Sabbath in Bere

Saturday, November 18, 2006 - Sabbath

Today we had church with the locals of Béré. The church is fairly new and is located just outside of the walls of the hospital in a bare field of sorts. It is a mud brick structure with a tin roof and a green door. We walked the short distance and went inside. The children were singing. Little did we know that they were practicing for us. They put on special music for us later in the church service. Peter preached with James translating in French and another church member translating from French into Nangere (the local language). The people then sang special music for us in their own dialect and then the children sang. I think the others would agree with me that we all enjoyed the singing immensely, even though we couldn't understand a word. We also sang for them.

After the sermon, they all voted that they wanted Peter to stay. He commented that seeing all the beautiful children made him miss his and he didn't think that he could stay. Their response was that he could just bring them here. Rachel, how do you feel about that?

We went to the Logone River today. On the way we saw this woman struggling with a load and her baby. We stopped and gave her a ride. We must have gone at least 2 or 3 miles more before she asked us to stop and she was coming from Béré, so when we picked her up she had probably already walked a few miles. She was very greatful and said Merci, Merci several times before we pulled off. She will have a story to tell around the fire in her village tonight.

I got some surprises for Tyler, some of them courtesy of Paul, one of the other missionaries here. Jamie, Rick and Paul went out onto this sand bar where they saw and found a lot of things. We didn't see any Hippos or wildlife, except birds and the local's animals. We did see the locals traversing the river in their dugout type of canoes. They would take loads of people, animals and even motorcycles across the river in their long canoes. It was very interesting.

On the way back we stopped and got some great pictures of the sunset. It was beautiful.

We are watching one of the movies we brought for James and Sarah and will possibly have popcorn later.

I will write more tomorrow.

Kelli