Christmas

We had a lovely Christmas celebrating with friends in their small Assemblies of God church, and eating with them after the service. And later more friends called round to see us.









What a colourful Christmas!

Timing

Our car broke down on Saturday. We were going to visit our Baptist
missionary "neighbours" an hour north of here, and as we dropped down
from a kind of speed bump there was a bang. And when we tried to keep
driving there were repeated bangs.

The good news was that we could see our friends' wall from where we were
stranded. The even better news was that our friends know more about cars
than us. So we walked the rest of the way, then Marc and Colin walked
back to the car, and were able to drive it limping to their house.

It turned out that the exhaust had been pushed out of its socket (in
non-technical terms!) and was hanging onto the part of the central
transmission that turns, meaning that it was banging on some nuts as the
car went forward. So the guys jacked the car up enough to tie up the
exhaust pipe up so that they could drive it a few miles to where another
missionary friend has a proper mechanic's pit, where they were actually
able to fix it. So that was amazing, and yet another example of God
allowing things to go wrong, but allowing them to go wrong when we are
in the right place with people who can help us!

By the time it was done though, it was getting a bit late to drive home,
so we ended up staying over. Our friends graciously found us beds,
bedding, towels, T-shirts to sleep in and even some toothpaste to rub on
our teeth! The kids were overjoyed to have more time together, and as we
left the next morning their daughter said, "I hope next time you come to
visit your car breaks down again!" "Or," suggested her mother, "you
could just plan to stay over in the first place!"

I have never had so little unpacking to do when returning home after a
night away!

Selling technique

When I was doing my weekly shopping in our nearest town of Kandi last
Saturday, I was approached by two young men. By their over-polite
greetings, I could tell they wanted something, and sure enough one of
them soon launched into his sales patter.

Him: We're selling traditional medicine. It can help with all kinds of
diseases (and along came a list of examples...).
Me: Thank you, but I'm in very good health.
Him: It can also protect you against witchcraft. Do you know witchcraft?
Me: Yes, but I'm protected by Jesus.

And they gave up (convinced by my argument?). I obviously didn't want to
help them with their sales technique, but I felt they were hardly
pitching to their audience. Generally speaking, any white person around
here would either not believe in the power of witchcraft, or would, like
me, know that they have nothing to fear from it. If I'd wanted to help
them, I'd have suggested forgetting the supernatural, and insisting on
the natural, organic ingredients and cleansing, preventive powers of
their products ... well, it still wouldn't have worked on me, and there
are very few whites about, so maybe they should stick to their "one
script" approach ...

Lunch

Some friends came for lunch on Saturday.



Their "hostess gift" was a future meal...

The law is the law ... except when it's the laws

There aren't many words for "law" in Monkolé. The one I've heard most often is "wooda". It seems that it originally came from English ("order"), passed into Hausa and presumably from there into Monkolé. (A slightly awkward reminder of the colonial past.)

There are, however, many different words for law in Hebrew, and in some verses you can even find up to four of them used in one sentence :

"because Abraham obeyed my voice and kept my charge, my commandments, my statutes and my laws." (Genesis 26:5, ESV)

Our consultant asked us to do a word study of the different words used in Hebrew (he suggested 8 of them) to decide which Monkolé words had the closest meanings. Of course, this abstract study then has to be applied taking context into account (there is no such thing as a literal translation).

We made one helpful discovery as a side effect of this work. For instance, in the Psalms, particularly Psalm 119, "the Law of the Lord" is often mentioned. This had been translated with a singular noun in Monkolé … but of course in English (or French or Hebrew) it is a collective noun. When I asked my team whether the collective use existed in Monkolé – ie. using "the law" to refer to a collection of many laws – we realised that it doesn't. So while the actual word was a good translation, we needed to make it plural where it was being used as a collective noun.

Celebration

A year ago I had a message from a missionary friend in Mali to let me know that mutual friends of ours were in need. A young Beninese couple living in Kandi had been expecting their first child. The husband had to go to France for training, and the baby had been born 3 weeks early. Fortunately the young mother had her mother-in-law with her, but the baby was on oxygen, and our friend asked me to go and visit.

