A letter from Bob Rice in Congo
March 15, 2010
Greetings from Kananga, DRC! We arrived Thursday March 4, and were graciously and joyfully received by the church leadership. Although our “period of transition” is far from over, it feels great to finally have arrived in the region where we will call “home” for the foreseeable future!
Studying Tshiluba with Pastor Mboyamba at the guest house in Tshikaji.
We are temporarily staying in Tshikaji, at a guest house near a large hospital for the CPC (Communaute Presbyteriene au Congo). We are about 15 km. from the city of Kananga, so it is a rural, quiet community that has been great for language practice. Last week we started Tshiluba lessons with Pastor Mboyamba, the Director of the Evangelism Department for CPC. We study with Pastor Mboyamba for a few hours in the morning, and then in the afternoon we review and walk through the community talking to lots of people to practice what we have learned.
We were able to learn a few words and phrases in Kinshasa from some Tshiluba-speakers, so when we arrived in Kananga, we could at least greet people. On Monday, our first day of lessons with Pastor Mboyamba, we realized that we were able to explain to the cooks of the guest house in Tshiluba that “we are not going to eat the meal tomorrow at 12:30, but we will eat in the morning and in the evening.” In Tshiluba, “twelve-thirty” is “diba dikumi ne ibiri ne tshitupa,” so we felt that was an accomplishment worth celebrating! Tshiluba shares some words and grammar with Kinyarwanda, which has been helpful.
Kids in Tshikaji help us to practice numbers in Tshiluba.
In our excursions through the village to practice language, the children have been a great help, as you can imagine! Some boys led us to their homes and introduced us to their families, which was a great excuse to get off the main road and into the heart of the village. Children are also helpful because they don’t mind repeating something over and over! It is frustrating to not be able to understand conversations or find the words that we want to say. Despite the fact that we CAN say a lot for our first week, we get impatient. We often feel like small children, mimicking words that our mouths are not familiar with. A poem from the book On Your Way, which we read for orientation, seems to articulate this feeling well:
My mouth contorts
the word mashes through
plops out
and drops dead at my feet
mangled beyond recognition.With hopeful eyes
I beseech my listeners.
Then, with the care of forensic linguists
they gingerly examine
my apparent attempt at communication
and solemnly offer their astute guesses as to what
I might have been trying to say.
—by Audrey Patterson
Church leaders of the Church in Kananga in the SNEL district, where Dr. Mulumba pastors, with Hunter Farrell and his children visiting.
We have enjoyed visiting a few of the churches in Kananga. Bob preached this week at the church of Dr. Mulumba, the General Secretary of the CPC. We love the creativity of the choirs, the energetic singing and the way that women dance up to the front as they give their offering. In a couple of weeks, we are planning to attend a conference for laity for the CPC at Ndemba, a village about 60 km. from Kananga. We have been impressed with the hospitality and warm reception of the leadership of the CPC. Our sense is that our presence is a tangible expression of “solidarity” and partnership between the CPC and the PC(USA). That is one of our hopes for being here — being a bridge and link with the church in the U.S.
Thank you for your prayers for our transition! We are still waiting for our residence visas, which we hope will be completed soon. We were advised at just the right time to request a document called a “tenant lieu”, which allows us to travel within Congo while we wait for our passports. We were anxious to get out of Kinshasa, so were very grateful for that advice! God has been so gracious in this process to provide wonderful people who come alongside us at the right times—for more stories of that, please check out some of the recent posts on our blog, Adventures of Bob and Kristi.
A few prayer requests:
- Perseverance in the language process! We keep reminding ourselves that this is a ‘marathon’, and not a sprint, and we are just at the beginning.
- That we would be in the right place for language learning — we may go to a more remote location for a couple of months to be able to be “isolated” and focus on language.
- Good initial connections and relationships. It is hard to build relationships without much language, but this initial period is important for “bonding” with people. We also need people who can help us learn and interpret culture.
Tuasakadila bya bungi! (Thank you very much!) We appreciate your prayers.
Bob and Kristi
