I’ve never thought of pigs as scary creatures. Dirty? Yes. Stinky? You betcha. Tasty? Absolutely. But not exactly fear-inducing. Then I went for a walk with my coworker to see some friends who live in a village on the other side of the ridge. We stopped to talk to a group of people we found gathered in a neighboring village and commented on the newborn baby piglet that one of the girls was holding. I knew that they didn’t usually take the babies away from their mothers until they were a little older, so I was curious to know where the mama pig was.
“Where are you going?” they asked us. When we told them they warned us that the mama pig was on the trail between us and our destination and that if she saw us she would bite us. We figured we’d be ok and told them we would go anyway. I mean, there were two of us, and we are at least three feet taller than a pig, right? They all smiled fondly and waved us on our way.
We started out making lots of noise to make sure we didn’t surprise any post-partum piggies and increase our chances of unnecessary bleeding. It was rather nerve-wracking walking through the thick undergrowth knowing just how hard it is to see pigs in the bush and expecting a furious sow to accost us at every turn. But it wasn’t long before we saw her on the trail, waddling toward us and grunting threateningly. Her owner was following at a safe distance, chucking hunks of wood at her and shouting to keep her moving. Elizabeth and I stopped and tried to decide what to do. I was all for going back to the other village, but she thought we should stay. The pig owner told us to climb up into the bush on the side of the road and wait for her to pass, which seemed like a good idea (except for the handful of tiny razor sharp slivers I got from grabbing a clump of grass to aid my assent).
We stood there and waited for the pig to walk by, but as soon as she got close enough to smell us she refused to go any farther. She, too, seemed to think the bush was her safest option, so she clambered up off the road and started blundering toward us. If you’ve ever seen Jurassic Park, you know that standing defenseless in the jungle hearing the underbrush rustle as something dangerous comes towards you is not something most people would recommend. Again, I suggested that we make a break for it and run back to the village, but the pig owner told us to just be still. When the pig got so close we could see her snout through the grass we decided to ignore his advice and scrambled back down onto the road. We hurried with all the dignity we could muster past the pig owner and went on our way, only stopping to pick the slivers out of my hand.
These little adventures make great stories for practicing on our Pal friends. They love hearing them and telling them gives us a better grasp of the language. I told the story to a friend yesterday, and after she helped me correct my mistakes the conversation turned to other topics. I told her that my sister is planning on coming in June, and her response was, “You guys will stay with us, and soon we will become men.” I understood her words, but I had no idea what she meant. I asked for clarification and she told me that now she and all her people are just trash, only good for throwing into the bush. But if we stay with them they will become real men like us – good and worth something. Then they would be good enough for my sister to come and see them. As unexpected as her assertion was, I was blessed to be reminded that it seems there are many hearts among the Pal people that are ripe for the harvest, and while they don’t really understand how exactly the transformation will take place, many of them are convinced that we carry a life-changing message and are anxiously awaiting it. Please continue to pray for softened hearts and ears that will hear, and for speed in language learning for our team so that God can change them from trash into men SOON!