This hospital visit was the beginning of a deeper friendship between our two families, and this last Sunday we were pleased to be invited to the little girl's first birthday party.

Harvest

It is harvest time here for many crops at the moment. I called in to see some friends yesterday, and they were just de-husking their corn. This can be done by hand, but when you have a certain amount of corn, it makes sense to hire a machine to do it. In the photo you can see the corn husks to the right of the photo. They were being put into sacks, from which they were fed into the top of the machine. Behind the machine to the left you might be able to make out the big bowl on the ground into which the grains were falling. From there, they were poured into large sacks. There was a lot of husk dust around, and it was very noisy!

A day in the life...

From time to time I think it's interesting to give you a taste of our
daily lives, so here is my Friday:

6.30am Wake, read Bible in bed, get up and dressed before breakfast as a
family. Then get Eve to get dressed, clean her teeth, and then do her
hair while Marc reads the Bible to the family.
7.40am I'm just chopping things for lunch when my laundry girl, Musaala,
arrives, so I stop what I'm doing to finish filling the dirty-washing
basket and ask Simon to take it out to her. She'll be able to do the
washing with the 4 big basins of rainwater we managed to collect on
Wednesday night. It's far cleaner than our well water at this time of year.
8.00am The kids and Marc are off to school, and I have finished
preparing lunch ingredients, so I have nearly half an hour of quiet to
journal and pray. I very much appreciate this time of day!
8.30am I make my way over to the translation office, about 50 metres
from my front door. No fighting the traffic, but not much chance of
getting fit either! I already know Philémon won't be in to work, he's
still off with the infection in his leg, and Pastor Samuel phones me to
say that he has to go to Social Services for a family problem.
I catch up on my work emails and finally manage to send my 6-monthly
report to our Projects Manager (the connection wasn't good enough for it
to send yesterday, and today I ended up putting the English and French
versions with separate emails, which was enough to get it off). Then I
begin working on the introduction to the book of Deuteronomy, which
first involves reading the whole book in Monkolé and taking notes on it.
9.20am I hear Musaala on her way out greeting the pastor's wife Hélène
as she arrives to clean our house. She'll do some washing up, sweep the
floors, dust and then clean the bathroom.
10.30am I take a half-hour break, and head over to our house to cook
lunch. I have a quick chat with Marc, who's made me a cup of tea and is
just about to go back to school with the kids, their break having
started earlier than mine.
11.00am Back to work, back to Deuteronomy.
12.30pm Back to the house, to heat up my sauce and eat lunch with my family.
1pm I make bread dough, and leave it to rise during...
2pm Siesta.
3pm Official end of the siesta for our kids, but I've already got up to
knead my dough again, and later to put it into the oven.
Friday's afternoon ended up not being so typical and since "a day in the
life" is supposed to be typical, I'll drop back and tell you about
Thursday's afternoon. I spend most of it doing reading practice with
Eve, giving her a dance lesson (her PE this module is dance so it's me
not Marc teaching it), and doing Spanish with Benjy then Eve. The
internet is actually working - slowly but well enough - so it's good to
get both a lesson and their evaluations done. On afternoons where I am
less taken up by Spanish or housework, I try to get out to do some visits.
We eat at 6, and then it's into the bedtime routine for the kids ...
easier now that our boys are autonomous, and Eve just needs help with
her hair (though she likes me to stay in the bathroom so that she can
chat with me).
On Thursday evening Marc went out to the church prayer meeting - on
foot, brought back afterwards by a church member on a motorbike at
9.30pm - and I spent my evening knitting. I am knitting a skirt for a
crocheted doll I've been making for Eve's birthday next month, and have
also started knitting a jellyfish for a little girl born prematurely
last year who is now coming up to her first birthday.
10pm Bedtime, and if we're lucky we won't be woken by a storm and have
to run round closing windows during the night!

They say patience is a virtue...

Generally speaking I work quickly. Speed and efficiency please me. So living in Benin has its challenges. One of my colleagues is very good at what he does, but he really takes his time to think everything through. Fortunately my predecessor told me about this, so from the beginning I knew that patience would bear fruit.

