Day 9 (Thursday)

As the locals say here, "My heart is warm." I just finished up meeting with a group of local believers for their mid-weekly study. It was a pretty amazing thing to be a part of and see how much things have changed over the past year and a half.

Before I left, a few of us started meeting with a handful of local guys on Wednesday nights. We'd sing a few songs and do a little teaching. Back then we'd have usually two or maybe three guys show up and most weeks it was pretty inconsistent and rough. Eventually the wives and some girls wanted to start coming, so it changed shape a little bit. Over the past couple of years, it has changed and grown into a full on fellowship that meets twice a week and is entirely led by locals in their local language. This is the first one of these that I know of and there were about 14 local people that came.

We started off the meeting with some singing. The last song they sang was one they wrote the week before in their local language and in a local style. We then had a message from one of the guys. They have started rotating who speaks each week so that they all have experience in how to write a message and share with others. Reproducibility and the ability to multiply is a huge thing out here. The message was out of Nahum. I can't really tell you the last time I heard a message out of Nahum, but it seemed to work for them. Because these are city people, they can all read so we read the entire book (3 chapters) and then the spent about thirty minutes going over the content and contrasting it with the message that Jonah had for Nineveh. The language was way over my head so I could only catch bits and pieces of it, however everyone was engaged and taking notes though. It is amazing to see the passion of people who have never heard the Word before.

After the study part of the meeting, one of our local friends started a language lesson. The local language here is an oral only language, which causes a lot of problems when you want locals to read scripture or other things. A friend has spent the last decade or so developing a writing system, but only a handful of people can read it. I'd guess that when I left, there were probably 10 of us in the world that could read the language (and about half of that was foreigners). Now there are probably 25-30 and many of those are locals. While we were sitting in the language lesson, I leaned over to my friend and told him it was strange watching people try to read when they already had the vocabulary. I would read trying to discern meaning, they read trying to understand the sounds the words made and already knew the meaning once they could get the sounds. It is a pretty rare moment in history to be there when a culture moves from oral to written. I'm sure it will be a slow process, but it is important for the Word to go forth here.

We also had a great morning out here. Lindsey (yes, she's been with me this whole time, and no, she hasn't fallen off a cliff or wanted to kill me yet) and I went out with some friends to a bluff on the ridge and had a picnic overlooking the city and talked about the work here over the past eight years. It was a good time. When I went to the study tonight, Lindsey decided to spend some time with my friend's wife and his girls. I figured I wouldn't make her sit through a local meeting. It is hard to follow even with language and incredibly boring if you don't know what anyone is saying for an hour and a half. I think the girls had fun doing their own thing. It was a good break day and we're heading out to the village again tomorrow.