We have enjoyed a lengthy time in the village. This allowed time for Gertrude to finish up the work that was started at the literacy workshops she has done both at NITI and at Libba (a neighboring village). Something that we continue to work on daily is language learning. I have been receiving much encouragement from everyone. We are both able to have very basic conversation with just a few phrases; beyond that we are at a lost. Anywhere you go in the world children will be children. Pictured here are a group of children playing in front of our house. They enjoyed posing for the camera as you can see.
On Sunday, July 11, we sang from the new hymn book that I had just published. There were a total of 33 hymns that I have worked with others to translate into Notsi. Everyone was so very pleased to sing these hymns that they would sing in the church language that only a few of the older people really understood. Now everyone can sing these hymns with a clear understanding of the words for the first time. It brought tears to the eyes of the preacher to hear this. You could not help to hear the difference as the people sang these song with all their hearts and not just going through the song with little understand. Please pray that we will be able to complete more hymns in the coming months. I would like to publish a hymn book with some 100 songs by the end of the year that will be available to all the Nots churches. This will be a big help in encouraging others to help with the New Testament translation.
We were hoping to change start cutting lumber from the bush to replace the walls on our house, but we found that the post that were holding up the house was in need of being replaced. For the last two weeks I have been working with a few men from the village replacing the post. I was meant to have before and after pictures, but I did not get around to it. We we return to the village I’ll be able to post some pictures then.
NicholasNews 