The internet drives me to distraction. Literally. It is hard not to become distracted when I am sitting looking at my connection counting off the seconds "33 kbps, 0 kbps, 45 kbps, 67 kbps, 0 kbps, 112 kbps, 28 kbps..." as I pray that it will hold steady enough and especially not cut out before I have finished sending my work files to the central server, or sending an email to which someone needs an immediate response. (Please don't send me emails which require an immediate response!)

I also like to plan. At the moment I can't plan our work very well because one of my colleagues is off sick, and a lot of the work on my to-do list is work which I know would be best done with him present. And now that our consultant has "postponed" (a new date has yet to be found) our next checking week, the work on the to-do list is less urgent, so I am reluctant to insist on the other two of us doing it in that colleague's absence.

My afternoons look flexible on paper. I am supposed to do Spanish with Benjy and Eve, and in past years we scheduled that in for Monday and Thursday, and when occasionally the internet wasn't working well enough, we moved it to Tuesday/Friday. But nowadays the new website requires a better connection, even to the point of using videos (where they really aren't very necessary), so I feel like every afternoon I have to say, "We'll do Spanish if the internet is working!" and then if the internet isn't working at 3, I leave my computer on so that I can check the connection at regular intervals, ready to grab a child if it suddenly starts working. This makes it much harder to plan outings or even fit in spontaneous visits to other people.

My evenings are relaxing. I don't even bother to check whether the internet is working. Sometimes I write emails which will (hopefully!) be sent the next day, sometimes I read ... but often I crochet. At last, something which depends entirely on me, and which gives me a sense of satisfaction because I can always achieve something visible!

People tend to say that God puts us in these kinds of situations to teach us patience. But I wonder a bit about this. Overall I think I am a pretty patient person, as people go. Yet I also feel sometimes that having to continually exercise patience wears me down and actually makes me less patient. What do you think?

Nature

We live in a fairly large compound, which had quite a lot of trees when we arrived, and has even more now. So we find we don't have to go far to see "wildlife", though it isn't quite the lions and elephants people immediately think of when you mention Africa. At the moment we have a lot of nests close to our house. Here's a dove sitting on her nest just under our roof. Doves make what seem to be quite scrappy nests, just enough twigs to stop the eggs from rolling away.



If you look carefully you should be able to see a slightly yellow coloured ball of grasses in this next photo. This is a red-cheeked cordon bleu (that's a bird!) nest just outside our bedroom window. It was lovely to watch the tiny birds arriving with individual sprigs of grass in their beaks.



And the architectural marvel of little weaver bird nests. If I were designing a nest, I would never think of putting the entrance hole at the bottom...!



This fellow amuses me. From the kitchen window, I can often see him sitting by an ants' nest, having an "eat all you can" buffet. What a life!



And this magnificent dragonfly was sitting on our washing line last week.

Kids

Besides school, our kids keep pretty busy...

Playing football or other games with friends:





Helping me bake (this was afterwards!):



And even at school they have to do sport:



And of course, there is always Lego:



(Rather dusty Lego, in our case!)

School ... and the years pass ...

Facebook recently reminded me of this photo, taken 7 years ago when Simon started school, and Marc began his homeschooling career!



Time has moved on and Marc's class has grown ...



... and so his workload has grown too. We are impressed by the French government's homeschooling curriculum, and all they provide us with, but it is very demanding. Marc does an amazing job, and our kids have always ended up with good results.

Please do pray that he will have the wisdom to organise the kids' timetables well, time himself to go through the lessons ahead of time, and pray too that our internet connection will work well enough for important tasks to be done online. And pray for good attitudes and a good atmosphere in the classroom!

Very rainy season

After a couple of very dry months in England, we got home to Pèdè to discover that here in the "dry North" it has been one of the wettest rainy seasons for years. People told us that it had been raining almost every day, and our first week back was exactly like that. It makes it hard to dry laundry, makes it impossible to get in and out of our compound some of the time, and fills up our septic tanks making it hard to drain the shower, but at least it keeps the temperatures down. And the farmers are happy about it ... in fact it's almost too much rain for them!

