Fertile Soil

This morning, Aaron and I went on our proposal-versary date followed by a trip to Honiara's Central Market. I hoped not only to pick up food for my family but also to find some Lavukal who had come to sell food in Honiara. We began by walking through the fish section, and as we approached the first cooler, we heard "Lalomomeahobea!" (good morning). Somebody recognized us immediately and called out in Lavukaleve! The man and his wife were from the Eastern part of the Russells (we live in the West), and they had just come in last night with a cooler full of beautiful fish. Somehow, he knew that we had just come back on the Bikoi last week, and he asked how our New Year celebrations (complete with "singroll") had been in Marulaon. I guess word gets around. We bought an almost 4 pound fish for a great price, and continued to walk around toward the shellfish.

I saw some "haleav" (not my favorite), and then I spied piles of "kalimeto" something I actually knew how to prepare! Just for fun, I asked where the young ladies had gathered the kalimeto, which were still crawling crawling around the bag laid on the ground. Their response? "The Russells"! I felt like God had led us straight to them. I was able to buy the shellfish using Lavukaleve (my limited vocabulary consists almost entirely of market phrases), and I discovered that the ladies were from Louna, the village in the East Russells that Aaron and Benjamin had visited last summer. On our way home, Aaron teased me that he couldn't take me to market without coming home with lots of extra food. But we think that going to market may be a great connection with the Eastern Russells and a way for me to continue language learning while staying in Honiara. What an exciting gift the Lord handed us this morning!

I called my friend from SITAG who had been asking how to prepare some local food, and she sat down with us to visit while we pulled the little critters out of their shells for two hours (the bowl on the left is the edible fruit of our labor). Karen works in literacy, especially in using God's Word to teach people to read. One of my burdens is that our friends in Marulaon aren't interested in the Pijin Bible. The entire Pijin Bible was dedicated in July 2008, and parts of it have been available for 30 years. I always thought that the Bible was just too expensive (about $10 US), but Karen suggested that the people just didn't know how to read in Pijin.

Whatever the reason, ever since we began to live among the Lavukal last April, I've been impressed that they are the soil in Jesus' parable of the Sower (Mark 4:1-20). Their hearts are so ready to receive God's truth and to apply it to their lives, but Satan uses so many things to steal away that Truth, especially since God's Word isn't written in their heart language - YET. Our road to facilitating translated scripture is a very long one. But, there are things we can do now to begin literacy and scripture use in the Russells. Will you please pray that God will continue to prepare fertile soil among the hearts of the Lavukal?