Easter Egg Hunt

The kids participated in their first Easter egg hunt today! It was a little crowded and crazy, but they had fun. Zarya was much too timid to push her way into the mass of preschoolers (and their parents and siblings) who were grabbing eggs as fast as they could, but she enjoying gleaning behind the throng. She actually had to search for the ones she found!

As for Jerod, just picking them up and putting them in the bag was exciting for him. He held his own amongst the toddlers. It's a lot for a one year old to take in, but he didn't seem too fazed. He'll be racing around collecting them next year.

It must be easier if it's your own language

bhiikumaniirye

bhiikumanirye

If I were a native speaker of Zanaki, the two words above might be easy to distinguish. Context within a sentence likely helps, too, so one doesn't have to rely only on whether there is a short "i" or long "ii" in a word to know it's meaning. 

I'm not a Zanaki person, and when I came across these two words in back-to-back verses in Acts, I thought that perhaps one of them was simply misspelled. It looked like a typo had happened, but I could come up with a linguistic explanation of why there might be a difference (I'll spare you that one). The context seemed the same to me, though, so I wasn't sure why one would be different than the other, even though I could theoretically figure out how an extra "i" had ended up in one word. 

I gave the translators the benefit of the doubt and wrote a polite note in Acts asking if these really were two different words. The answer came back saying yes, in fact, they were! I'm glad I asked in a friendly way and didn't assume they had made a mistake!

If you're curious, the difference is that the top word, the one with the long "ii", means that people gathered indoors somewhere. The bottom word means they gathered outside in an open place. Languages are fascinating and complicated!

Father Melancholy's Daughter

Way back when I was a young thing in grad school, I read Gail Godwin's novel "Father Melancholy's Daughter" for the first time. I really enjoyed it - there is nothing as gripping as a book that is all about interesting characters and how they develop, in my opinion, that is. I thought, "Wow, I've found a fabulous new (to me) author! I've got to read all of her other books!" Well, I did read five more, and they ranged from just okay to good, but none of the others I tried were anywhere near great. I include that info so that you don't assume that I'm highly recommending everything she's written and go read one of the other books and then think I've got poor taste in literature.

But, back to the one exceptional book of the lot. What I can say without giving anything away that you won't learn in the first few pages of the book is it's a coming of age book, and the title character is the daughter of an often-melancholy Episcopal priest, and her mother has recently departed the scene. You follow her from age six to age 22, although more accurately, you learn about her at age six and at age 22, and not much between.

For fans of books in which the plot involves the inner workings of minds and dialogue, try it, you'll like it!

Home Assignment in Australia

This lovely family is the Archers from Australia. They are friends of our from Tanzania, where they are still currently residing. They recently spent some time back in their home country on what their mission organization calls home assignment. (Some call this period "furlough" or "secondment return period.") I'm pretty sure if you're reading my blog, you have some idea of what home assignment is - lots of traveling around speaking at various churches and events, catching up with friends, family, and ministry partners, eating food you don't get to enjoy for another few years, and going to see doctors, dentists, and hair dressers so you look and feel decent for a little while, at least.

But just in case there are any readers out there who think home assignment equals lots of R&R, let me tell you what my friends the Archers recently tallied up: When they arrived back home in Tanzania, they had been away from their beds there for 221 nights. During those 221 nights, they had slept in 49 different beds! That's an average of 4.5 nights in one bed before changing to another for 7.5 months!

I'm not saying they didn't have a lot of fun and good times during those 222 days, but I know they were excited to get back home to their own beds in Tanzania, mosquito nets and all!

Little boy and his balls

Get thee behind me

I grew up reading the NIV, but for whatever reason, the phrase "Get thee behind me, Satan," from the King James Version stuck in my mind. Jesus had been talking about his death and resurrection, and Peter took him aside and told him to stop saying these things. The NIV's translation of Mark 8:33, says: "But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. 'Get behind me, Satan!' he said."

In one of the Swahili Bible translations (Habari Njema) and the Ikizu translation, however, the phrase is a little different: "Get out of in front of me." When I was checking this verse earlier today, I had to decide if it was accurate or not. What did Jesus mean when he said that to Peter? Did he actually want Satan to get behind him? No, of course not!

Jesus was telling Peter that his thoughts were from Satan. Peter was tempting Jesus to not follow God's plan, and Jesus was not going to have any of that! He used an idiom Peter would have understood to be quiet and rejoin the group. In Ikizu, the idiom that means that is "get out of in front of me." I deemed it to be a correct translation.

As an interesting side note in thinking about temptation, it seems that you can flee temptation, or you can tell temptation to flee you. Some modern English paraphrase probably has the phrase, "Get lost, Satan. Out of my face!"