The rose, the rosebud, and the thorn

I have a friend who, when she writes her updates, always includes three stories: one representing a thorn (something hard), one representing a rosebud (something exciting just starting), and one representing a rose (something wonderful).  I’d like to do the same today here.

The rosebud

Do you remember the association that we started with the big meeting in the village a year and a half ago, and then our prayers for the paperwork to come through?  All has come through now, and they were able to have the next annual meeting in the village two weeks ago!  During this meeting they talked about working towards the next steps towards literacy out in the village – in order to have it be lasting and not just something that is one and done, you have to go through all the right steps in the right order, and we’re at least thinking about them now and trying to get started on the next ones! 

At the meeting we also got the official approval for the national anthem of My Country that we had translated into My Language!  People are very excited about it, and last week 2 of my alphabet party guys were given the opportunity to sing it in front of a huge crowd!  There are things moving forward!

The thorn

Satan is so cruel.  And he doesn’t want to give up his grip on My People.  Right before Easter I was out of town for two weeks for a real vacation (so nice!), and while I was gone my main language helper Adama’s* dad passed away.  When I got back, I went to see a friend, Maimouna*, and she said that a very close relative of Jen’s host mom in the village also passed away.  And there was another funeral she mentioned, too, but I missed who that was.  Since then there have been quite a few other deaths among My People that I’ve heard about, the latest two both being buried yesterday.

And it’s not just the deaths that seem to continue to pile on top of each other – it’s the pain and hard things in life, too.  For example, when I went to see Maimouna, she said that, after not having a phone for several months, her husband had finally bought her one.  But a few days later it disappeared and she couldn’t find it anywhere.  Then shortly thereafter, when she stopped by to ask me to call her husband who is out of town for work, she said that not only had she lost her phone, but she also lost about $100 the next day, which is a huge amount of money for people who struggle to buy a $10 phone, and she was distraught.  When she got ahold of her husband, he told about another death, and she said that the lady who died was a close relative.  Since I was on my way out the door to go to the morgue for the funeral of that lady, I invited her to join me, but she said that she would love to, but couldn’t.  She said that every time she goes to funeral activities before the person is buried, she gets horrible headaches and is sick for a few days.  It is likely some kind of demonic activity, though I don’t know for sure and she’d never say that.  So she’s been advised to just wait and attend the funeral activities that happen after the person has been buried.  See, Satan is so cruel!  (And that is only one of many, many stories…)

In the midst of it all, sometimes I don’t know what to do.  I feel like a scientist, working on a cure for a deadly disease, who also has the job of putting on the bandaids to cover the symptoms in the meantime and comfort the patients, and my heart is pulled in two directions – if I don’t put on the bandaids and give the comfort, the day that the cure comes they won’t accept it.  But the more time I spend putting on bandaids and giving comfort, the less time I have for research on the deadly disease (in my case, translation of the Book that explains the cure to the deadly disease of sin) and the longer the real cure will take to get to them.  Please pray for wisdom, for supernatural time and energy, and that the news of the cure to the deadly disease of sin will be able to come to them soon!  I am also so glad that I’m not the only gospel witness among My People, and that there are a few others, especially in a few of the villages, who are sharing this “cure” as well.  Pray that they would also have wisdom, time, and energy, and that the Lord would work through them as well.  Pray for continued unity among us, and that those still under the curse of sin, desperate for a solution yet not knowing that that solution has already come in Jesus, would be willing to listen, understand, and believe.

The rose

Last time I wrote about our work on translating Ruth, and while it is still going slowly between everything else, it has definitely been such a joy recently!  Just after Easter we started on the next step on Ruth 1, which was to read it to at least 3 different people, paragraph by paragraph, and have them tell us back what they heard to make sure that they understood it. 

My heart was overflowing when the alphabet party guys and I went to see Kristina* and she was able to tell us back almost everything.  And at the beginning of the chapter there was a tricky part where, depending on the tone, it could either mean “In the days when there was no king in Israel” or “In the days when the king of Israel wasn’t home,” and when we asked Kristina if there was a king and he was just traveling or what was happening there, she thought for a bit and said, “No, there wasn’t a king.  I don’t think that they had thought of having kings yet.”  Hooray!  Our spelling rules worked and all the time we’ve spent on looking into such minute differences paid off, and we communicated the message we hoped to communicate! 

Later, when we took the same story to an older gentleman and read it paragraph by paragraph, he also seemed to understand it all and kept commenting that it was so emotional, so emotional.  When you read Ruth 1, do you read it as a story you’ve heard a thousand times, or do you let the words touch your heart as you feel the weight of them? 

Each time we read it to someone new, I felt so honored or humbled or privileged or something to be able to sit there and listen to a group of My People, read, listen to, and discuss the Word of God in their own language for the first time.  What joy filled my heart!!

Thank you for standing with me in prayer and rejoicing, even when I’m often so busy living life that I don’t have time to write about it.  We definitely need the prayers!

*Name changed for security reasons