.

This year I am trying to read through the Bible, and as I am reading on this more purposeful accelerated reading plan, already I’m finding myself reminded of a lot of things about God and His workings in history that I had forgotten. I think that reading the Bible more is just a good cycle – God shows me so many things that in turn, I just want to read it and obey it more. Hopefully so that I will keep becoming more and more like that man who wrote Psalm 119, and who seemed to have a pretty good understanding of how vital God’s words are for our lives –

“Remember your word to your servant, in which you have made me hope.
This is my comfort in my affliction, that your promise gives me life.” (Psalm 119:49-50)

 

 

 

Road Trips, Recipe and Rambunctious Kids

The past couple weeks have been a bit of a whirlwind here. Adam made a 16-hour road trip to Bangui with our friend André to get medical attention for his broken jaw. Two days later, Adam and our branch director Larry drove back to Berberati, making record time—they left Bangui at 5:00 a.m. and arrived in Berberati at 4:00 p.m.

Larry, and another of our branch members Will, have been meeting with us for a number of days, and we are covering a lot of ground and having fun in the process. It has also been a blessing to have two wonderful ladies helping us cook some of the weekday meals so that we can give more time to our meetings.

Esther’s wood stove is pretty impressive, and you can keep a lot of pots going at once above its blazing heat.

Next door on our own back porch, I continue to experiment with my more humbly-sized free standing charcoal grill. I’m finding that one simple and effective way of baking is to steam breads or cakes in a lidded pot over the hot coals. I have altered a recipe for Boston brown bread to use ingredients available here:

3 ½ cups flour
1 ½ tsp baking powder
1 tsp salt
½ tsp baking soda
2 ¼ cups milk
½ cup molasses or honey
½ cup raisins

I pour the batter into two lightly oiled and floured milk cans and place them in the boiling water. After a couple hours of cooking, we have two delicious loaves of bread (they slide very easily out of the milk cans!)

Here are a few photos of the kids, who spend much of the day playing in our yard and on the big front porch…

Cute baby Elliot, who loves to eat dirt and is learning to walk...

Sam, Louisa and Elliot...

Louisa, John and Tishik on their "motorbike"...

Elliot, Louisa and Sam...

And two of the ever-present onlookers who find us fascinating to watch...