Hope everyone had a happy turkey day yesterday! I am sure that many of you are taking advantage of the black Friday sales.
The seminar is going very well. This morning they said that 410 people had registered. That is a bunch of people! That is a bunch of people to find places to sleep and to feed 3 meals a day. The cooks are doing a fine job but they are exhausted! Oh! They found the gari. I told you yesterday that they said they were going to run out of gari to put on top of the dried cowpeas. We were surprised that they said they were running short because that is usually have some left over each year. They found someone in the village that had some for sale so they bought all the guy had. When they got ready to wash the rice to cook for supper they found a 50 pound bag of gari! The cooks were so surprised! They thought that it was a bag of rice. Since it was gari instead of rice now they were short of rice. Steve and I came back to the mission house and picked up 75 pounds of rice to add to the rice they already had. We intentionally bought extra just in case. We will use the surplus for the monthly classes.
Today’s lesson topics were Juju, Witchcraft and Faith healers. Steve taught this lesson; he had a plastic collapsible knife as a visual aid and a small calabash on a thin elastic string. He was making the point that the Juju, Witchcraft and faith healer stuff was fake and trickery. The people here believe that you can get Juju (charms, talismans etc) that will protect you from being killed in battle or against an enemy. The Juju can even protect you from gunshots and bullets. Steve demonstrated that he could stab himself with a knife and not die; not even bleed. They were amazed! He used the calabash on a string as a means of divination. He said that the calabash would tell him who had stolen an item that had gone missing. The string is really a thin piece of elastic that we passed through the calabash gourd. When the gourd is brought close to the thief it will fall down the string. It really falls because the person operating the calabash pulls the string tight and it floats down the string. I miss the presentation because we forgot to bring the masks out and one of the microphones Steve bought the other day did not work. Well, it would have worked if it had the spring that holds in the battery. I spent too long at the electrical store trying to get it changed out; but in the end I was successful. The electricity was back on today so everyone could hear better.
Thank you for your prayers and support.
In His Service,
Steve and Kandie
