A few weeks ago I made the
ten mile trek from our home in Nagishot to my former village, Napep.
After the evacuation, when Tianne,
Elly and I returned to ministry in Nagishot, we made a point of visiting Napep
as often as we could. We hoped that
these visits would be a means of building trusting relationships, relationships
that would open the door to sharing the Gospel.
These frequent visits were put on hold in January of 2011, when a man was killed on the Napep church compound.
Thankfully, things have once
again calmed down and my revisiting the area has, for the time being, been
cleared to continue.
The purpose for this, my
initial visit, was twofold. I hoped to
not only catch up with old friends, but also to meet up with Lino Chunni, the
first believer in Napep, and invite him to attend our weekly chronological
Bible study in Nagishot. At this point,
there is not a functioning church in Napep and those like Lino, who desire to
hear the Word of God, are presented very few opportunities for Christian
fellowship and sound Biblical teaching.
After speaking with Lino
about the Bible study he was not only eager to attend, but agreed to making the
20 mile round trip journey each week to do so.
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| Lino and Tianne at the grinding stone - 2010. |
It was both a sweet and very
strange experience to walk back into Napep after being away for more than a
year and half.
It was also a bit eerie to
be there alone, without these ladies…
or this team….
My homestay mom, Pia, whom I
normally stay with in Napep, was down the mountain, weeding a distant field. Since she was away, I stayed at Lino’s family
compound.
It was the second morning of
my stay, upon returning from a friend’s compound with Lino, that we first heard
the loud painful wails, the wails which in Didinga can only mean one thing -
death - coming from his father’s tukal.
When we rounded the corner
onto the compound we found Lino’s brother leaning on the chicken house, shaking
with grief. He looked at Lino and, at
that moment, we all knew the cause of his sadness.
Lino’s elderly father, who had
been suffering for months with quite severe internal joint pain, had just passed
away.
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| Lino's father back in 2010. |
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| Sharing a meal with Lino's family - his father is sitting on the far right. |
He was buried just outside
of his mudhut hours after he passed away.
Seeing that man's naked body being lowered
into the ground, to the chorus of his daughters’ wails and the clanging of a cowbell his
youngest son was ringing, is a picture I will not soon forget.
The rest of that rainy day
and all of the next were spent huddled inside the family’s dark and smoky
mudhut. Everyone was quiet, osculating
between tears, sleep and pensive silence.
How do you comfort those in
pain?
The hours spent starring
into the fire, huddled in my Masaii blanket next to Lino’s sister, were incredibly retro/introspective for me.
You see, the work here is
not always straight-forward and easy, but oh, oh what a great responsibility we
have been given. The responsibility of
sharing the only true hope there is. The
hope we have in our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ.
