"Paul reduces all the actions of the new life to three classes: sobriety, righteousness, and godliness... Nothing is more difficult than to forsake all carnal thoughts, to subdue and renounce our false appetites, and to devote ourselves to God and our brethren, and to live the life of angels in a world of corruption.To deliver our minds from every snare Paul calls our attention to the hope of a blessed immortality, and encourages us that our hope is not in vain. As Christ once appeared as a Redeemer, so he will at his second coming show us the benefits of the salvation which he obtained.Christ dispels the charms that blind us and prevent us from longing with the right zeal for the glory of heaven.Christ also teaches us that we must live as strangers and pilgrims in this world, that we may not lose our heavenly inheritance."
- John Calvin's Golden Book of the True Christian Life

this deserves a *happy dance*

So, I have exciting news -- the missionaries have asked me and Erika to return to teach again next year! The mission has approved and my parents gave me the ok, so please pray that all the necessary details get sorted out. The hope is that we'll be able to come here in late August (after White Lake camp, of course, I wouldn't miss White Lake for anything!) and stay until May -- 9 months. I'm soooooooooooooooo excited :) Erika will primarily teach the Okkens while I'll teach most of the Wrights' classes and Omnibus (early church - Reformation) for James and Josh Tricarico.

Also, I wrote an article for RP Missions which will appear in the January RP Witness. Certainly not my best piece of writing, but it'll do. So keep your eyes "Pihled" for that (yeah I just did that).

"You are very important to me"

The Wrights and Ericka have been down country for over a week, so I've been enjoying a breezy teaching schedule and lots of downtime. I spent most of my time reading, hanging out with Leah Hopp in the evenings, and putzing around on the internet (since the middle compound, where I live, has been home to only three people instead of ten, we've had tons of power! My poor old Grove City laptop has 30 minutes of battery life, so it's wonderful to be able to plug it in all the time!).

Leah had a birthday last Friday, so we had tortillas and hummus and watched tons of episodes of the Cosby Show... oh the 80s. Gotta love the outfits :)

The kids Bible study on Monday went very well. Leah came with me this time. I taught them the parable of the lost sheep. Only 25 kids came (instead of forty, as we'd had the week before) which, I admit, I was thankful for, because a group of forty kids is hard to control. I brought along a big jump rope. Some of the older girls were pretty good and they had three kids jumping at once. I think it was a hit. 

This morning Ruffin (a 19 year old visitor who's been here for 6 months), Jamie Tricarico, Jim and Jenny Knox and I were on the road at 6:15am to visit the Pian Upe Game Preserve, which is just a little ways south of the market town of Namalu. We went on a mini-safari :) We arrived and the guide brought us into his office. "If you are lucky, you will see some animals... if you are lucky, you will see some animals... if you are lucky... you will see... some animals..." He was a very funny man... he said "for-ay-nee" instead of foreign and repeated himself a lot. Jim had to sign the guestbook because "you are very important to me." 

Jamie, Ruffin and I climbed up on the roof rack of Jim's SUV (easier said than done for a shorty like me!), and our guide plus a ranger (complete with AK-47s) sat in the back seat. The sun was just rising as we set off on the three hour drive through the bush. It was terribly uncomfortable sitting on the metal bars of the roof rack, but after a while I didn't notice it so much. The view of Mount Kadam was breathtaking... I'll post pictures soon. Unfortunately, we didn't see too much wildlife, but we saw tons of cobs (a type of antelope) who run SO fast... they were outrunning our car. It felt like we were in the middle of a National Geographic film. We also saw Jackson's hardebeasts, which are huge antelope-type things with big horns. We also saw a very large, very fast rodent thing and some guinea fowl and other neat birds. No cheetah, ostriches, leopards or baboons... but the view alone was worth the trip. That was my first time riding on the roof of any  vehicle ever... and it was so much fun :P

I think I got a bit of heat stroke/sun stroke cuz when I got back I crashed in bed and slept for two hours. I'm still feeling exhausted and dehydrated but it's all good. I'm just chugging water like it's my job. Tonight we have a group dinner, and it will be Ruffin's last before he goes home, so I have to make an epic dessert :)

In other news, Bob Wright cut his arm badly earlier this week, and yesterday morning he had surgery which successfully reconnected a nerve and two tendons. Poor Bob :( His arm is in a cast and he can't use it for six weeks, so the Wrights and Erika are coming back from Kampala a week early, along with Bob's sister and her son Justin, who are here for a visit. 

"Have you chewed the donkey?"

On Thursday I visited the Kyalo family. James has some Kenyan Primary 1 textbooks I'm going to work on with him. Kenyans have a very hard time pronouncing R's and L's, so I was helping James say his colors: Ye -la-la-la-la-la-low. Yellow. Rrrrred. Not Ned. Ned is a man's name in America. He seemed to get that and laughed to think he had been saying something so silly -- "Emily, it is red, not Ned! Ned is a man!" Elizabeth gave me African tea and jackfruit, which I liked. It's got a strange taste.

Last night, Jim and Jenny invited me and Ruffin over for dinner, along with Moses, Albert and Fred, three of the   young men on the clinic staff. I think all three of them are roughly my age. They are hilarious. 

"Have you ever chewed the rat?"

"What??"

"The rat? have you chewed?"

"You don't say that in America. You say tasted or tried."

"How about chewed and swallowed? Have you chewed and swallowed the rat?"

