Saturday, July 31, 2010

Friday, July 30, 2010

Poopy Banana = Your sin in my eyes

 

Turtle, Greens and Sago

Noel has been helping me with translation and lesson comprehension checking for months.  He’s the most faithful of all my helpers, helping me twice a week consistently.  He would help me more if I didn’t need to work with other guys as well.  Anyway, he came on Wed after the teaching time, although he slept through the teaching time and was ready to work on a couple Bible lesson checks.  On Monday, he’d helped me and as he was leaving, he and some other guys were going fishing.  We talked about turtle meat and how good it is but I don’t ever get any of it.  So he said that if he got one, he’d give it to me.  Well, he didn’t come by that night with one but someone else did – the whole turtle, shell and all!  I was barely eating real food again from the stomach bug so I wasn’t sure what to do with it.  I didn’t know how to get the meat out of the shell or anything – wasn’t sure I felt like tackling it that night either.  Then Akusta suggested that they cook it on the fire first and then she would bring me the meat.  Great – sounds like a good idea to me!  So she brought it back partially cooked and as much as I wanted to finish cooking it and eat it, I threw it into a Ziploc and put it in the fridge.  Then it was time for my lone egg and biscuit dinner- the first real food in days.  

 

Anyway, so now we’re back to Wednesday.  Noel came and somewhere in the middle of lesson checking, he started talking about how they caught turtles and fish bare-handed in the really low river the day before.  They caught something like 244 fish and turtles and a couple of small crocodiles too.  I was excited for them – it’s always good to know they’re getting meat to eat!  So I thought we were just going to chat about their great catch and fun but then he invited me to eat with them that afternoon!  His wife, Wekot was going to cook turtle meat and greens and make the sago paste for us to share together.  This is not a normal thing – they don’t actively invite us to meals very often so that made this a pretty special invitation.  So I cooked some rice and went over for dinner.  My stomach was barely used to food again so I wondered how it would go.  The turtle meat was good – hard to eat the meat without the skin and such.   The little claws were still attached but it was pretty good meat.  The first bite of greens hit my stomach and just kind of sat there like a lead balloon.  I wasn’t sure I could finish what was on my plate although it wasn’t an outlandish amount of food.  But I kept pushing myself and insisted that they eat more of the rice than what they put on my plate.  Once we finished off our food, we sat around and talked about things they’re learning in the teaching or have questions about.  Noel asked again about where their spirits would go after death.  If a man doesn’t believe in God, does he go to hell?  Yes, and one who believes God’s talk – that he’s a sinner before God but that God has provided for that in Christ goes to heaven.  We didn’t go as far as naming Christ since we haven’t taught that yet but kept pointing towards that as we talked.  Then he asked, well, if our ancestors didn’t have God’s talk, then where did they go?  That’s always a much harder question to answer, eh?  I tried to get them to come up with the answer themselves by asking questions based on the things they’ve been learning. They recognized that they must have gone to hell and said that we’d talk further about it once they’d heard the rest of the lessons.  It was a neat time with them – felt like I was visiting friends in the States in a lot of ways, talking about the Lord after dinner.  Never mind that we ate with our fingers in the darkness and hardly talked as we ate, it was a neat time of fellowship with them! 

Poopy banana or sin, neither are very appealing

On this second day of teaching on the 10 commandments, we utilized a lot of skits to bring the Uriay perspective to the forefront – to drive home these points so they could see themselves as transgressors of the law.  Matt and I demonstrated coveting from their perspective.  They all do it but the difference here is that if I press you enough, you have to give me your knife.  This goes back to their thinking that a good person gives whatever another asks for.  But now the shoe was on the other foot, showing the sin of that coveting and even pressing of the owner to give it to you.  We did a skit where I was Matt’s daughter and not obeying him and even lying to him.  He asked me to cut firewood and I not only didn’t do it but lied and said I didn’t hear him tell me to do it.  It was clear to all that they do this all the time.  Then we ended the day with me playing the part of God and Elias was a guy trying to come to God – to be right in His eyes since he’d mostly kept the 10 commandments.  He’d only broken a few so he couldn’t be that bad in God’s eyes, I mean, everybody does it.  So as he tried to convince me that he was pretty good and his good outweighed his bad, I dipped a banana in poop (it was really barbeque sauce) and offered it to him to eat.  “Would you eat this banana if someone dipped it in poop first?”  As Elias turned away in horror and disgust, I continued to tell him (as God) that his sin is the same in my eyes. It’s as if his body were covered in poop just like the banana and I can’t bear to look at it or smell it.  How could he expect to come into my pure and holy presence with his sin?  Breaking one means that he’s broken them all in God’s eyes.

