Yesterday marked our first real day of work in Bayanga since our arrival last week. Our time to rest is over and work has begun. We rented a VCR, television and generator from the neighbourhood 'movie theatre' and set it up in the village of Yandoumbe, a couple kilometres up the road from where we are staying. The residents of Yandoumbe have motivation issues when it comes to farming, as most residents prefer to work as temporaries in villagers gardens, getting paid just a little manioc each day, rather than work in their gardens and take home as much or as little manioc as their family would need each week. Because it is hard to find a time to speak to everyone in the village at once, what better way than to show an outdoor film and gather the masses. Once darkness hit we started with a twenty minute film in Sango that was produced in Bayanga introducing the work of the mission in Bayanga and the various activities they do. i am not sure if everything in the film was understood by the mostly Aka speakers but it served our purposes of drawing a crowd of nearly 200. During 'intermission' I, speaking through my Aka interpreter Jean Pierre, gave a demonstration and speech of why they should have their own gardens instead of working in everybody else's. My visual aids consisted of a small bowl and a really large one, making the point that for their efforts in someone else's garden they are only rewarded with a small bowl of manioc, not quite enough for the whole family for one day. But when you have your own garden, you can have enough to fill the large bowl which is plenty for your family for several days, meaning you don't have to go to your garden everyday even. After a rather animated and convincing (if I do say so myself) speech we settled down to watch the second tape which was mostly Aka pygmies singing that was filmed during a pygmy church conference in the town of Liboko. Just as I had heard about enough of the video, God did as well and we packed up just in time for a big rain storm to scatter everyone back to their homes.
While I am not sure how well I would do preaching to the masses, I sure did enjoy encouraging folks with my tree-vangelistic campaign. Speaking of preaching though, this morning at seven the local evangelist knocked on our door and asked if one of us wouldn't mind preaching at church this morning. Darren, not one for public speaking kindly deferred to his wife and she, I, quickly prepared a sermon for delivery at eight thirty that same morning. Me and my rapid fire mind found it a little difficult to preach through a translator (into the Aka language) as while your words are being translated you have to not lose your train of thought, but otherwise it went well. It made me even more grateful for the time I spent with YWAM eight and a half years ago, when no-warning sermons were par for the course. Every event in life has its purpose.
Tomorrow morning we get up real early to head for Bomanzoko and Lindjombo to check in on the people and their trees. I am sure that as I write someone down there is munching on a Jackfruit...
