Monkolé Bible school students

Jumping forwards again to Boxing Day, Sil and I also went to visit Etienne and Pauline, who are currently studying at Bible school so that Etienne can train to be the next Monkolé pastor. They are now in their second year of studies - the wives also have some classes - and it seems to be going well. They are a lovely couple, very committed to God's service.

Last Christmas in Benin

Hopping back in time a day, we had a good day for our last Christmas here in Benin. We were at church for over three hours - but rather expected that - then had a reasonably traditional (for England) Christmas lunch, followed by a traditional (Australian) Christmas dessert of pavlova! We very much appreciated our guest Sil's contribution to the meal! And we'd even made our own non-cracking crackers.

Update

Pastor Samuel's wife Hélène and son Benja have been back at home for over a month now, and went back down to Parakou for a check-up on Monday 23rd December. It seems that things are progressing alright, though Hélène seems to be having extra problems caused by her pre-existing condition of arthritis in her knees.

We've been cycling over - on dirt paths, we never risk the road - a couple of times a week to visit. I chat with Hélène while the kids play with card games they have brought with them. It's always a good time. We went over yesterday, on Boxing Day, with our friend Sil who was staying and who wanted to go over and greet them. She took a couple of photos of us with them.

Conceptual thinking

Fairly on in my time on the translation team, I realised that we had a
different way of looking at text. If I say "the word before" and "the
word after", I am thinking of the order in which I type. If I say "the
word before", it's the word that I typed first. But my colleagues look
at the text more as if it were moving forwards. Imagine that each word
is the front of a train. So they say "the word in front" meaning the
word towards the front of the imaginary train. In my previous sentence,
they would talk about the full stop "in front of" the word "train".

Having realised that there was this clash between our way of thinking, I
used the get-out of just saying for example "the full stop next to the
word 'train'", which worked too. Then just recently I actually found
myself naturally using their way of talking - and then my brain did a
little hiccup, as I tried to figure out what I'd just said! But my
colleagues had understood...!

Church doing church

I shared about a good number of men from church coming to clear our property of weeds back in September.

They surpassed themselves harvesting Pastor Samuel's cotton fields. He has spent the last four weeks down in Parakou where his wife and son are in hospital. So about 160 people - mostly from church but a lot of others too - turned up and spent a day harvesting his cotton. Then a lot of them were there again to load it into a lorry. That will be a weight off the pastor's mind, and a very practical proof of people's love and care for him and his family.



Benjy walking past a cotton field last year.

Bonfire Night

As often as possible we have celebrated Bonfire Night here in Pèdè. Some years we even managed to find sparklers locally, but we usually at least built a bonfire. This year the boys did a great job of collecting wood together, chopping pieces to the right size and building a lovely fire. I found a recipe for treacle toffee - a staple of my childhood bonfire nights - and so that was a new treat for this year.

Catch-up time!

I'm not going to list excuses - it's been a while but I am in Parakou and have some free time and more reliable internet, so it's time to post a bit more!

October brought our annual missionary conference - a time for learning and relaxing with colleagues who've become friends. And this year those who went out for a short afternoon walk got more than they'd bargained for - a complete tropical downpour! It wasn't cold though, and everyone had a smile on their face, at least once they were under cover again! Marc was the official interpreter (English to French) for the daily Bible messages:



Simon played recorder with the band for the first time:



And all the kids enjoyed their time together:



The week after the conference we had a week of checking with our consultant. The day before we started, I had a phonecall from one of my colleagues, Philémon, who began by saying to me, "It's really bad news..." He told me that our other colleague Pastor Samuel's wife (who does housework for us) and son (a friend of our kids) had been in a motorbike accident and had multiple fractures.

Hélène with Eve in 2014.



Benja with our kids last year:



A lot of people from church were at the hospital, so Marc went down to join them. Marc said it was a real testimony to see the way that as each bill for a test or a medicine was brought out, someone from the church went and paid it. Both Hélène and Benja were evacuated to Parakou that same evening as the Kandi hospital didn't have any of their rare O-neg blood.

We worked that week under a cloud of concern. But if anything I found it spurred me on. I didn't believe that it was just a coincidence that this accident had taken place the day before our checking week, especially after all the other things that have been happening in the lives of our team. So I was just like, "We just need to get this done!" Even so, my colleagues and I were absolutely amazed that we managed to get all of 1 and 2 Chronicles checked in the week. Praise God!

