Lessons in Living

Everything here is getting green and growing.  Especially the weeds!  All the kids are wondering when I’m going to ‘sikle’ my garden.  They all need to make some money, but I don’t need 20 kids weeding my corn!  We had our first big rain event since I’ve dug the drainage contours in the field and we weren’t even here to experience it.  We were visiting Beth and Philip Holinger helping them on their house for a couple days.  We knew it had rained, but when we got home there was 3.2” in the gauge!    Without the terraces, the floor in the house would have been flooded.  We came home to dry floors!  This is very good!

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We’re getting more people interested in planting things.  Amaranth is the hot item right now!  I’ve given seed to several people and 2 ladies in particular are really getting it.  I included a picture of one of them in our last post.  I have given her some additional seeds and she stopped by today to say her lettuce and carrots have both sprouted.  She was just beaming! 

I helped the other mom prepare her bed and plant the seeds.  I visited her today (2 weeks later) and the Amaranth is about 3” tall.  She’s also got some pepper plants started and I’d given her a couple tomatoes that are doing fine too.  The Amaranth, they call it Epina, is something that they are familiar with, it’s very nutritious, it doesn’t require a lot of water and it grows

really fast.  You should be able to start eating it 3 weeks after you plant it!  And if you let 3 plants go to seed, you’ll have enough seed to replant another plot and some left over to give to a friend.  I need to check on some of the other people I’ve given seed to and see how things are going.  We’re praying that gardening fever is contagious here on the mountain! That’s a lot of what we feel God has called us here to do.  To teach people they don’t need to depend on someone to feed them, they can feed themselves and teach others to do the same. 

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We had our first Saturday night Bible study last week and, not really knowing what to expect, it turned out about as we expected.  They chose to have it in one of the leader’s homes instead of the church, and scheduled it for 5:00 PM so it would still be daylight since no one has lights in their houses.  We’ve been here long enough to know that 5:00 doesn’t really mean anything.  We had good excuses to be late as my English lesson carried over past 5:00 and then a couple medical problems wandered in.  We left the house at 6:15 and had to drop something off at a friend’s house on the way and were feeling like we were really going to be late.  We arrived about 6:30 and were the first ones there!!   The American in me wanted to go do something else. But we hung around just reading quietly. As I was reading I noticed a movement by the house and looking closer saw a big, fat rat sitting behind the banana tree next to the house. 

Ivan's house. They hosted our first Saturday evening worship.

I guess he was kinda nervous sitting there because he almost immediately hopped up on the foundation of the house and disappeared inside a hole in the wall.  It was right about then that Ivan invited us to go inside to ‘komense’ the service.  One other person had arrived, so it was Cheryl & I, Beniswa and Ivan and his family.  There was no confusion on where to go inside the house because there are only 2 rooms, so we picked up our chairs and squeezed our way in.  The room was the full depth of the house, about 10’, and I could have stood in the middle, raised my arms and almost touched both side walls.  In addition to our 4 plastic chairs, there was a table in one corner and a bed along the side.  The only opening was the door so even though it was still light outside, flashlights were necessary to see the song books (of which we neglected to bring our own).  We prayed and started singing and people started filtering in.  By the end of the evening there were 14 people crammed inside and several others on the porch.  And at the end of the evening Ivan and his family (wife and 6 kids) knelt on the dirt floor and everyone else gathered around them to hold them up in prayer.  The singing was loud and from the heart.  The prayers and testimonies were sincere and God was truly worshiped.  We didn’t understand a lot of what was shared, but 3 things were repeated often, grangou (hungry, hunger), pa genyen lajan (don’t have money) and Bondye konnen (God knows).    What would it be like to have an empty stomach and an empty wallet and still have the Faith to lift my hands in Praise to God!  I want a Faith like that!

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On the way back from looking at a house we’re providing materials for a new roof I was asked by a neighbor if I could fix their bed.  It was a wooden bed frame sitting up on blocks and the one leg had come loose from the headboard.  It wasn’t separated bad or really broken.  A couple good long screws (thanks Bart!) and it’d be good as new.  Not a big deal.  The house was close to ours, so I hiked home for my cordless drill, driver and some screws. It actually took longer to walk home and back than it did to fix the bed.  It wasn’t a big deal to me but it sure was to this family!  They’d never seen tools like these and they just danced, clapped their hands and rejoiced when I was done.

Bed frame in need of leg replacement.

 

They had another bed that needed some repairs but I’d only brought what I thought I’d need for this job, so I returned on Monday with my camera this time. 

There's always plenty of 'helpers'.

Standing on new legs!

God help me to appreciate the simple things that I take for granted!

Happy neighbors!

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Day by day we are learning more from our neighbors.  So much more than we could ever teach them.  Pray that we could get past ourselves and appreciate them more.  Their love, their simple Faith and their contentment.

We have a soft, dry place to lay our heads!  We are truly blessed!

 Now there is great gain in godliness with contentment, for we brought nothing into the world, and we cannot take anything out of the world. But if we have food and clothing, with these we will be content. 

(1Timothy 6:6-8)