Ten days ago we went “up North” for the weekend. A bit of background might help to explain where we were and what we were doing.
In 2002 I first came to Benin with a short-term mission team from France. We stayed in a town called Kandi, hosted by the local pastor and his wife. We visited churches in villages around Kandi and put on open-air events with the double objective of advertising the lending library set up by the Kandi church and sharing the good news of Jesus. During the trip I began to wonder whether God might be showing me that the next step for me after I finished my linguistics doctorate in France would be to return to Benin to work in translation work.
So in 2003 I came back to Benin on my own to spend 3 weeks with Grace Birnie, in Pèdè, a village near Kandi. Grace is a Canadian missionary who has been working with the Monkolé language for many years. She worked with Monkolé informants to analyse and write down the language, before beginning the translation of the Bible. The time I spent with her and her team made me fairly sure that God was calling me to work in Benin. At that point I assumed I'd be coming here on my own, but God had different plans!
In 2004 Marc and I got married, and in 2006 Marc came to Benin with a short-term team. He was working in the South of the country, but did visit Parakou, where our mission (SIM) has its headquarters, to talk with missionaries about possibilities for us to work here as a couple. He met a missionary who had worked on the type-setting of the Monkolé New Testament (published that year) and she told him that with Grace soon to retire, there was an opportunity for me to take her place on the translation team, and for him to work in discipleship and leadership training in the Monkolé churches.
This idea was approved by both SIM France (our sending office) and SIM Benin-Togo. Later, SIM Benin-Togo decided to keep us in Parakou for our first months, so that we could get to know other SIM missionaries better and meet the leadership of the Union of Evangelical Churches. They also felt that life in Parakou, a large town, would make the transition easier for us. So we have been living in a mission house in Parakou since we arrived here in May. God has provided Abraham, a student from Pèdè who has been studying in Parakou, to help us begin learning Monkolé. (Here in Parakou the main language is Baatonu, and hardly anyone speaks Monkolé.)
Our trip up North was therefore Marc and our boys' first opportunity to see the village of Pèdè and to meet the pastor and church there. It was also the first time they would see Grace's house, which we will eventually live in after her retirement in June next year.
The journey was wearisome, as we had to travel over a lot of what I call “Swiss cheese road”, with pot-holes sometimes 30cm or so deep, and capable of damaging your car badly if you accidentally drop into them. What took 3 hours back in 2003 when the road was newer, now took us nearly 5 hours (including a short break to feed Benjy).
Our first night there didn't exactly give us our much-needed rest. The four of us were sharing Grace's bedroom (she was in the small guestroom) and Benjy woke three times and I had to feed him to get him back to sleep (these days he is usually on just one feed a night). Then a cock started crowing outside our bedroom window at 2.30am and carried on for the rest of the night! Since the windows here never shut entirely, it was as if the cock was in the room with us, and we found it impossible to sleep!
Still, the rest of the weekend was well worth it. It was great to see Pastor Samuel again and to spend a lot of time talking with him and with Grace about our future move to Pèdè. At church on Sunday Marc introduced us in Monkolé, which earned us a very warm welcome! We were encouraged to find that we could understand some of the things people said – obviously our hard language learning work is paying off!
The plan now is that (all being well) we will move up there in January, and we will spend the months until Grace's retirement in a small house next door to her. Our lifestyle will change as much, if not more, as it did in the move from Europe to Benin. There is no mains electricity or running water in the village, so Grace has a solar power system which powers her fridge, lights and well pump. The small house has a kerosene fridge and its solar system just supplies enough power for 12V lights for the evening and small 12V fans for the night (apparently very necessary in dry season).
The biggest logistical question at the moment is whether Grace's solar power system can supply the amount of electricity needed to pump enough well water for us and her without her fridge shutting down! There may be another solution though, as a mission-owned petrol-powered pump has become available. We would welcome prayer that everything would fall into place for a January move, as we would like to have a few months' overlap with Grace.