We have now finished checking the Old Testament, which should have been a time for celebration ... but none of us could celebrate with our minds on our friends in hospital in Parakou.

They both had complicated fractures which needed to be operated on, but lack of the right kind of blood and of finances held things up. Eventually Hélène was operated on last week, and Benja on Sunday.

We are in Parakou this week, and so both Marc and I have been able to visit them. Hélène was sleeping so I didn't disturb her, but I was able to say hi to Benja, and even get a couple of smiles out of him. It is so hard to see our friends going through this - both the patients themselves and their family who are here caring for them - but it is amazing to hear about the way that God has provided for their needs. Local friends, the mission and overseas Christians have been giving generously.

1 John 3:18

"Dear children, let us not love with words or tongue but with actions and in truth."

Before:

During:





After:





Very grateful for the church's initiative!

Good news at last!

After recent trying times, it was wonderful to be encouraged by amazing progress made by the translation team last week. Our consultant was with us to check Psalms 98-150 and whatever else we could manage. Well, we did those Psalms, then Song of Songs, Lamentations and the six minor prophets which we hadn't yet checked. As a result, we only have 1 and 2 Chronicles left to check!

Simon took a photo of us at work:

Hilary's Theory of Gaps in the Wardrobe

Life has been difficult recently with Marc being unwell for so long, but let's talk about something completely different. I'd like to say that you can't escape from reading about climate change at the moment, but you probably can if you choose your news source carefully. Anyway, I've been reading about it, and one thing which has been in the news has been the effect of the fashion industry on the environment. The throwaway clothes culture is unsurprisingly causing damage both in the production of the clothes in the first place and the disposal of them afterwards.

On to my theory. You've probably heard the expression "a gap in my wardrobe" suggesting that you don't have the appropriate clothes for a particular situation. I suspect that this is more of a problem for women than for men. The fashion industry would always like us to believe that the solution to the gap in our wardrobe is to buy a piece of clothing to fill that gap.

Here comes my theory. For the sake of argument and without trying to be realistic, imagine that you have three pieces of clothing in your wardrobe. Hold up three fingers. How many gaps can you see in your wardrobe? That's right, two. Now, imagine you manage to "fill" one of the gaps in your wardrobe. You now have four pieces of clothing. Hold up four fingers and count the gaps. Oh no! You thought you had filled a gap in your wardrobe but now you have actually ended up with more gaps!

This simple illustration is designed to show that there will always be "gaps" in our wardrobe, and that we perhaps need to think more carefully about what we buy, why we are buying it and how much wear we will actually get out of it.

And don't forget to make cleaning cloths out of your old clothes!

Birthday treats

Despite Marc and I not feeling at our best, I still had a great birthday weekend with our friend Miriam.

Holidays

Our kids are in their last week of school holiday. They have been pretty good at occupying themselves since we got back from Cotonou.

Gloria in excelsis!

A pastoral couple, good friends of ours, had a worrying time recently with a difficult pregnancy. However, while we were in Cotonou they rang to announce the good news of their daughter's birth. They named her Gloria, wanting to give the glory to God.

We were back in time to attend her Service of Thanksgiving at their small church, and rejoiced with them to see both mother and baby healthy. (In the photo the parents are in the centre in matching clothes.)

(not so) rainy season

We knew the rains had started late this year as we'd really only had one
good rainfall when we left for Cotonou at the beginning of July. But we
hoped they would have started to come regularly by the time we got back.
However even now at the end of July the rains are neither as regular nor
as abundant as the crops need. It doesn't matter much to us if our
garden fails, but our friends rely on their fields as their main source
of food and income, so for them it is crucial to have the necessary rain.

A few photos from Cotonou

Holiday fun!

The lost hen

Yesterday afternoon I went out to visit some friends with Eve. When we got back I was surprised to see one of our hens, Fabienne, but not her constant companion Mildred. Simon confirmed that she had disappeared a couple of hours earlier. We thought maybe she was somewhere in the compound, or just perhaps had got out of the compound, but if so would be back later. However, when she wasn't there at the usual time I give the hens grain, and then didn't appear in her usual roosting spot, we began to worry more.