 

Poop is the one thing that’s really disgusting to the people here.  Their kid can stand in pee but they’d immediately cart them off to the river to be washed off if they put their foot in poop.  So although it’s so gross, it’s the perfect thing to compare sin to.  Dirt or mud aren’t near bad enough in their eyes to convey the meaning. It certainly hit home here.

 

The amazing thing to us is that the Uriay people seem to be seeing themselves in this!  They’re not pointing their fingers at the Israelites as being dumb and weak when they saw all the miracles that God did to get them there and broke the law.  Instead they’re seeing themselves in the Israelites – yep, we do those same things.  It was quite the eye-opener for them to see that coveting is bad.  They would say it’s bad but presented in the way that it plays out here was quite revolutionary for them.  The ladies were all chatting about it at the end of the session – talking about how they do that all the time.  It’s so neat to watch them grow in their understanding of truth!   

Lisa covets Matt's knife, following the Uriay norm

 

Lisa in the middle of the crowd

 

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

What about my kids?

It was Sunday morning, time to start another new week of teaching but my body was hardly wanting to dive into another week.  I’d spent more time in the bathroom the night before it seemed than in my own bed.  But it was time to get up – the first tree gong was being hit so it was 6am already.  By not eating and sitting more than standing, my body was able to make it through the teaching time.  We talked about the purpose of the law and then covered the first 4 commandments.  Matt demonstrated the very normal occurrence here of taking the Lord’s name in vain and it hit home.  It’s very normal to hear them say ‘Thank you Jesus’ when they cut their hand or stub their toe, whenever they hurt themselves or come close to it, they use His name commonly.  So today we were talking about how He commanded the Israelites not to take the Lord’s name in vain.  Of the first four commandments, this one hit home the most.  They’ve worshipped evil spirits but they wouldn’t necessarily admit to that at the moment and yet they could sure see their habitual breaking of this law.  Anyway, the lesson itself went well and they really appreciated the skit on the purpose of the law.  Matt had dirt on his face and as his friend I told him it was there.  But he insisted that his face was clean – he had washed that morning already.  But I kept insisting that he couldn’t see his face on his own so I gave him a mirror and he could see his dirt then.  Then he tried to clean his face with the mirror and of course it didn’t do much to help him.  We were comparing the law to the mirror.  It showed him his sin but it sure couldn’t get rid of it – it wouldn’t help him become right in God’s eyes.  Again we were encouraged with their understanding and grasp of these truths.

 

Now it was time for the ladies’ meeting.  As bad as I felt, I knew the Lord could undertake and make it a neat meeting with these ladies.  And He didn’t disappoint! There were only about 6 ladies there but they all participated and were all so keen to hear all that they can about God’s Word.  I opened it up first for questions – to see if they had any on the last week’s teaching.  So my ‘sister’ asked about her kids.  If she followed God, would that help her kids go to heaven.  It was a super neat opportunity to talk about how we must each make this decision for ourselves.  We must each choose to believe God and accept Christ as Savior – or not.  I didn’t say it exactly like that as we haven’t taught all of that yet.  But I did lay out that her kids too will have to make a choice as to whether to believe God’s talk.  They will have to choose to come to God His way – or not.  If she believes, then she can help them by teaching them and helping them understand the choice they have to make but they will have to choose for themselves.  Since we don’t even have a word for ‘choose’ in Uriay, it’s always interesting to talk about making a choice or decision.  It ends up being more of a paragraph to explain it but you can get there….I think.  J  Anyway I was so glad to see her thinking and analyzing all this.

 

Then my other sister asked about the word pictures represented by the skits that morning.  So we talked again about the mirror and about how it showed them their dirt but could do nothing to clean it up.  And how the law was like that for us.  It’s good and it helps us see that we’re sinful but it doesn’t make us righteous before God.  It’s so cool to see them grasping that there is nothing they can do in their own strength or from their own knowledge to be right with God.  They are understanding that God has made a way for us to be right with Him – to be clean in His eyes and we can go to Him by that road.  And if we do, we will be righteous before Him.  We can spend eternity with Him in heaven as opposed to being eternally separated from Him in Hell. 

