Greetings to All our dear prayer supporters!
“ And she shall bring forth a son, and thou shalt call his name JESUS: for he shall save his people from their sins. Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring forth a son, and they shall call is name Emmanuel, which is being interpreted is, God with us.” Matt. 1:21,23
God has been very gracious to us in giving us life and breath and joy to serve Him! We are grateful for His love toward us in sending a Savior to save us from our sins!
We have had several answered prayers this past week…. Thanks to all who have been praying for us! I will start with our language teacher. Bro. Samuel said he knew of a retired teacher who he thought could teach us the Ewe language so one day he brought the teacher to us to see when he could begin teaching us. The dear old man looked like he just crawled out of bed and seemed very tired and quiet… not quite my expectations of a teacher! He could barely squeak out ‘thank you’ when I gave him a bag of water! It turned out that this man was on the list for elections of some sort and was expecting to be elected and wanted to wait to start classes until after the elections, the 28th of Dec. So after several days of waiting and praying… we were ready to start language class now and the idea of waiting 2 weeks just to see if he is elected and what times will best fit into his schedule looked pretty long! Then Bro. Samuel told Chad that he thinks he knows of another retired teacher that may be able to teach us because this other man is taking too long! J It seemed to us that if he is dragging his feet then maybe he doesn’t really want to have to teach us! So Chad went and met with our prospective teacher on Mon. of last week… and scheduled our first class to start Wed. morning at 9am! Well, you know how changeable Africa can be and it ended up we had class in the afternoon… and had a very enjoyable lesson! (We had to postpone the class because of the “Old Man” Brother Paul, from Hikpo passed away that morning and we had to go visit the family.) Our teacher, Atitsogbui Godwin Kwadzo, is a very enthusiastic teacher and really seems to love teaching! A big answer to prayer…. Learning comes easier if the teacher is encouraging and enthusiastic! He taught us the alphabet and the sounds of each letter…. There are 30 letters and 7 vowels…. But one nice thing is each letter has only one sound so really there is only 30 different sounds! Some very hard sounds and some nasalized sounds… it will take some practice to get our mouth, tongue, and nose to work properly! Thankfully our teacher is very patient and is very helpful in showing us in great detail how to make our mouth and tongue say the right sound! Another thing, Ewe is a tonal language, which means if you make a word go up in the end it is one word and if you go down in the end it is another word. For example, dzo’ with the accent going up means “go” and dzo with the accent going down means “fire”. So it will take very sharp ears to know and hear the difference plus remember which means what! After he taught the alphabet and went over each vowel separately he proceeded to tell us that we can take any vowel and put a consonant in front of it and it will be a word! Amazing! With only the exception of about 4 consonants that only make words with 3 of the vowels. So there are about 140 two letter words and the ones that we have learned so far are all nouns! It was interesting because some of their letters are about the same sound as ours, like “p” for example, and you add “a” to and it makes “pa”. As the teacher was writing it on the blackboard I sounded the word out before he said it…. And he got a huge grin on his face and did a complete circle and said, “Correct O!” “Oh, you can read it! You are learning it very fast!” Very encouraging! We have had a total of 3 lessons so far and we have recorded the alphabet and words that he has taught us and are reviewing them daily. I also put the words on index cards so we can drill each other with pronunciation and word meaning… Ewe on one side and English on the other. We are thoroughly excited about learning and being able to communicate and understand the language and people God has called us to! For me I have such a longing to be able to communicate with Sis. Eunice and other ladies who can’t speak English! Most of the men can speak fairly good English and Chad can communicate well with them but it brings such a smile to their faces when you say something in Ewe! So with God’s help and your prayers we shall learn it!
