English and City Water Lines

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Our Neighborhood

I was feeling a bit sick today, Saturday, so was resting at home.  I got a call from the Pastor of a church in our neighborhood, weather he could come by and visit with some elders from the church.  We were delighted with the suggestion as we were trying to go and meet him, but now he was coming to see us.  Besides, I didn’t have the energy to go anywhere right now. The Pastor and the elders came by, we all got to know ourselves, and talked about various tings.  We talked about various details of Bible translation.  One elder got very interested, and started asking lots of questions.  Then Christy and I started asking about some questions about language use choices in the church.  We noticed that in the church they mostly used English, but that many of the members seem to speak Hausa better than English.  The Pastor said that about 6 years ago, they had a church congregational meeting, in which they noticed they were losing their youth.  They talked about what youth liked, and one of those things is English!  They are attracted to it, even if they don’t understand it.  The church made a choice to start using the English language to start drawing the youth back to church.  We talked about a lot of other aspects of church ministry as well from children’s ministry to weekly Bible studies to city water line in the church property and the Pastor’s policy that he would let the community use the water before he would fill the church’s water tank.

As our conversation rounded up, I thanked the Pastor and elders so much for taking the effort to come and visit me.  I told them, “I think this is the first time a Pastor and elders have come to visit me in the home.”  The pastor’s answer surprised me, “We go for many visits, and talked about many things, but this one was special because we also talked about ministry.”  

Please pray for us as we talk with more church pastors to understand how, in a city where lots of languages represented in a single church, we can partner with faith communities to bring the Message of life in Christ in languages that will draw them to church, AND speak to people’s hearts.