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):

Weekend away

We spent last weekend down in Bembéréke, visiting friends. We had thought we'd escape the heat a bit down there - it isn't far but the micro-climate is very different in the hills - but while it was cooler, it was also extremely humid.

We went walking up the hill behind the hospital, something we'd never done before on other visits. We live in an extremely flat part of this generally very flat country, so it was wonderful to do some climbing! Just the sensation of being high up and looking out over the town was quite a novelty! (But oh, in 90% humidity we were dripping like sponges!)

Sermon illustration, anyone?

In Cotonou there is a beach restaurant where we often go to have a drink or an icecream, enjoying the sound of the crashing waves. Being on the edge of the sea, the proprietors had built a huge concrete wall, planted deeply into the beach, presumably hoping this would protect them from the constant wearing-away of the beach by the waves. Here is the wall with a little Simon standing next to it in 2011:



When we were last in Cotonou we went to the restaurant one afternoon, and were startled to find that 20 or 30 metres-length of their seating area had simply disappeared, along with the huge wall. The beach looked exactly the same, yet it must have advanced a good way in just five months.

A little way down the beach, next to a wrecked ship, part of the ruins of the wall can still be seen. I pointed out to our kids what a good illustration this is of the parable in Matthew 7. Building on sand can look impressive ... but it isn't safe!

The Word of God is going out!

When you're working in a translation office every day, working on the details of the Biblical text, it is sometimes hard to remember that God's Word is actively at work "out there". But our team has recently begun what we call "village testing", taking texts which we have translated out to Monkolé villages, where people are asked to listen and to comment on how well they understand and how the translation could be improved.

I don't go out with the team as we don't want people to come just because they see a white person, and it is better that it be the Monkolés on the team asking other Monkolés about the best way to express things in natural Monkolé. This is the best time of year to find people in the villages, as there is no fieldwork to be done at the moment, so my two colleagues have been going out once a week for the last few weeks.

It has been great to see that in every village they have visited, they have found people very willing to sit and listen for long periods of time and to give their comments on the text. In one village three people even enjoyed the book of Jonah so much that they asked to have their own copies of it to read again.

This stage of the work is obviously a help to us in making sure that our text is easily understood and natural-sounding, but it is also sometimes referred to as "pre-evangelism". I like to think of it as a kind of teaser campaign! Whatever you call it, it is inspiring to know that God's Word isn't just staying in our office, but is getting out to people who have never heard its message before.