"If you say that in America people will look at you very strangely."

We talked about eating rats, cats, dogs, small birds ("you could fry them like a chicken, but I think maybe even you must eat the whole head, even the what? The bones.") camels, chameleons (in a stew or something??) and donkeys.

Fred said that on the radio that day they were offering 5,000 shillings (about 2 dollars) to a caller who could answer this question: If the man is the head of the family, the woman is the what? Fred put the question to us. Jim told him he should call in and say the woman is the body, because Christ is the head of the church and the church is the body. We also considered the neck (she turns the man any direction she wants!) or the heart. Apparently one person called in and said the tail (?!). The callers had such a hard time answering the question that they were going to continue the discussion on the radio the next day. Jenny said that here in Karamoja the men say that women have ears on the "buntocks" (as they call it) so you must beat them in order to make them listen. Women are not very respected here, but believe me, they do must of the work. 

The Lord's Prayer

Papa kosi ngolo eyai Nakuj Ekonikiro tokeritete.
Akonijakanut bu neni kosi, kitiyaere alokwap nguna a Nakuj.
Inakinae isua nakwar na akosikimuj ngina a jwi jwi.
Kisyomi isua ngakosimecae, ikwangina ikisyonio isua nguluce dang.
Nyikiya isua nakitemyet, nai toiunae aneni aronon.
Anerae apukan ka apedor ka apolou ngina Kon jik.

Monday, Monday

For the past several weeks Erika has been running a 30-60 minute kids program down at the clinic ward. I went the first week to scout it out with her, but since then my TEFL course and lesson prep has prevented me from going with her. This past week I was finally able to go and I hope to go every week now.

Thirty kids showed up, along with our translator Omena (Lokwii Paul). It took a while to "mobilize" (i.e. shout back into the village and tell kids to come). While Erika walked around calling for kids, I stayed in the ward and visited with the ones who were already there. I know enough Karamojong now to scrape by a small conversation (Hi! How are you? What is your name? What is your sisters name? My name is Ngakiru Emily. etc.). I tried to get all their names, but the names here are so unfamiliar to me that I had a hard time with that... but there are a few kids that are very familiar to me now, and will greet me and Erika by name if they see us walking around. Samuel, Lokiru, Sagal David, Abra, Losike, Longoli, Soki, Tony, Baby Bob, and Achio are the ones I know the best, and we love to visit them and talk to them. I'll keep working on learning more names over the next few weeks. 

We sang a few songs first. Some are classic kid songs here:

Amina, amina, amina

Epol amina, 

Ejok amina, 

Kristo erae amina. 

Love, love love,

Love is great,

Love is good,

Christ is love.

Kire ejok Akuj,

Kire ejok Akuj,

Kire ejok Akuj,

Nooi, nooi ejok Akuj!

Surely God is good,

Surely God is good,

Surely God is good,

God is very, very good!

Oh, Oh, Oh Yesu ikimina iwon!

Aleluya!

Oh, Oh, Oh Yesu ikimina iwon!

Oh, Oh, Oh Jesus loves us!

Aleluya!

Oh, Oh, Oh Jesus loves us!

Omena also led the kids in a song they requested that I've never heard before. It's not in our Karamojong songbook, so I'm not quite sure how all the kids know it, but they sang it very enthusiastically. The only part of the song I understood was "Satan", which was mentioned several times...

Then Omena told the kids the Christmas story using a tract the missionaries have been using for the past month. He is a great teacher - he went to Bible college and the missionaries are training him for church leadership. He asked the kids lots of questions and they answered well, and they also practiced memorizing John 3:16. Martha Wright, who came along to observe, handed out the Christmas story booklets to all the children who were in school and could read. Only a handful could out the group of thirty, but when she was going around asking the kids "Can you read?" many of them said "Not yet!" They want to learn, which is encouraging.

After the lesson, we brought the kids outside to play Duck Duck Goose. I took the younger kids group (mostly toddlers and preschoolers who had no idea what they were doing) and Omena advised me to use the words "Ane, Ane, Akine" instead of Duck Duck Goose. I still don't know what those words mean, but in any case we had fun, even if we did kinda bend the rules. They didn't know how to play and the only useful word I knew was "atipei" which means quickly, so I pretty much just let them walk around, pat heads, and then if they whispered "akine" or just started running randomly, I would point to the kid sitting and say atipei! It worked ok... many of them were laughing. The littlest guys just looked totally confused. One little girl, Abra, is so chubby she couldn't run (chubbiness is very uncommon here.... she must eat a lot of porridge) -- she just waddled around looking mystified. It was pretty adorable though. 

Finally, we decided it was time to go. Martha wanted a picture of us with all the kids, which they got quite excited about. Hopefully I'll be able to post that picture on here at some point. We kept saying, "it's time to go!" but they didn't want to go, they were clinging on to us and started spontaneously singing Yesu Ikimina Iwon, which was so sweet. We finally managed to detach ourselves, point the kids home, and say goodbye. 

It was encouraging to see them so excited to come. They refer to this not as a Bible study, but as ebolya - playtime. They have fun, and hopefully they'll continue to bring their friends along so that more and more of these children will hear the Gospel. We also told the school children that they could keep the Christmas story book if they promised to read it out loud to their family, and they agreed to. So if even one child or one parent comes to know the Lord through this simple Monday afternoon outreach, it will be well worth it.