 

She also asked about the previous lesson where we talked about God coming down to the Israelites in fire, thunder, lightning and smoke and how afraid the Israelites were.  She asked again about why God showed His power to them.  So it was a neat chance again to talk about how the Israelites recognized God’s holiness and just how pure and different He is from them.  And they recognized their own sinfulness – that they couldn’t approach God because of their sin. 

 

For a group of ladies that have done little besides scrape sago, look for food, prepare meals and take care of their kids with no real educational background, these ladies are getting it.  Some are younger ladies that are quick anyway but most of these ladies are the older crowd here.  Some have learned to read and write.  Some are still waiting on their turn.  Some may never actually learn it even if they attend the literacy course, but God is opening their understanding to who He is….and to who they are.  Keep praying that they’ll also understand His provision and accept Christ as their substitute.  I can’t know their minds but as I talk with these ladies, I can’t help but think they’ll ‘get it’.  Pray that I’m right.  J

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

'God, honor them for their commitment to hearing Your Word.'

We’d been hearing all week that they were going to ‘wash’ the Bapi river on Friday.  We’re in the middle of dry season and we’re not sure that we’ve ever seen the Bapi this low – seriously!  Anyway, because it’s low, the people have been gathering poison root to beat the pulp until the juice runs out in a canoe.  Then they’ll capsize the canoe so that the mix of water and ‘poison’ makes the fish all slow and loopy – and much easier to catch!  This is always a big event and lots of fun.  The people get lots of fish and dry quite a bit of it afterwards.  Anyway, we kept hearing that they were going to do it on Friday – which was encouraging as we don’t teach on that day and no one would be tempted to skip out on the teaching with the temptation of lots of food.  Then yesterday we heard that a canoe of guys from another language group upriver had come through and said that they were going to do it today – Thursday, the last teaching day this week.  We were a little bummed as we knew that some would skip the teaching for the sake of fishing.  That’s understandable when they live hand to mouth every day.  But still….we were praying and hoping that many would wait and go after the teaching time. 

 

And there was a small crowd there this morning.  The most faithful were there and it was a good enough crowd to teach, even though we would have liked for everyone to be there.  Then as soon as we got done, the talk and preparations started to head upriver and meet up with the ones that went ahead.  So Elias, Matt and myself changed and got ready for the hike upriver and the fishing down river.  The guys use spears and knives to catch the fish while fortunately, us ladies use small hand-held nets.  So we set off, a group of about 8 of us with others coming behind us.  It was kind of fun to be doing something different from the norm – and this is always a really fun thing.  You come back tired and burnt but having had a really fun time with the people – and with some fish for dinner too.  So as we were hiking on the very edge of the river, through the jungle, over some logs, through brush and such, some of them were talking about whether the ones that went first thing in the morning had already started or not.  Would we meet them on the trail half-way or get there before they actually started? And as I listened to them talk (many of whom  had encouraged others to wait until after the teaching), I prayed, “God, please honor these folks’ commitment to hearing your Word.  They’re wondering if they’ve missed out on all the good fish and yet, you are Jehovah Jireh.  Give them fish to carry home for their willingness to honor You before their bellies.”  And we kept walking – still looking for folks and wondering what the day would hold.

 

Then we saw a couple and another lady just ahead of us on the trail.  When we got up to them (folks from another of our villages, Busan), they told us that they weren’t ‘washing’ fish today but tomorrow. The Busan folks were still gathering the poison root today, everyone was going to fish tomorrow.  So all those that went first thing this morning were going to be a bit disappointed when they didn’t rake in any fish in today.  It didn’t take long for me to think back to my prayer.  He didn’t answer it the way I expected, but He did honor their commitment to hearing His Word!  Now tomorrow, they can all go first thing in the morning and be a part of the process from the beginning – and they didn’t have to miss any of God’s talk to do it!  I wanted to do a little jig right there as I thought about what He had done!  He knew all along that they wouldn’t ‘miss’ anything today but they didn’t know that.  Hearing His Word was more important – and I feel like the Lord honored that!  I can’t wait until they’re praying those things for themselves but in the meantime I’ll rejoice and praise Him for answering in a way that He knew would be best!  Yea God! 

