A day in the bush

 

 I recently had the opportunity to spend a day in the bush with a friend from another organization.  This was also a great chance for Ryden to experience life in the bush and what is happening in this area.  Our destination was a village about 2 hrs from town where my friend's been going once every two weeks along with another coworker from our organization.  They first had contact with people in this village about 10 years ago.  There wasn't much interest back then from the villagers in having someone teach them about God's Story, so our coworkers focused their efforts elsewhere.  Then, about 3 years ago they heard that there was a group of people in this village asking for someone to come teach them.  They visited the village again and began teaching a group that quickly grew to 50-100 people depending on the week.  After a little while, the village chief told them that they couldn't come anymore.  This decision was met with some protests from the villagers, so they decided to hold a meeting.  Our friends were there at the meeting and told them to talk about it and let them know the decision.  As they discussed it, an older man finally said to the chief, "I didn't like you before you became chief and I don't like you now."  He continued on to say that he wanted the teaching to continue.  After that, the chief reluctantly agreed to let the meetings continue.

About 6 months ago, several people from the village (5, I think) came to the point where they were bapt*zed.  The day I went along would be the last visit with this group for about 6 months as both of our coworkers are on their home assignments now.  The goal for this visit was to help the group begin to understand how they could listen to an audio recording from the Word, ask questions about the passage and then glean truths from it to apply to their lives.  No one in the group knows how to read, so audio recordings are the only way they can hear and study God's Word.  

The trip began with us picking up a local pastor from town.  About 45 minutes outside of town, we stopped along the road where a small clan of women, children and a few men were waiting.  They were relatives of the man at our next stop and were hoping some of them could catch a ride to his place.  We agreed to take one of them (the son-in-law pictured above).

We then made another brief stop at the last bigger town to buy a bunch of straw.  Our coworker with whom I was traveling owns a few cows that his friend takes care of in the bush.  The straw was for the cows and it's cheaper to buy from the rice fields by the river than further out in the bush.

After another brief stop to buy a bag of mangoes as a treat for the group in the village, we arrived at our first planned stop.  This is the home of my coworker's friend, who is a believer and goes along to help translate.  Ryden is pictured here standing by the doorway. 

These two huts are also part of his home.  Now that the rains have started since our trip, these huts are actually surrounded by millet stalks starting to grow in the fields all around.  In a few months, the millet stalks will be taller than the huts and you wouldn't be able to see the huts from this view.

We went inside his home to visit and meet his family.  The man on the right is the head of the family and the one we were taking with us to the village.

Sitting on a shelf around the top of the wall were dishes and pots.  This is a display of the good "china," which is used for special occasions.  The "everyday ware" was sitting on a similar shelf on the other side of the hut.  

Next to the door were a number of clay pots which are filled with water used for drinking, cooking and cleaning.  The whole family will share the few cups sitting on top and dip them into the same pots.  The water is hauled from an open well about 1 km away.  

As we were visiting, this calf walked into the hut to get a drink of water from the same pots.  One of the daughters willingly hopped up to serve the calf a drink in the blue bucket.

Cooking is done over a wood fire.  The goats are lounging around next to the cooking area.  In the background are two small huts for chickens.

The main staple is millet.  Here two of the women in the family are pounding the millet for the next meal. 

The family sleeps on beds made of sticks.  This one was outside.  Each hut has 2-3 similar beds inside for sleeping as well.

 These are a few of the kids in the family.  They are precious, beautiful little girls made in the image of God.

After visiting for a little while, we loaded up again and continued on another 30 minutes into the bush to our destination.  The meeting happens under the one large shade tree in the area.  When we arrived, there were two of the older men laying on mats in the shade of the tree.  We joined them and sat around visiting while we waited for people to gather.  After about 20-30 minutes, we had a group of around 40 men, women and children.  My coworker had to wing it a little bit as his original plan for this last meeting fell apart when he learned that the local pastor with us didn't bring the tape player and recordings that he wanted play for the group.  My coworker speaks one of the local tribal languages, but most of the people in this gathering are from another people group who speak a different language.  He wanted to play the passage for the meeting in their language so that they could understand it better.  Instead, he ended up reading it in the local language he speaks and then someone loosely translated it into the other language.  There was good interaction and feedback from the group as he asked them questions and had them work on gleaning the truths from the passage for themselves.

At the end, he emptied the sack of mangoes on one the mats and the older men distributed them to the group.  Everyone was very grateful. 

On the way back, we stopped again at the family's group of huts to drop off the folks from there.  We picked up some more cargo (grass thatch rolls used for making the huts) to be hauled part way and dropped off on the way back to town.  The man of the family continued with us part way as well.  We dropped him off at the home of a friend he wanted to visit who had just lost a child.