The other Sunday we had a service in Sogakope in the morning and then in the afternoon Bro. Samuel, Sis. Eunice, Chad and I all went to Nugblebi for a service. The sun was shining so fiercely hot and we had only walked about ¼ of the path to the village when we saw a lorry coming down the narrow one lane path! He stopped and we asked if we could have a ride…. “Sure,” said the driver, “but I don’t have any seats!” We looked and sure enough the seats in the back were all taken out! Only the front bench seat was there but was full with the driver and two other passengers! So we climbed in anyway and sat on the dusty metal floor of the van, thankful we didn’t have to walk the rest of the way in the hot sun! We had another small group of 3 teenage boys and 2 teenage girls plus a handful of children. But they were a very attentive audience except for the two littlest ones who fell asleep! J Bro. Samuel and Sis. Eunice seem so to love these children as if they were their own and you can see the earnest desire they have that each one would walk in the path of God! Please continue to pray for these dear children because some of their parents are not happy that they want to follow Jesus…. And I don’t know for sure but some of them may even suffer from verbal abuse because of it! One time Bro. Samuel asked them if their parent were to say you may not have three meals a day but only one because you have chosen to follow Jesus. What would you do? And they all said, “We will follow Jesus Christ and eat only one meal a day!” What would you do?? Is your commitment to Christ that deep? They would not be doing it to fast as a self-discipline or to be in earnest prayer about something in their life or the life of others… but it would be a devotion to God and a sign that they have chosen to follow Jesus!
Serenity’s birthday was this past week and we tried to make it as special as possible! We had a later breakfast of coffee cake and an ice coffee drink… but to my disappointment my coffee cake got dumped upside down when I was trying to turn it around in the oven! So it was pre-crumbled! We went out to a nearby restaurant for lunch and had fried chicken and yam fries… Serenity didn’t know that ‘chips’ means ‘fries’ here so she got the Jolof rice but it was very spicy with lots of ginger in it! Oh by the way, we waited for more than a hour for our lunch! Till we got home and children in bed for a nap it was quite late in the afternoon! Then we had pizza and a cabbage salad for supper and buck-eye’s and opra creams for dessert! It just wouldn’t be December and Christmas like, without some candy around! J And Serenity seemed to think it was a nice birthday dessert too!
Christmas day dawned much like all other days… warm! J We had cinnamon rolls for breakfast and they were delicious even if they were made with white sugar instead of brown sugar in the filling! We had a very relaxed day after we did a bit of laundry and did the normal Sat. cleaning. The children were fighting colds and Chace cut another tooth so they took morning naps, leaving us adults to read and Chad and I to study language! In the late afternoon Bro. Seth came and visited with Chad and they talked some about the language. Then in the evening Bro. Samuel’s family came and we had fried chicken, Jolof rice (made to the best of our knowledge and not as spicy as they make it!), and coke, Fanta, and sprite! Then we served some chocolate chip cookies, buck-eyes, and opera creams with them and they thoroughly enjoyed them all! We weren’t sure if they would like things so sweet but they all said they did with big smiles on their faces!! So we were glad to share a few luxuries with our dear friends on Christmas day!
One more thing I should add…. There was an ‘Old Man’ Brother Paul from Hikpo, a village about 15mi. from here, that had been coming to the church in Sogakope for some time who had been very sick and in the hospital since we have arrived. Chad went and visited him in the hospital once and then he was taken back to his village some weeks back. He had a surgery of some sort and the incisions didn’t heal up but got infected. His daughter was going to take him to the doctor. The morning that she was going to take him, she went to get him ready to go, he had already passed away! He was a strong Christian and I think a big encouragement to Bro. Samuel family because they all took it pretty hard! We don’t know when the funeral is, it may be several weeks from now… the Church and the family will have to get everything worked out! Nothing is rushed in Africa! J By the way, the body is stored in the morgue so it can wait until the family is ready for the funeral!
You can pray for us as we continue language classes…. This week we will have a class on Wed. and Fri. Pray for understanding minds and a good memory!
We are very thankful for all of you who take the time to pray for us and write and let us know! Thank you for all your support! May God bless you!
Rejoicing in our Savior!
Chad and Elizabeth, Elayna, and Chace Martin