Monday, July 5, 2010

Will God destroy us like he did those in Noah's day?

We had just finished the lesson and review questions on the flood.  God offered a way of escape but only 8 people chose it.  God had killed everyone outside of the ark and then promised Noah that he would never flood the earth again.  And now that the lesson was over, my ‘sister’, Imi had a question.  Because guys were using the question time as a platform to air their grievances, we had cut off the question time, telling them to come to us individually with questions.  My sister decided to wait until we met as ladies later that morning.  So when we came together, I started the ladies meeting with her question, asking her to share it with all of us.  It was a small group of ladies, and this particular lady has been tracking right along – speaking boldly in the lessons and ladies’ meetings.  She’s one of my favorite ladies here and that makes it all the more special that she’s tracking so well!  Anyway, she finally asked if God would destroy us as He did the people in Noah’s day.  The way she phrased the question made it clear that she feels like she’s in trouble – in danger of being destroyed for her sin!  Wow!  It was so exciting to hear her ask that – all of the things it revealed about where she’s at in her thinking.  She’s wondering what she needs to do to be saved….that’s the bottom line.  She sees that she’s a sinner before God and she seems to be grasping that she’s going to receive punishment for those sins.  She didn’t state it as boldly as any of that but her phrasing and question sure indicated that she’s pondering all these things.  Praise the Lord for what He is doing in her life! 

 

Then I opened it up again for them to share thoughts or questions and Dakruma started talking about how she kept thinking about the people in Noah’s day as she scraped sago the day before.  She kept thinking about what they were doing – and how they (the Wabuku people) are no different – they do those things now as well.  She was just talking about how it was going round and round in her mind as she scraped sago.  As I sat and listened to her, I was almost in tears.  It hit me just how incredible it was to finally be talking about spiritual things with these ladies – and see all that they’re understanding – and believing.  And that one day very soon, I could be sitting there listening to believers talk about their Savior – and what He’d taught them while they were out in the middle of the jungle.  It was almost overwhelming as I sat there!  I held my tears in check because I knew the ladies would wonder what I was upset about…..but I felt it.  I can almost taste the reality of a church birthed here in Wabuku.  I’ve been so encouraged by what these ladies are sharing – seeing them grasping the things they need to know about God and themselves.  As we get to the stories of Sodom and Gomorrah and the Law, I imagine that weight and concern about sin’s punishment that they’re glimpsing right now will only get heavier.  And then we’ll finally get to the Answer we have in Christ!  Exciting stuff! 

Friday, July 2, 2010

Tyob reading his Bible portions

 

Tyob, my main helper reading his Bible portions

Late Night Village Argument…

 

It had to have been 9:30 or 10pm when I first heard the voices.  I heard the mumblings of other voices but overpowering all the rest, I could hear Tyob’s ‘code red’ level voice. He was not happy!  There had been a village meeting the week before where voices got heated and a teenager even stripped down to his tshirt in his anger.  There was talk of his sister, Akusta, his marriage exchange being given to his half-brother as his marriage exchange and Timoti was not happy about it!  Anyway, with the number of voices and the bits and pieces I could hear from my house, I figured it was another conversation about potential marriages and exchanges – nothing gets the whole crowd hot so fast as the talk about women – or money!  It was late enough that I decided I didn’t need to head over to find out what the problem was – I’d hear the next day all about it anyway.  But I started praying right away because I know Tyob well enough to know that if he was really upset, his frustration tends to overpower every other thought.  This could keep him from hearing God’s Word taught the next morning – and it probably meant that he wouldn’t help me finish up the taping of Acts that next afternoon either.  So I prayed.  The enemy will use all kinds of distractions to keep them from hearing God’s Word, and Tyob has been tracking really well.  As a main part of the translation process, he has heard every Scripture that’s been translated up until now – all of the phase one and two teaching portions that are in print as well as the entire book of Acts, save this last chapter at that point.  So I doubt that our enemy is going to leave him alone! 

