What Can I Give?

Confession: I came to Tchaguine with the expectation that I was going to serve, to give, to teach, to pray for, and to bless the people here. I realize now that I overestimated what I have to give, and underestimated what they would share with me. The people here serve me so well. The children give me mud and clay models of cows, nomads, horses, and other pieces of artwork. Everyone I'm around helps teach me about the language, the culture, their perspective on God and his creation. I have had 3 Chadians tell me that they pray for me every day, that I would learn the language and that God would keep me safe and healthy while I'm here. Many people have come by to visit, to pray for me, to just welcome me to Tchaguine. I have never felt more blessed.
God is already here, and he doesn't need me to save his world. He does delight in his children serving and loving each other though, and I have seen that so clearly during my time here in the village. The church, the people, the songs, none of it is the same, but the people here are recognized as disciples of Christ by their love for one another.

Say What?

Something I have come to love about the Kwong people is how they use language to illustrate their thoughts and feelings. I have been learning basic Kwong from Luk, one of the pastors at the Kwong church here and one of Mark and Diane's good friends. Although I can understand a decent amount of what people are saying now, sometimes I get thrown for a loop. The language has a rich use of idioms, and a lot of times they make no sense to my western mind as to what they mean. One, for instance, that I learned while sitting in on the translation of the book of John, is the phrase for "eternal God" in Kwong. In order to say that God is eternal, the Kwong say "he sits with his eyes". Similarly, when translating that someone is still alive, the Kwong would say "he still has his eyes". There is always an exception though. In the book of John, there is a story of a man who comes to Jesus to ask him to heal his son who is sick at home. Jesus tells him to go home and that his son will be well. As he is on his way home, his servants meet him and say, "your son is alive". In Kwong, instead of saying "he still has his eyes", apparently in this case "he still has his mouth". Don't ask me why, and they won't give you a reason either, but little things like that are why Mark and Diane never translate without the help of at least 2 Chadians. Another interesting fact is that, even though the Kwong language has significantly less words, the book of Luke in English is 25,000 words, and the book of Luke in Kwong is 40,000 words.
Sometimes there are words in English that don't quite have a good translation in Kwong, but other times there is just the word. For instance, in recent past the Kwong had a tradition that when a child was sick, they would bring a goat, rest the child's forehead on the goat, then kill the goat (sounds a little bit like the old testament, huh?). That word, kilinye, is about as close as you get in Kwong to the word "atonement" in English. It probably actually means more to the Kwong since they still witness animals and goats being killed on a regular basis. It brings the atonement of Christ's blood to life in a way that the Kwong understand.
Another neat thing in the Kwong language is that there are phrases or sounds that can be added in that don't translate to anything in English, but give the preceding sentence or phrase a certain meaning. For instance, when saying it is lightning, the Kwong say "Kumoyn bilaayye bic bic" which translates directly to "God made it flash, beech beech". Another one that you hear a lot is "krabb krabb krabb" which is added when something is done "just so" or very exactly. Depending on the emphasis intended, it could be repeated 4 or 5 times, very rapidly. Another one is if you don't forgive someone very quickly, you "let your stomach cool off, oyn oyn". No idea what that means. It throws me off guard because usually the sounds have an extra emphasis and they don't follow the phonological patterns of the rest of the language, and sometimes they can sound very funny to an English-speaker's ears. All the same, I don't think I will learn very many while I'm here, but it is fun to hear them in conversation.

Welcome to the 21st Century...

When we have the time, Diane and I take walks out to the bush. On Saturday, we took a walk to go see some nomads who had settled down on the other side of the airstrip that borders the edge of the village. Nomads are almost all Arabic, and Diane knows some Arabic so we were hoping to get to talk to them and hopefully see the inside of one of their tents. As we walked past a few of the tents, some kids came out and talked to Diane. They were real friendly, and we wished we had brought our cameras since it seemed like they would maybe let us come and sit down. While we were still talking though, all of a sudden I hear a "click" and one of the nomads had pulled out their cell phone and had taken a picture of US! Well. Welcome to the 21st century. Even nomads in the bush in Chad have cell phones that can take pictures.
We took a walk today also, past the nomads and out to the peanut and rice fields that the Kwong people cultivate at the beginning of the rainy season. We stopped to say hi to a man that was cutting down trees and bushes, preparing a place to have a rice field. We talked to him for a bit, found out where there were more people planting, and walked on... and while we were walking, I hear another "click". The man's son had pulled out his phone and had taken a picture of us as well.
Diane and I do a VBS on Fridays for the kids in Tchaguine, and last Friday was the first lesson. Before we started, we were just playing with the kids outside the church, and one of them came up, pulled a phone out of his pocket, and took a picture of me. I motioned to see the picture, and when he turned it around, I realized it actually wasn't a real phone, but a phone that he had made out of clay, and he had conveniently stuck a picture of a very cheesy looking white person where the screen was meant to be! Chadians apparently really get a kick out of the way us Americans look!

What to post...

There has been so much that has gone on since I left almost two weeks ago, and although I have journaled about much of it, it is hard to determine just what to post on a blog. That being said, I'll give an overview in this first post of what all I have been doing, give some prayer requests, and maybe give some shorter stories in more detail as I have time later to post.
I arrived in N'Djamena on June 11th and stayed there a day with Mark and Diane, my hosts, while we got my visa registration figured out and did some last minute shopping before packing up for Tchaguine. They do their grocery shopping for 6 months twice a year, since the local market in Tchaguine doesn't have a lot of the essentials. We packed up on Thursday and made the 7 hour trip to Tchaguine, stopping by the koo kina mati (funeral) of a pastor in a neighboring village on the way. There was another koo kina mati going on next door to us when we arrived at Mark and Diane's home in Tchaguine - funerals here are much different than ones in America. Chadians entering the compound of the deceased person's family will start wailing loudly, laying on the grave, weeping, spitting, singing songs about the person. It is definitely an eye-opening experience for a North American. Then, the family of the deceased person serves the visitors tea - I actually saw a few ladies get very angry and start shouting at the family because they never got their tea....
Once I got settled in, we took walks around the village, met some people, and went to the church service on Sunday. I got sick Sunday night and spent Monday and Tuesday sick, but was able to start language learning on Wednesday. One of the Chadian men, Luke, comes over every day at 8am and helps me learn the language for 2 hours. I have picked it up pretty well so far, so I hope to be able to make some conversation by the end of my time here.
There is plenty more to share, but for now I will close with some prayer requests:
 - That the Chadian church would continue to grow and flourish
 - That Mark and Diane would continue to lean on Christ and draw strength from him as they do ministry here.
 - That I would stay in good health and that I would continue to adjust well to the high temperature and humidity.
 - That I would make some friendships here in the village and be able to learn more about the culture here in Tchaguine through the Chadian people.
 - That I would continue to discern whether missions is a good fit for me in the future.