kids' songs, praise songs, fish songs, and songs you hear over and over . . .

We had another great trip to the forest! This trip was a little different than previous ones for several reasons. First, my sweet sister was with me! Also, our team was able to teach some in the school. The church in this village runs a very successful school, and they had asked us to do some English and Bible teaching there. We spent some time with the children each morning, teaching them some basic vocabulary, as well as praise songs in Malagasy and English. We even taught them “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” and the “Hokey-Pokey” to review our body part vocab! (Who knew what a workout “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” is?!)

At the end of each morning with the kids, we asked two of them to re-tell some of the Bible stories they’ve been working on. Their teacher, Tete, is part of our story-crafting group, so after the group finishes a story, he teaches it to all the children at the school. They are fast, eager learners! They all did a great job with their re-tellings, and as always I was blessed to see how God is spreading the stories throughout this village and even into their future generations!

Another blessing of the trip was having the whole crafting group together, with some new people too! Last month, one special woman, Reliny, was at a funeral, but I got to spend a lot more time with her on this visit. She even took us out to her family’s cassava field and showed us how to pull the cassava roots up out of the ground. Hard work, but fun!

We also had some youth and children in the crafting group, and I was amazed by their attentiveness—their elders have certainly set a good example of cherishing the stories. One of the young boys was even able to re-tell the new story the next day at school!

An older woman in the group wasn’t there the first day for our story-crafting, and I was worried we might not see her. The next morning, I woke to the sound of girls chanting in Masikoro:

There are fish,

Over at Brigita’s!

They’re cheap!

Come quickly to see!

Their little ditty rhymed in Malagasy, and told me two things: we would be having fish that day, and Brigita was back in the village in time for the second day of story-crafting! And she was! The fish were delicious, too. :)

Another special moment during the trip: we visited a woman and her family who I met the first time I came to the village. On our last trip, she had shown me her xylophone, a bundle of sticks which she stacked on her legs and played beautifully! I asked her about it again when we went to visit her, and she and some of her sisters all played together. They were amazing! One of their brothers played a handmade guitar along with them, and they even sang some—such light, playful, original music to come floating out of the Masikoro forest! 

They invited me to try too—I did, but the sounds I made were sorely lacking in the skill and quality theirs possessed. They were gracious about my inability, though :) This is a family that I really want to get to know better, and who I am constantly praying for God to draw them to Himself, as I can see He is, so I was excited to be able to spend this special time with them.

Noelle was with us on this trip, and as always he was eager to play his guitar with Mazikini, one of the members of the story-crafting group. They are a wonder to watch together, and have already composed several original praise songs, some of which stem out of the Bible stories. The children in the village are among their most avid admirers, and so most nights we gathered around the fire with our two musicians, while children materialized out of the darkness, and crowded closely to practice their favorite songs. 

Noelle also provided us with another source of musical entertainment—he had brought a cassette tape with his name emblazoned across it, which contained approximately 5 songs in English. The songs were sort of Bob Marley-esque, though he told us the singer was an African. Those songs played over and over, morning and night, over the course of our entire trip. As we drove home, one of us started humming one, and we discovered that we each had different parts of different songs stuck in our heads, but all, of course, from that tape. :)

 As always, I was thankful for the chance to get to know everyone just a little bit better on this trip—this village becomes more and more precious to me each time I visit. And it should be even less than a month until I can go back! This time, for the first time, I started a story with them that I knew we wouldn’t have time to finish, so I left it with them to work on as a group. I’m so excited to see their progress—pray that His Holy Spirit will guide them over the next month as they craft the story together!