 

But the next morning, the teaching started with a smaller crowd than usual.  It wasn’t just Tyob that was upset the night before!  Tyob came late and sat at a distance but he came.  He voiced a question at the end to shame everyone else basically but he had his say.  Then I gave him the ‘out’, knowing instinctively that he would have not been any good at translation that day so I approached him first and gave him the out.  His voice was hoarse from all the screaming the night before.  He seemed thankful that I approached him and promised to help me the next day if his stomach cooled down basically.

 

One of the single boys had written a letter asking for a certain girl in marriage, but he doesn’t have an exchange for that girl.  The tricky part is that Tyob is the girl’s uncle and has a say in who she marries, he also has been basically taking care of this single guy too.  This single guy, Aendru really wants to be married and has been sort of going about it in all the wrong way!  The meeting the week before had to do with him sort of  enticing another young girl to inappropriate behavior.  He’s at that age – and pretty much all of the single teens are doing this, he just keeps getting caught.  The thing is, if Aendru would go through the proper channels and yield to what Tyob says, Tyob would really go to bat for him and get him a wife.  But he’s impulsive and certainly lets his emotions drive his actions – a norm for this culture so he keeps ticking the very people off that could help him the most!  So Tyob was mad at Aendru and Aendru was mad too so he didn’t come to the teaching.  He came after everyone else had left and told us to remove the pictures that were attached to the siding so he could remove his siding (sago palm fronds) from the teaching house.  Matt sort of talked him down and he didn’t do it but his frustration was high too from the night before.  Both he and Tyob were trying to get us in the middle to declare that what the other person did was wrong – and not acceptable in God’s eyes.  We managed to stay out of it but we definitely need His wisdom to do just that! 

 

Tensions were high in the village that day.  It wasn’t just Aendru and Tyob that were involved in the heated discussions the night before but another couple of young teens that want to marry each other were caught fooling around and the boy had taken off for fear of reprisals.  So that marriage was being discussed, although Tyekob doesn’t have an exchange so not sure what’s going to pan out there.  That’s really why it got to heated.  Her brother, Terens, wouldn’t be getting a wife in the deal if his exchange is given freely to Tyekob.  So it’s rather a tricky situation for them.  If the adults don’t settle it soon, it could very well be that Tyekob and Dina will run off together and basically elope culturally here – then money will need to be paid, but it will also make the family lines easy prey for sorcery.  It gets very complicated and hard to put into a short paragraph here – let’s just say that marriage talks are often some of the most heated!  Not everyone is happy at the end of those discussions! 

 

I heard the tree gong being hit that night around 6pm but was busy doing something else and didn’t go down.  So then it was Wednesday.  They’d decided the night before that there was going to be a village meeting after the teaching that day.  So even though the crowd was there that morning, it was a subdued crowd, knowing that there was more to come after – and it might not be so pleasant.  So the teaching ended, Tyob disappeared and we all thought we were having a big meeting.  I stood with one crowd of ladies who are on one side of the equation and they were chattering about the meeting and what might happen.  Then I stood with a few ladies that are on the other side and they were even telling Dina to run away and hide if it looked like they might hit her during the meeting.  The tree gong was hit once, but without a lot of authority.  I eventually made my way that direction, only to be stopped by Tyob.  He asked me what time it was and what time we were going to start working.  Huh?  I asked about the village meeting and he told me that they weren’t having it.  So we marked a time and he went to get a fishing hook from someone and then came back awhile later, ready to help me.  I was actually praising the Lord because I knew that He was answering prayer and intervening here.  So we finished taping the last chapter of Acts and worked on a few other little things.  He seemed rather tired as we worked so I asked him if he’d not slept well the night before.  He told me that he woke up at 3am when his 4 week old daughter woke up and stayed up the rest of the night reading his Bible and thinking about this trouble that had come to him.  He didn’t go into specifics but somewhere in there he decided not to ask for the village meeting.  The fact that he could actually help me showed me that the Lord had helped him and he was able to concentrate on other things besides the dispute- very unusual for him!  Praise the Lord!  We see the Lord working in Tyob’s life.  He’s not got it all figured out quite yet but he is hungry and he is responding to truth.  So keep praying!  This topic will come up again – and the enemy may continue to attempt to distract them with this stuff.  But it seems to us that we’re seeing God’s little victories in it too!

Elias...aka...Abel offers a lamb - coming to God God's way

 

Matt...aka...Cain offers God garden food as a sacrifice - coming to God his own way