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Almost Christmas Greetings, I pray that in the approach to Christmas Day you are able to experience the joy and peace that is so present in the biblical account of Christmas and that the stress and chaos of the modern Christmas is not overwhelming that. One thing I love about being in Nigeria at this time of year is the lack of emphasis on buying presents for everyone and having all the right trimmings. I find it far easier to relax and remember why we are celebrating here than I ever did in England!
Tim and I both survived the Hausa course and I actually think we both (mostly) enjoyed the experience. One of the ladies on the course was recording each session and then listening to it again at home later. She said one of the things that it highlighted to her was just how much laughter there was during class. It was very stretching, especially for Tim who had a heavy workload for those weeks on top of the course. The monolingual style of teaching was kind of like a long series of overlapping guessing games – what are they saying now? Given the other words that they have used and the actions that they are doing, what must that word mean? But, as advertised, hugely effective, at least for those of us who enjoy guessing games! One of the interesting things that we did was read and act out Bible stories in Hausa – by taking a story that we were all already familiar with, we had a head start on working out what the words meant. Now that the course has finished our challenge is to keep putting into practice what we have learnt and to try to keep learning!
Dan has exams coming up at the end of this week, Thursday, Friday and Monday of next week. Please pray that he will prepare well and be able to focus during the exams. Thankfully he does not dread exams but he has a heavy cold at the moment and is not quite himself. In fact we have all been a bit up and down health wise for the last few weeks. I have had a couple of stomach bugs that knocked me out for several days each time and Dan has generously shared his cold with me. My sprained ankle is improving but I still have to walk slowly and can’t walk very far.
We are looking forward to having a visit from Tim’s mum and my mum over the Christmas period. It will be the first time that Tim’s mum has visited us here so we are trying to think of all the things she might enjoy doing and seeing. Trying to think up things to do has rather reminded me that Jos is not exactly a tourist destination! However we will all enjoy having time together and giving them a taste of our life here.
If you have time, please take a few minutes to pray for us.
Praise Enjoying our Christmas preparations Successful Hausa course
Prayer That we would all have good health, especially while the Mums are here. That Dan’s exams would go well That Tim and I would be inspired to continue to use the Hausa we have learnt and to add to it.