A lot of life here is determined by the rain. If it is raining hard then people don't come to work. If it is raining hard, there isn't much point going to the market (a few people will be there whatever the weather, but there won't be so much choice). Starting times for meetings will be suspended, and you never quite know when will be the point at which people will finally venture out, and there will be enough of them for it to be worth getting started. Not comfortable for our relatively time-respecting mentality (and a bit of a nightmare when you are trying to plan meals etc!).

It also means that everything is green, which makes a contrast from the yellow and brown scenes we were seeing before we left here in March. And the skies can be wonderful.

A few days in Cotonou

I was hoping to post this to my blog this evening, but the wifi isn't working - welcome back to Benin!

We flew into Cotonou at about 4am last Friday. Fortunately once we were in bed at the Guesthouse by ten to six, we did actually get two and a half hours sleep. Since then we have had time to catch up on it some more.

We have had to stay here for a few days to get the kids' visas done. Marc and I have 3-year residency cards, but the kids are on year-long visas. Other missionaries would have driven our car down for us, but with Marc's collar bone still not strong, he certainly can't drive, and I didn't fancy driving the seven hours from Cotonou to Parakou, especially since I will have to drive the three hours from Parakou to home. So we ordered a taxi for this Thursday (probably past by the time you read this!) and have had to do without a car in Cotonou. Our usual Cotonou taxi-man took us to Immigration and back for the visa business, and we tried out the new city taxis, but it's never as easy as having your own car!

Even so we managed to do essential shopping for school, plus some extra treats we can't buy further north, and we did manage a trip to the pool and a meal by the beach. But we'll all be glad to leave Cotonou - visas came through this morning, so we will be able to!



This is where we ate.



Simon put a newly-acquired skill into practice (thank you, Weymouth!).

Photos

Just a few of our recent photos:

End of Home Assignment

Our Home Assignment is coming to an end, and it has been full and busy. It is always great to spend time with so many people ... it is also rather difficult to keep up with emails and blog posts - sorry!

The main event at the beginning of this month was Marc breaking his collarbone, which unfortunately meant us cancelling our visit to St John's Hatfield, and the first of our meetings in Bedford. He is much better now, and very impressed with his experience of the NHS.

"I like to move it, move it"

... as my kids often sing! I got back from France on Thursday after
successful surgery on Tuesday and a very restful Wednesday at my
parents-in-law's. By the time I reached Chesterfield I was exhausted,
and spent nearly 12 hours in bed that night, but I'm feeling much more
normal now.

Yesterday's only outing for me was to the Optician's with the kids ...
not quite sure how, but 3 eye tests ended up taking over two and a half
hours!! Still, it is done, and it's still easier to do it here than in
Benin.

And today we are off to Bath. I love taking my family to places where I
grew up! And it is always lovely to renew old friendships and share
about our work in Benin.

When plans change

We're now in England again. But I will be back in France again in eleven days' time. It's as if I just can't decide between the two countries!

I wanted to see my gynaecologist while we were back for a smear test, because I believe it is very important to keep up to date with these kinds of tests even when it's a bother because we don't have much time in Europe. So I booked an appointment to see her during our one week in Nancy. The smear test was fine, and she removed a polyp from my cervix (sorry about the details, but I think it is good to talk about these things so that it is less of a surprise if it happens to us or people close to us). The polyp was analysed and it was benign.

Since my mum and grandmum had breast cancer, my gynae had already sent me for a mammogram two years ago, and prescribed me another, and a scan of my uterus (I think because I told her about extra bleeding just before my period), if I could manage to get appointments before leaving France.

I got a two-in-one appointment for those, but it was on a Friday just four days before we were due to leave France. So when the mammogram was clear but on the scan they discovered another polyp, this time in my uterus, and said I must consult a gynae, that rather threw me for six. I did quite a lot of crying and then some internet research, and eventually found myself an emergency gynae appointment at a clinic for the Monday afternoon, less than 24 hours before we were to leave France.