This morning I was ready to give up hope, thinking that maybe she'd been stolen - a common occurrence in the village. Then Simon came to say he'd heard something in our outside storehouse and was going to get the key to look in it. I told him that I'd stood at the open door yesterday evening and called Mildred, but had heard nothing. But when he checked, there she was! What a joy to hear Simon saying, "Mildred!"

I have always understood the parables of the lost sheep and the lost coin on an intellectual level, but today I really felt a similar joy. Mildred is "just a hen", but she was lost and is found!


Mildred when she had just arrived in May

On with the New...

In February, I wrote to my dad to tell him a bit about the work the translation team was (and still is) doing correcting the New Testament. I thought others might be interested to hear about what kind of things we are working too, so here are a few examples. Not the boring typos, though we are hoping to get as many of them corrected as possible, but the bits where we have found problems in the meaning of the translation.

What we've been doing is reading in Monkolé, then I get one of my colleagues to back-translate (give me a very literal translation into French) and I look at a very literal translation from the Greek (since my Greek is not strong!).

In Matthew 3:16 the NIV says, "As soon as Jesus was baptised, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him." but we had, "As soon as Jesus was baptised, he went up out of the water. At that moment heaven was opened, and John saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him." I checked with the Greek and my translators' manual to check that in fact in Matthew's Gospel it is Jesus himself who sees the Spirit of God descending, and so we replaced "John" by "he".

Matthew 5:25 says, "Settle matters quickly with your adversary who is taking you to court. Do it while you are still together on the way, or your adversary may hand you over to the judge, and the judge may hand you over to the officer, and you may be thrown into prison." For the word "officer" we had "zandaamu" which is used in Monkolé from the French "gendarme" since there obviously isn't a traditional word for it or for "officer of the court" as it would be in this case. I would have left it as such, except that last year the President of Benin abolished gendarmes! He mixed the gendarmes and the police together and called them, "La Police Républicaine". So in a few years time, people might not even know what "zandaamu" were! So we decided to go with "polisi" instead.

I only discovered while doing this work that of the two words for "sin" which I knew about, one is against God, the other is against other people. Which is quite tricky really, since biblically sin is always against God and sometimes also against other people! But in the Lord's Prayer, we had to say "forgive us our sin-against-God, as we forgive those who have sinned-against-people against us" (as it were, obviously it's just one word each time in Monkolé). And even this seems not quite right to me, since we also need to ask God to forgive us our sins against other people … but it seems to me that this is the closest we can get in Monkolé without giving a theology lesson in the middle of the text!

We had a problem with the Good Samaritan, because in the second greatest commandment, in Monkolé we say "love other people as you love yourself" because the word you might use for "neighbour" also means "friend", and the whole point is that we aren't just talking about loving your friends. But therefore, the scribe ended up asking Jesus, "Who is another person?" which sounded very odd! So we changed it to something more like, "Who is another person in my case?" Not ideal, but better than what we had!

I have likened my work to ironing before, and it does feel like we are doing that at the moment, just ironing out little wrinkles in the translation of the New Testament. Re-reading the New Testament has also given me renewed respect for the team who translated it in the first place. There are some very nifty translation solutions in there.

People ploughing in the field next door to our house last week:

Happenings

I don't like to get into the mindset of thinking, "Ok, what's going to happen to us next?" but sometimes it does feel a bit like one could! On the evening of May 31st, Pastor Samuel had a motorbike accident. It wasn't too serious, and the lorry driver whose fault it was took Samuel to the hospital. He had a week off work, but when he came back he then came down with a horrible tummy upset.

Starting this week my team-mates have decided to take their annual leave, in the hope that the rains are going to start properly. They certainly haven't yet! We've had some big storms, but not all that much rain with them, and it is horribly hot and sticky.




Red sky at night?

May

April was a challenging month, as I said, and May wasn't too easy either. It has been very hot and humid, and several of us had nasty heat rash and trouble sleeping. Marc has been slowly getting better, but he's had ups and downs. It is hard to rest in this weather. Lying down on a bed or sofa just isn't appealing.

Fortunately we've had the first rains, which have taken the edge off the heat for a couple of days each time, and we will be easing into rainy season. We've planted some corn, and it's fun to see that sprouting already.

We were given one hen, and bought another to keep her company. It's nice to see them pecking around in the compound, and we are enjoying the extra eggs.

