Giving Birth

Today I went to see a mum that just gave birth this morning. I went there with Gerdine and our kids. I was so happy to have gotten the news so quickly about a newborn baby. Turns out, she was even just finishing her hole birthing process. The mother was still sitting on the leaves where she has given birth to her baby.

Where is home

We are going for a home assignment to our home countries in a few days. And my emotions are a roller coaster. I am even struggeling how to title this blog post. ‘how I feeling about going home’? or how I feel about leaving home’?. Don’t get me wrong. Germany is in a way a home, there are people I love, family friends… but Kovol has become also our home.

Funeral of a Kovol ‘dad’

He died two days ago. We heard the wailing starting in the night and we knew it was him. Yesterday was a day of mourning and sitting with the family. They dressed him in a nice white shirt and black long pants. Today was the burial. Nothing fancy. Very simple. They built the coffin, dug the hole, put him in there and filled the hole. No ‘last will’ to take care off as far as we know, no fancy meal or decoration, no program, today there was not even much crying from what we saw. Just sad blank looks. But it took all day from morning until almost 6pm to burry him.

Discourse Analysis

Proverbs 26:11; As a dog returneth to his vomit,
To translate this passage was one of my tasks at our last Culture and Language Evaluation. Did I nailed it? No. What came back from the Kovol people was, that a foul goes to the vomit like the dog does. Oh dear. On my second try (with a hint from the consultant) I did get the message across. But this is not the only task that I had, that showed that my Language hasn’t progressed at all. This was something I expected but it was still disappointing. I know vocabulary isn’t necessarily my weakness, but it is about how I communicate..

Only GOD…..

Remember my blog post from August about a baby called Menum who was hit in the head by an iron bar? Well this is a follow up blog. I am anxious to share what is happening here. God is at work, even if we don’t see the outcome!!! We saw HIS HAND very clearly day after day. We don’t know what the outcome will be, but we trust God is in control. So many of you are also praying for this precious family. But let’s get started.

Life and Death

These last weeks and months have been marked by the deaths of people I know here in Kovol and back home in Germany. My two granddads died and also my dear aunt just a week ago. I miss my family in these times especially and I wish I could be there with them. I find great comfort knowing that my granddads and my aunt are now enjoying being with God their father, because they believed that Jesus died for them on the cross paying for all their sins, and then He rose again, conquering death. I know I will see them again when I leave this earth either when I die or when Jesus comes back. Tragically, the Kovol people lack this comfort in the face of death.

A flying iron bar

Sunday night around 1 pm I was woken up by the sound of voices under our houses. The only people who usually wake me are my kids and my cat, we’ve never been woken by anyone from Kovol. I went to see what all the commotion was about. It was an emergency. A 4-month old baby had a terrible head wound and was in shock. 10 or so people were stood around looking sad and worried in the cold night.