That gynaecologist said that he really thought the polyp should be removed before we returned to Benin. He said the worse case scenario would be hemorrhaging in Benin ... and I wouldn't want to risk that ... or not-so-bad but still not great, losing excessive amounts of blood each month and ending up very anaemic ... also not a very nice idea! He could, however, operate on the date I asked for (limited slightly by my monthly cycle), and got me an immediate emergency appointment with an anaesthetist, since I needed to see one at least 48 hours before my operation. And all the other paperwork was wrapped up there and then too.

So I'll be hopping back onto Eurostar the week after next, and having my operation on the 19th. Marc's parents will look after me while I'm in France, and my parents will look after Marc and the kids in England, so it works out pretty well. As someone said to me, at least this has come up when we have the time and the people around us for it to be possible.

At the clinic on Monday, it just felt like God had put everything in place and it was unfolding in front of us. Very reassuring.

Upfront

I haven't taken photos in all the meetings we've spoken in, but here are a couple of photos of Marc:





I tend to say that Bible translation isn't a very photogenic ministry ... Home Assignment meetings aren't much better!

Smells like the dentist!

"It smells like the dentist in here!" exclaimed Benjy, as he entered the dentist's surgery this afternoon. The dentist seemed concerned about this, and sprayed some essential oils to try to get rid of this apparently distinctive smell!

We are in and out of medical appointments at the moment, trying to get check-ups and vaccinations up to date before we leave France again. So far so good!

Another world

While there are things we miss about life in Europe, there are others we most definitely don't. Yesterday was a mixture of both for me!

I went into Paris - that alone is far from my daily life in Benin! - to meet a friend who I first met over twenty years ago, and have been writing to - and occasionally meeting up with - since then.

(Yes, definitely Paris!)



I knew it was a strike day on the trains, but while I was concerned I might not get a train, I hadn't quite realised what it meant for conditions on the few trains that were running. I was lucky to fit into the already-packed train, and then spent an uncomfortable half an hour packed like a sardine as we travelled towards La Défense. One poor lady started feeling very unwell - I felt sorry for her but encouraged by the way people around her did what they could to make her feel better. Our train terminated at La Défense, and fortunately I realised that it would be best to get out at the station before, and transfer to another train there ... when that train reached La Défense it was quite scary to see people standing packed together 5 or 6 deep on the station ... I don't know if I'd have had the pushiness to get myself on a train in those conditions!

It was a great relief to get off that train, and to take another, less full, underground train to my destination. I have never thought I'd want to live in a big city, and that experience did nothing to change my mind about that!

It was lovely, though, to visit the National Museum of Asian Art "Musée Guimet" - suggested by my friend - and to admire artefacts thousands of years old. It always makes me wonder about the people who saw or handled them daily all that time ago. And again, a very different experience from life in Pèdè.

Catching-up with Rachel was wonderful too. We write to each other often enough to know the important events that have happened, and the main news about our families, but it was really nice to be able to ask a question and have an immediate response instead of the 6-8 weeks it can take with the post between France and Benin. (Obviously for urgent questions we can use email, but we really prefer pen and paper!) Nothing beats face to face communication!

The road is long...

... but we can drive a bit faster than is usually sensible in Benin!

We're back at Marc's parents' after three weeks away. First we had a week down in Caderousse, near Orange, at the SIM France Headquarters. There was a two-day Conference with other missionaries and the missionary office personnel, and with a very interesting speaker, and then our debriefing spread out over three days. That gave us time for two sessions with the Director talking over our last 20 months in Benin and the next 20 months in Benin and beyond, and also a meeting with the Treasurer to talk about our financial support, and another with the Communications Officer to talk about the way we share our news. I also spent some time with the Communications Officer designing and ordering magnets for our regular supporters.

The children had a great time on borrowed bikes ... though of course they also had to keep plugging on with schoolwork whenever Marc was free. They also enjoyed talking with other missionaries at mealtimes.

Marc's cousin Marielle got married on the Saturday at the end of that week, just an hour-ish from Orange, and an hour and a half from the church where we were due to speak in Lyon on the Sunday - very good planning!