This is also wedding season, and in May we went to Pastor Samuel's daughter's wedding.

April

Back to blogging after more than a month away from my computer.

April was one of the most unpredictable months I've ever known. At Christmas, no one could have guessed that Dad was going to be so unwell, and certainly not that he was going to die just a few months later. By February, I had decided to go and spend Easter with Mum and Dad, knowing that Dad wouldn't be well and hoping that my presence there would encourage them both. I booked flights, planning to arrive on Palm Sunday.

By the end of March, Mum had got in touch to say that some nurse friends of hers thought that I should come earlier if I wanted to have quality time with Dad. So I flew out of Cotonou on March 31^st arriving late on April 1^st. Dad was in a hospice by then, supposedly just while they treated certain symptoms. But over my first few days it became clear that he was unlikely to come home again.

The hospice was amazing. Especially coming directly from Benin, it seemed so clean, so comfortable and so beautiful. Everything was done to make both patients and families feel welcome and supported. All the staff were so good at their jobs, and so available. That didn't stop it from being a difficult time emotionally, as we came to terms with Dad's fast-approaching home-going. His faith never wavered, and he said openly to the doctors that he wasn't afraid of death, that he knew where he was going. We could see that he was fed-up with feeling so rotten, and he said to us that he just wanted to go to be with the Lord … and then apologised, but we completely understood.

And on Palm Sunday, with Mum, Ali and me by his side, he left us. He was sedated, so we don't think he was suffering, but it's nice to think that maybe he knew that he was surrounded by people who loved him.

In Benin, that was the day that Marc had to leave the village with the kids to go down to Parakou, because he was too unwell to look after the kids and himself in our living conditions. It was really hard to have both of us going through intensely emotional times so far apart from each other. On the Tuesday after Dad died I had a stressful time wondering whether I should actually leave and go back to Marc and the kids, rather than staying for the funeral. But Marc and the SIM Benin-Togo leadership all encouraged me to stay. And my sisters and I were able to help Mum with practical things, and have special times of happiness and grieving together.

I was glad to be at the funeral. Though I felt I'd already said my goodbyes to Dad, it was good to be with so many people who loved him and were missing him. Also good to proclaim our faith in our resurrected Lord, and His victory over death. While Dad was in the hospice, I took in a book of his to read while he slept. It was "Surprised by Hope" by Tom Wright, which re-affirmed and strengthened my beliefs about life after death, the resurrection body and the new earth.

Marc and the kids waited in Parakou until I got back, and even then I ended up spending a couple of nights there because Marc was waiting for test results. He was treated for malaria, but it seems like he also suffered from kidney stones – and may still be suffering from kidney stones. He is pretty tired of feeling unwell, and hoping that this will pass soon.

We are back at home in Pèdè now, and are back at work and school. Though in fact I am not at work this morning because Eve has a tummy upset and Marc has gone back to the doctor...

On with the New (but not out with the Old!)

Apart from a break to check Judges and some Psalms with our consultant,
my team is getting stuck into the New Testament at the moment. We're
reading through it to try to iron out any wrinkles. It is a good
experience, especially since I wasn't around for the translation of the
New Testament. I can't help but admire some of the excellent translation
choices yesterday's team made. And it is satisfying to catch some of the
mistakes that hid away.

After seven and a half years of concentrating on the Old Testament, it
is refreshing to walk in Jesus' steps again, and listen to His words,
made that much richer by knowing the Old Testament better.

Freedom!

The kids got bikes in December, and I bought one this month. So we can now go a bit further on outings than we could on foot.

Internet

I've been trying for the last three days to post a blog post with
photos, but it's just not getting through! Our connection gets better
for a while, but unfortunately always gets worse again...

A painful goodbye

Sometimes friendship strikes when you least expect it. I know a lot of people here in Benin, and just like back home in Europe, I won't be true friends with many of them. When I say "true friends" I talk about a meeting of minds and a meetings of hearts. Yet sometimes something in someone else rings a chord somewhere in me, and a friendship is born.

She was my friend. A Beninese woman, whose mother tongue I don't speak (and she didn't speak mine), and who came from another religion. But we cared for each other.

Last week she died very suddenly - from what I've heard it was a diabetic coma. I'll mourn her and miss her.