These past few months we have slowly but steadily been learning the language and the culture of our Lembena friends. Language learning is hard and frustrating at times, but we are so thankful that we are not struggling through this on our own. We are incredibly blessed to have the Hughes and Ferguson families to work alongside; encouraging us when we’ve had a rough day, helping us figure out why languages do such weird things and reminding us that the reason we are here is to tell the people about God’s love for them. We love our teammates and for 5 months we were together as a full team, but in October the Hughes left for home assignment and plan to return in July. It’s was hard saying goodbye but we are praying that they are able to come back with no delays and that they will have a refreshing and good remainder of their time in America.

While it is hard living in the middle of the bush, we have enjoyed getting to know our neighbors and learning more about their culture. Every day is an adventure in Lembena, from burning an entire mountainside just to kill a single pig, to wedding feasts where hundreds of people gather and sing all night long, to archery contests and sitting around a fire talking about life. It has been good spending lots of time with our people, although the more time we spend with them and the more we begin to understand about their culture, the more we realize their need for the Savior. There is much about the Lembena culture that is good and fun, but there is another side of it that rooted in darkness and fear. Our people try hide this part about themselves and act like everything is fine, but it is in times of crisis that you see the underlying beliefs show themselves. When someone is sick or has died, when threats are made from a neighboring people group, when someone has a near death experience or when something makes them angry or upset; it is in these moments that we see a different side to our people. It’s like the mask slips off for a second and you see what they are really thinking and what really drives and motivates them. Pray for us to be able to understand the way our people think so we can communicate the Gospel clearly when the time comes and address the issues of their hearts.

We will not be the first to attempt to share the Gospel with the Lembena people. In the past, outsiders have come and told our people to stop doing all the bad things they do and to be good so that God will be happy with them and allow their gardens to grow well and keep them from getting sick. Our people have taken what little they have heard about God and blended that with their ancestral animistic beliefs and the result is a twisted and false Gospel. And instead of bringing hope to our people, it has brought hopelessness. One of the older men in the village opened up about the hopelessness of their situation to one of our coworkers. He said the outsiders always come in with this list of rules: stop smoking, stop fighting, stop lying, stop stealing, stop gambling, stop your animistic practices and God will keep you healthy and allow you never to be hungry and such. This Lembena man looked at our coworker and said, “What’s the point of trying? We can’t do it. We keep failing. We can’t be good.” And that’s the point of the law, isn’t it? To show us that we cannot be good on our own, that we need a Savior who can do what we could not, who can save us while we are hopelessly lost in our sins. Please pray for this man, Philip, that God would continue to prepare his heart so he will be ready to hear the Gospel and believe. Pray for all our people to come to this point, where they realize they could never keep the law on their own and be good enough to earn God’s favor. We keep pointing people back to the reason we came to Lembena, to tell them the truth about God and that, when that day comes, we will answer all their questions. Pray that God will help them be patient and give us strength and endurance to learn this language quickly.

Prayer and Praise

• We recently had a language evaluation and were very encouraged about the progress we have been making! Pray that we will be able to put into practice the advice we have been given.
• Pray for our people: that their hearts would be prepared, that they would be motived to help us learn and that they would be patient with us.
• Pray for our teammates, the Hughes, that while they are in America they would have an encouraging time with friends and family and return refreshed and motived to continue the hard work of language learning.
• Pray for us to balance our time well. Time spent with the people, time with our family and that we would be faithful in raising our kids to honor and glorify God.
• Pray that we would be living out the Gospel now even before we can communicate with words and that we would be building anticipation for when we get to share the true Gospel with them.

In His Strength and Power Alone,
Micah, Laura, Adalia and Declan