We’re Hitting Dung
For the past few weeks Rachel and I have been working, along with several neighborhood ladies, to get our house stuccoed before the rains come. Naturally, we tried to learn a little while we worked. I kept asking my friend Andrea, “What are we doing now?” At one point she said, “Tiwihtehtí kwita.” We’re hitting dung. The stucco recipe is a delicate mix of water, “good” dirt, and donkey droppings. After the mudding, we covered the house with a layer of cement so that the rains wouldn’t wash it off. After two long weekends, our house is now finished and the ladies are suggesting paint colors like mint green. We’ll see.
Test Results
The month of June also brought a visit from our friendly consultant. He gave each of our team members language tests and I’m happy to report that we all know more now that we did before. J We really appreciated our time with our boss and his tips for how to really go after different challenging aspects of the language. Most of all, however, I appreciate our leadership’s focus on being unified as a team, showing God’s love now to the people, and remembering that our identity is in Christ, not in any level of fluency. Please keep praying that our team will work, play, think, communicate, and study in a way that draws the Nahuatl to the Lord.
Messing with the Promise
The Nahuatl are afraid of many things: the dark, being alone, going outside at night, and rainbows. That’s right…rainbows. In their language the word for rainbow is the same as the one they use for snake: kuwah. They tell kids that if they point directly at a rainbow it will somehow “get them” like a snake could. As rainy season approaches and rainbows grace the clouds more frequently, I wonder what they think of us, taking pictures of the colors in the sky. What I see as a promise, they see as a threat. Where I see hope and faithfulness, they see only something to fear. Please continue to pray for the Nahuatl and for our team here as we work to reveal the Love that casts out fear.
