Here comes the bride...

It's wedding season here, and this year there are four weddings in our church, spread out over two months. We have the third on Saturday, but I thought I'd show you a few photos from the last. It was the wedding of the taxi driver who brought me back from Parakou in February.

The "happy" couple ... I explained in a previous post about weddings that the bride and bridegroom are not supposed to smile too much during the ceremony. Something to do with brides not being supposed to be happy about leaving their family, and in general to show that they are taking it seriously, I suspect.



Eve and her friend Jokebed (Philémon's daughter) admiring one of the wedding cars:



Eve enjoying the pounded yam wedding lunch. She was of course very comfortable eating with her hand like everyone else (Simon looks as if he's relishing the sauce!):

Springing back to life...

Last week we had one rainfall, but it lasted about six hours. It is always amazing to see the effects of the first rain. 24 hours later, the once-dry earth was covered with a green fuzz of grass.



And the grass wasn't the only thing coming back to life. See if you can spot the black line running along our drive:



Much closer up, you can see individual ants carrying things back to their anthill.





Before the rain the anthill had been looking abandoned, so I assume these are new ants which hatched out with the rain.

The Word of God is going out (part 2)

Last month I wrote about the way our outings to test our translated texts in surrounding villages is bringing God's word to people who have never heard it before. We have also recently started making our consultant-validated OT books available to people in the church. They always were available in theory, but no one asked and we hadn't really pushed the idea.

Then one person asked for a copy of the book of Job. Others saw it, and asked to have their own copy. I made a list of books we've already checked, with prices based on the price of photocopies, and it was circulated, firstly to the church elders and then more widely. It's been great to see people's enthusiasm, and we hope that it may also help us to pick up any small errors still hiding away in the text.

The book of Ruth in Monkolé (sometimes the photocopies aren't very good quality, but it is at least readable!):

Comic timing...

As we were reading through the book of Numbers last week, checking our translation with our consultant, we came upon the words:

"and the livestock of the Levites" (in Numbers 3:41)

Just at the point the word "livestock" was read, a flock of sheep came running into our compound, as if they'd been waiting for their cue:

Enter SHEEP stage left (running)

It gave us a good laugh, which is always welcome when we're working through a detailed and repetitive text!

Some local sheep (though not running and not in our compound):