Thursday, October 25, 2007

Road Trip!!!!!!!!

Ok, so next week Jason, Erica, and I are taking a trip to Sintcham Botchi. It is a village in the interior of Guinea-Bissau. If you are curious you can look at a map of G-B, find the city named Gabu, and it's right next to that, though it probably won't be on the map. We have some friends who are missionaries there from Brazil – Jilson, and Rosania. Jason and I have bumped into them many times in Bissau and we've become pretty good friends, so we decided to go see the work that they are doing there. We are leaving on Saturday morning in a seven-seater taxi to go to Gabu, and Jilson is going to pick us up there. We will be staying with them until Wednesday.

We are really excited about going because we have not seen village life in the interior of G-B before. We wanted to go on Saturday because then we will get to go to church with them. Besides that I don't have any idea what we are going to be doing there. Hopefully we will be able to get some good pictures so that we can share the experience with you.

There are a few things I would like to ask you to pray for. Jilson and Rosania speak mostly Portuguese. Jilson knows a lot of Creole and he is a pretty dramatic guy – he uses tons of gestures and mimes stuff out well when we don't understand, so that helps a lot. Rosania can speak Creole too, but she does use a lot of Portuguese pronouns and stuff like that which confuse me. My Creole is coming in spurts right now. It seems like when I really need it I have it, but other times I get nervous, and it leaves me completely. I think that we will be fine; it will just be a lot of brain activity. (Incidentally Jason thinks that missionaries would kick everyone else's butt in a charades challenge because of all of the times we can't think of the right words but still get the message across.)

Jilson loves to joke all of the time too, so sometimes he is kidding but I am concentrating so hard on understanding the whole thing that I miss the fact that it is ridiculous. Like the other day we were eating with them and discussing the trip and Jason was asking Jilson about food in Gabu. He starting saying that they have McDonalds, and Pizza Hut there and Erica's jaw dropped. She was like, "Really, wow that is so cool." It wasn't until I told her that he was totally kidding that she stopped believing him because he had such a serious face when he was talking.

The other thing is that I think that the area were we will be is primarily Muslim. Right now we live in an Animist area, so I don't exactly know what to expect. I don't want to offend anyone…

Ok, so hopefully soon we will have a Sintcham Botchi blog (and maybe even a vlog) for you'll. Thank you so much for your prayers! I am really looking forward to going. It will be quite different, and I think it will also be really good.

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