Update on the last few weeks...

January 20-February 11 was a whirlwind for all of us! We had two teams in Gemena during those weeks. Yesterday, Sam, Hannah, Mandaba and I returned home from taking the teams back to Bangui, CAR where they flew back to the States. Whew! We so enjoyed our time hosting these two teams for many reasons. It is a lot of hard work for us to prepare for a team and to host them when they are here but this group made our work so worth the effort.

The teams were working on a few different projects that were all very exciting and important to the ministries here in Congo.  Jerry and Jeremy from Nebraska and Chicago teamed up with a group of five Congolese men to train them how to drill a well with the well-drilling rig that finally arrived last year. The well-drilling was a great success! The Elikya Center now has a working well with fresh water!!! They also had time to drill a well behind the CECU office and there is now a group of Congolese men able to drill wells in the area and they have already been in conversation about drilling more in Gemena for other organizations.

A group of five people from Constance Free Church in MN also joined us in Gemena. Constance Free Church raised some of the money for the well rig to be purchased and shipped a few years ago and they were able to send their Senior Pastor and a few others here to see the well rig in action. A couple nights before the teams returned to the states, we hosted a dinner celebration with the Congolese well-drilling team, Mambo, his wife, the CECU President and his wife. We ate delicious grilled pork (prepared by Sam’s dad) and rejoiced in the Lord’s provision of fresh water.

Jerry J. greeting some of the guys he worked with on the well-drilling team

Pouring water from the well

Raising our glasses

Sharing a delicious meal together

The team from Constance Free Church spent a couple days at the Tandala Hospital with the staff there assessing the current needs of the hospital. Constance will be donating money to the hospital to get clean, running water and electricity to the hospital over the next three years. Pastor Randy also taught a course at the Protestant seminary in Gemena. Jerry spent time with Mambo creating a business plan for the well, the soap factory and the future restaurant. The two women, Nancy and Debbie, taught a women’s seminar and also worked with the two new Bible teachers for the Elikya Center. Dan is a counselor who spent time training 3 of the Elikya Center staff to counsel students and also held a one-day seminar for pastors. The well, counseling and Bible class program are things we have talked about, prayed about and waited for a very long time and they are now in motion. It is a huge blessing to see all of this finally coming together!

We didn’t get the best pictures while the team was here because we were running all over the place translating, facilitating meetings, working with the hospitality team and caring for our babies. But, we are happy to share a handful of photos of the time we spent with this great group of people. It was a blessing to see this group in Congo because we already knew a few of them and Constance Free is one of the three churches that financially support Sam and me. They each had a great attitude about being in Congo and we appreciated watching them relate to the Congolese brothers and sisters here. They were all willing to jump into the work here and the lives of the people they worked alongside. We are looking forward to our lives slowing down a little bit now that the teams are back in the States…but we will truly miss each person who was here.

The team: Jim, Jerry H., Nancy, Debbie, Randy, Dan, Jerry J. and Jeremy

Hannah also made a few new friends while the team was here. Dan was one of her buddies.

Hannah and Debbie

We also got to spend three full weeks with Sam's dad who took advantage of every moment he could to hold his grandbaby. Hannah even started to crawl the day before he left!

The Beauty of Language

We have been teaching English for over a year now and we have also been part of an English club for several months. It is so nice and encouraging to hear our students speaking English. Some of them still have a long way to go, but we can carry on conversations in English and understand each other. We can teach an entire class only using English…no Lingala. We have meetings with the Hospitality Team in English with very little need for reviewing things in Lingala. Don’t think that you can come here and meet a team of fluent English speakers, but they can get by.

It is so interesting to me (Sarah) how we can express ideas, emotions, stories, etc. by just making certain sounds with our mouths. But, if you do not understand sounds from another language, those sounds strung together mean absolutely nothing to you. I can be listening to someone speak Lingala and be tracking with them or carrying on a conversation, but once they throw in a French word I have no idea what has just been communicated. The director of the Elikya Center, Mambo, speaks fluent English and many of our conversations and meetings are a mix of English and Lingala. I often wonder what prompts any of us to initiate a conversation in Lingala or English. Sometimes one sentence has both Lingala and English words…sometimes even a French word or two. And I can hear all of these sounds merged together and understand what is being expressed. It is quite incredible. Soleil has begun speaking a little bit and she can say both English and Lingala words. She has no understanding of the distinction between the two languages. She will clap her hands together if you tell her to do so in English or Lingala. She understands what it all means and it is just different sounds forming together.

Last week I ended up in a room with two people from our hospitality team and two other people who have been attending the English club and was pleased to see that they all chose to speak to each other in English. English is not their native language, and there are at least two other languages other than Lingala that they know better than English, but we were all standing there chatting in English. It felt very surreal to me. Sometimes it amazes me to observe these interactions and to notice the processing that my mind does as I take in what I am hearing.  The only down side of everyone speaking more English is that I am not using Lingala nearly as much, so I am forgetting some of it. Ugh!