It is 4.40pm and it has just stopped raining after an hour’s storm! We were just about to set off for a half hour’s walk across country to visit a little family when the thunder and rain began! It was fortunate we hadn’t already set off! It was sunny and hot when we went to Church this morning, and there were even more in the Service than last week’s 1,300. The Male Voice Chorale was a joy to listen to, as always!
No electricity again, but I’m starting to type on battery power, ready for a Blog to be sent whenever we next get power and Internet! Our last diary account went out on Thursday evening. We haven’t been able to check since yesterday if we have any more comments on the Blog system, or any other Emails; but we do hope to get ‘home news’ from friends and family.
Friday morning at the 7.30am Student Nurses weekly pre-College Service we had difficulty hearing speakers, due to yet another rain storm! The locals said it was BIG rain, and it was! It battered deafeningly on the corrugated iron roof! However, the lively Swahili singing could be heard OK!
I was brought back home after the service to prepare for my afternoon teaching session, while John was driven to the College to continue his work there.
The flannelgraph teaching session went well. Jeanine[the Sunday School teacher] and Marca[ the Oicha Deaf School Director]were amazed when they saw the materials. Marca’s English was good, so it helped me to explain everything with my minimal French and Jeanine’s minimal English! We had an enjoyable 3 hours, and they soon got to grips with making the picture stories; with much laughter too! How’s this for dedication and keenness to help the deaf children.......Marca travelled over 6 hours by bus [ that means very old coach!] from Oicha for these lessons, and then another 6 hours back on Saturday morning, happily taking a set of the Bible Story material with him, eager to show the other teachers and children this super way of visual teaching.
The first Deaf School was started in Oicha 5 years ago, and there are now 5 schools. I will be teaching at the Bunia school next week. It is so sad to know that Marca and others often have a difficult time persuading parents to let their deaf children be educated! It is like the time many years ago in UK when the profoundly deaf were often considered to be ‘stupid’ and would never be able to communicate, be educated or work. Some Congolese say “it’s no point him/her going to school...it’s not worth it”. The next step here, is trying to provide a residential school.
Marca was amazed to see our hearing aids.....and to know that we can get them for free. Even if hearing aids were available here, no-one could afford them. We can forget just how very blessed WE are! Here they pay for schooling, medical care, hospitalisation.......IF they can!
Saturday morning was hot and sunny for our weekly Market shopping....it really is a fun experience! One amusing incident this Saturday: - Nancy chooses fish at the stalls, looking for the freshest etc. As we were leaving after our fish purchasing, a woman called out, quite aggressively, to Nancy “You didn’t buy any of MY fish today, so I won’t have anything to put into the collection tomorrow!”
The Saturday evening Doctors meal and ‘English speaking’ was interesting!! It was on Childbirth and all the medical problems imaginable......gory bits and all! The senior midwife was also here, and I gave her the first bundles of premature baby cardigans and hats. She was thrilled.
All from me for now......hoping to hear from some of you......over to John later.
Janice.
Hi Everyone!!!
It was good to meet with the students for worship at 7.30 on Friday morning and despite the lack of understanding of what was being said and sung and no one to interpret for us the atmosphere of worship seemed to bypass the understanding and go straight to the heart!
In the last Blog posting I told you a little of the problems I was encountering at the College. I found software to remove the Worms which I had identified and having spent an hour and a half downloading it I found that the download was free but to remove the Worm was not free!! All day Friday the power supply was very erratic and in the afternoon it cut-out about 4 times midway through scans of the computer, resulting in idle time and a restart when the power was on again. On Monday we intend to move the computer so that it can access the internet directly – that might help a little as the cleanup programmes seem to want to be updated with the latest data on viruses etc over the internet before running. Please pray for continuous power on Monday!!
There are no pictures today as our internet connection, which is wireless to the MAF compound and then via satellite, is very slow this evening we think because of the stormy weather which us in this afternoon.
God’s Blessing on you all.
John
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