In 2002 I first came to Benin with a short-term mission team from France. We stayed in a town called Kandi, hosted by the local pastor and his wife. We visited churches in villages around Kandi and put on open-air events with the double objective of advertising the lending library set up by the Kandi church and sharing the good news of Jesus. During the trip I began to wonder whether God might be showing me that the next step for me after I finished my linguistics doctorate in France would be to return to Benin to work in translation work.
So in 2003 I came back to Benin on my own to spend 3 weeks with Grace Birnie, in Pèdè, a village near Kandi. Grace is a Canadian missionary who has been working with the Monkolé language for many years. She worked with Monkolé informants to analyse and write down the language, before beginning the translation of the Bible. The time I spent with her and her team made me fairly sure that God was calling me to work in Benin. At that point I assumed I'd be coming here on my own, but God had different plans!
In 2004 Marc and I got married, and in 2006 Marc came to Benin with a short-term team. He was working in the South of the country, but did visit Parakou, where our mission (SIM) has its headquarters, to talk with missionaries about possibilities for us to work here as a couple. He met a missionary who had worked on the type-setting of the Monkolé New Testament (published that year) and she told him that with Grace soon to retire, there was an opportunity for me to take her place on the translation team, and for him to work in discipleship and leadership training in the Monkolé churches.
This idea was approved by both SIM France (our sending office) and SIM Benin-Togo. Later, SIM Benin-Togo decided to keep us in Parakou for our first months, so that we could get to know other SIM missionaries better and meet the leadership of the Union of Evangelical Churches. They also felt that life in Parakou, a large town, would make the transition easier for us. So we have been living in a mission house in Parakou since we arrived here in May. God has provided Abraham, a student from Pèdè who has been studying in Parakou, to help us begin learning Monkolé. (Here in Parakou the main language is Baatonu, and hardly anyone speaks Monkolé.)
Our trip up North was therefore Marc and our boys' first opportunity to see the village of Pèdè and to meet the pastor and church there. It was also the first time they would see Grace's house, which we will eventually live in after her retirement in June next year.
The journey was wearisome, as we had to travel over a lot of what I call “Swiss cheese road”, with pot-holes sometimes 30cm or so deep, and capable of damaging your car badly if you accidentally drop into them. What took 3 hours back in 2003 when the road was newer, now took us nearly 5 hours (including a short break to feed Benjy).
Our first night there didn't exactly give us our much-needed rest. The four of us were sharing Grace's bedroom (she was in the small guestroom) and Benjy woke three times and I had to feed him to get him back to sleep (these days he is usually on just one feed a night). Then a cock started crowing outside our bedroom window at 2.30am and carried on for the rest of the night! Since the windows here never shut entirely, it was as if the cock was in the room with us, and we found it impossible to sleep!
Still, the rest of the weekend was well worth it. It was great to see Pastor Samuel again and to spend a lot of time talking with him and with Grace about our future move to Pèdè. At church on Sunday Marc introduced us in Monkolé, which earned us a very warm welcome! We were encouraged to find that we could understand some of the things people said – obviously our hard language learning work is paying off!
The plan now is that (all being well) we will move up there in January, and we will spend the months until Grace's retirement in a small house next door to her. Our lifestyle will change as much, if not more, as it did in the move from Europe to Benin. There is no mains electricity or running water in the village, so Grace has a solar power system which powers her fridge, lights and well pump. The small house has a kerosene fridge and its solar system just supplies enough power for 12V lights for the evening and small 12V fans for the night (apparently very necessary in dry season).
The biggest logistical question at the moment is whether Grace's solar power system can supply the amount of electricity needed to pump enough well water for us and her without her fridge shutting down! There may be another solution though, as a mission-owned petrol-powered pump has become available. We would welcome prayer that everything would fall into place for a January move, as we would like to have a few months' overlap with Grace.
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