Elder Harre, our main contact in North Ambrym, and one of our faithful translators, asked Houghton a few months ago if we could have literacy classes based in our village of Ranvetlam. He asserted that at least the village where the Bible translation office is located should be literate enough to be reading God's Word! So of course we agreed! I had brought up the idea of literacy classes with a local chief several months before, but it wasn't ever brought up in a village meeting. This was encouraging, however, to have local interest drive something we've wanted to have happen!
Elder Harre introducing the importance of literacy to the kids.
Houghton suggested then that we have something to pull the kids together, followed by the classes, and then a devotion.
Wednesdays Houghton does a volleyball workshop with village girls before they come to literacy class.
Fridays he leads a boy's soccer training before the boys' literacy class. The kids are loving it.
Teaching a mixed class of boys and girls.
Practicing writing their first letters in the Rral alphabet.
A friend of ours, Steve Armytage made dozens of chalkboards for us and Grace Bible Church in Miles City provided us hundreds of socks that we use for erasers, so all we had to buy was the chalk!
So far just kids from Ranvetlam have attended, but kids from surrounding villages have been invited.
A post-class game with Houghton.
Houghton leading a devotional.
Every other Sunday the adults come for their classes. The alternate Sundays is a youth/men's study led by Houghton. Adults have come from our village of Ranvetlam, as well as surrounding villages of Faramsu, Lonorrorr, and Melto.
We do the same lessons with kids and adults, using the curriculum (called a Primer) that I developed for teachers to teach elementary kids in our language group. It starts with most commonly used letters in the language and teaches one letter per lesson.
Jesiah has helped me develop funny videos of preliteracy skills (like how to turn pages carefully and how to store a book) that I show in the classes. The kids have liked these, and they are so helpful because having books and reading them is not a normal part of Vanuatu culture. He isn't comfortable in the local language of Rral, so he records these in Bislama, the trade language, which most of the kids know.
Please pray for continued interest and motivation for reading in our village and the surrounding ones, that people will be well equipped to read God's Word as it is distributed to them over the years in their language.
And now for several unrelated pictures showing our life on Ambrym...
Having fun with our teammates, the Ellis' during one of their weekend stays.
When boys were playing soccer one day (fortunately not during one of Houghton's trainings!), a young boy, Taaso, was injured. Houghton was able to stabilize him before he headed on a boat to the clinic north of us. Nothing is private here!
Jesiah and his friends waiting for transport to take little Taaso off to the clinic.
Kaiden and friends playing on the tire swing.
My new kitty, Jojo, and Jesiah's bird, Bluerie chumming together. They will go and come to Vila with us so we don't have to ask people to care for them for us when we're away. Having pets isn't common in Vanuatu.
Our other cat, Bluetooth, didn't accompany us to Vila when we went to Australia, and went a bit feral, so he mostly prowls for mice outside the house, while Jojo catches and devours every spider, cockroach, skink, gecko, and bug in the house for us.
No comments:
Post a Comment