Hulumo was one of our landowners. Over 15years ago, Kovol people have heard that the neighboring peoplegroup had some missionaries and who have translated Gods word into their language and thought them to read and to write. Hulumo said he send a whole chicken to the missionaries begging for missionaries come to his place. We came… but he…
In November it was time to pick two Kovol men who would join us for our translation workshop in town. They were going to fly in the helicopter with us instead of hiking many hours. They were going to sleep on a center and eat food provided by missionaries. They Read more
The excitement is rising in our people group. People are waiting as they know we reached the mark of the required language stage and we will move on in teaching them. They have invested hard sweat and time in teaching us. Payback time they think.
Currently there is tension between Kokoma and Eririm. Kokoma is the village we live in and Eririm is a village that is a 3-hour hike away. They are both Kovol villages and people from Eririm come over from time to time to see us and play soccer.
Some young men in Kovol like to get their wife from town or other bush locations. One such guy came to us with his wife and his mother a few days ago. They came to us for advice because the wife was sick. She has had pain all over her body since she arrived in Kovol, so they said. Because of that, she can´t work. There is no fever, no sores, no other physical signs that could give us a clue about a sickness she might have. I was silently praying for wisdom. She didn’t say much, so I felt prompted by the Holy Spirit to talk to her alone and took her aside. After I asked more questions, it appeared that she was homesick. Like many other young couples, they had run off together, not telling her parents who live far away in another remote place. Now, six weeks later, she is worried about her parents as they are still looking for her. There is no way to contact them from here.
We live on a mountain ridge. If we want to go out, our options are visiting people in their houses or going to their gardens. Most of the time the people are in their gardens. The way to their gardens is going downhill on steep trails, which are worse in Read more
I’ve been spending my language time recently transcribing audio recordings of Kovol stories that are about 100-200 words long. I started to feel like I was spinning my wheels a bit. I’d take a fresh story, work on it for 1-3 days and then I’d be done and would move on. It felt a bit like I was putting lots of time into writing these stories down, only to nibble on them just a tiny bit before moving on. It’s also a pure comprehension exercise because there’s no way I can speak anything like the fluent Kovol I see in stories.
As we transition from Kovol to Germany, here is a list of things that are ‘different’ during daily life and we have to get used to
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.