The wedding was lovely, and we had a brief but fun time in Lyon, presenting our work, catching up with old friends and making new ones.

After that we spent a few days at Marc's brother Sam's family home near Belfort. We presented our work to their small group one evening, and also enjoyed hearing about their church plant project.

We then had a week in Nancy, where we lived until 2007 and the 2015/6 school year. It feels like home to us all now. We have some wonderful friends who invited us to stay with their family for the whole week, and it all went very well. We presented our work at church on Sunday, and Marc preached and I led Sunday School, and we also organised a picnic for anyone who wanted to come along with their sandwiches on the Tuesday, which was a Bank Holiday. We also caught up with our lovely Léa and other friends, and I managed to fit in a trip to my gynecologist (the kind of necessary medical visit often hard to fit into a short stay in Europe).

Home Assignment is often hard for people to understand. To some people it sounds like we are on holiday - but as you can tell we aren't just relaxing! SIM tries to encourage us to make the most of all opportunities to share about our work - whether in meetings or just informal chats - and to get the previously mentioned medical check-ups - but also to get some rest while back in Europe where living conditions are so much more comfortable.

It will be easier once school is over for the kids! This was our room in the SIM Guesthouse turned into a classroom:



After the wedding ceremony our kids discovered the French tradition of driving to the reception venue in a convoy of cars with lights flashing and horns blowing!



Fun photo at Léa's flat:



Picnicking in our favourite Nancy park again:

April...

We have certainly had April weather since getting back to Europe. Easter Monday saw our excited kids playing in snow in Chesterfield...



and I felt cold, despite the sun, at my cousin's wedding in Wales last Saturday ...



But we have also enjoyed warm sunshine this week, seeing the kids playing outside in T-shirts ... those photos haven't made it onto the computer yet!

Fortunately, despite having to do their schoolwork while other kids are on holiday, our three have had time for plenty of bike-riding and playground-visiting with Papy (their French grandfather).

We are now getting ready for a bit of travelling - down to the SIM France HQ near Orange for a Conference and our debrief - then some visits to supporting churches and friends. Plus another cousin's wedding thrown in!

Journeys

We left Pèdè last Sunday morning and drove to Parakou. We spent two nights there so that we could have our "End of Term" appointment with our Personnel Coordinator (and friend, Lee) and so that Marc could meet up with a mechanic to talk about getting our car properly fixed at last while we're away.

Tuesday we had a taxi drive us down to Cotonou. Unfortunately the A/C wasn't working, but otherwise all went smoothly. We saw the usual aftermath of accidents like this one on the way into Cotonou, with the lorry blocking 3 of 4 lanes:

As always we wonder how on earth they managed to end up like that!

We then had one and a half nights in Cotonou, getting up in the middle of the second night to be at the airport by 3:35am. We then flew to Morocco, where our airline paid for a hotel for 24 hours because they'd changed our flight times (fortunately ahead of time so we knew it was going to happen).

Enjoying the hotel ... and watching "Casablanca" in Casablanca!

We finally arrived in Manchester yesterday (Good Friday) afternoon, and were very happy to at last get to my mum and dad's. It's a treat to be able to celebrate Easter here.

Finishing up...

Our last month at home in Pèdè was very busy! Full but fun! We're leaving for a Home Assignment of 4 months, and so lots of people wanted to see us before we left. We also had Léa (our short-termer) with us, and other missionary visits, plus the Ladies' Bible study I'd taken on for our last 4 Sundays.

Léa's time with us was rich and rewarding, both for her (she says!) and for us. She came at everything with such enthusiasm that together we got a lot of work done. She also got on very well with our kids, and even did some dance lessons for Benjy and Eve. Benjy had to for school, and did it reluctantly, but Eve loved it so much she asked for extra lessons once the obligatory ones were over!

Léa is staying in Bénin for a couple of weeks longer than us. She'll be visiting other translation teams and helping out with some more English-French translation for the SIM Benin-Togo office, so we hope all of that goes well for her!