Here is an excerpt from the Lynskey’s January 2010 Newsletter:
Back to the Village
Many in the village have already planted many of their crops (i.e., corn, beans, peanuts, and cassava) and are preparing to plant mpunga (rice). This is their major produce (cash and subsistence crop). They are preparing for the heavy rains (due to come in a few months) and will often spend weeks to months at a time at their mashamba (farms).
This will inevitably change the demeanor of the village life. We trust that we will be able to continue with a steady progress in language learning as well as connect with this pertinent and perennial rhythm of their life..
I (Matt) have made frequent trips to help my friends clear out their fields as well as plant the crops. Also, Sukey and I have riskily attempted to do a little farming of our own. We are hand-excavating a small area behind our house for a little garden. This tribe is truly a farming tribe; we pray that participation in this aspect of their life will reap invaluable insight into who they are as a distinct people group, meanwhile, granting us discernment into the manner we could offer community/transformational development to the village.
Otherwise, we are continuing the daily struggle and joy of language learning. Many of us are making progress. However, this progress is often met with terrain of its own: plateaus, hills, steady plains, valleys, and mountains. As for the dynamics of our team, it seems that we reach these different stages at different times. However, it seems (in God’s grand providence) that when we reach those ominous terrains, we sense the reality of the body praying for us and laboring with us back home. We cannot express how privileged we are to know that you are truly partnering for this people group.
So What About Our Insides, Familiarity as Friend or Foe?
Familiarity can be a best friend and a contemptuous fiend. There is much to say about being in one place for a long time. Although our six-month stay in our village is short by most standards, it has brought great blessings and other challenges.
It is interesting how more time spent with people often allows you to get to know them in a unique way. However, the more familiar one gets with these people, one becomes aware of two things: first, what has made them who they are is the result of years of history, culture, and socialization; consequently, second, change is a slow, painstaking, and grueling process.
As we have resided in our village for nearly a half-of-a-year, we are beginning to become familiar with it more so than other parts of the country. In fact, we are becoming accustomed to hearing daily calls to prayer, unsurprised to find intricate webs of family relations scattered throughout the village, and knowledgeable of the undercurrent of animistic practices that they “innocently” attribute as mere culture.
As we become more familiar with the power and influences that have made them who they are, we are learning that the wells of humans run very deep. On one hand, becoming familiar with them reminds us of the formidable process of change and the need for the intervention of God.
However, the joys of familiarity constantly contend with these challenges. There are few things sweeter than another culture accepting you as an insider, naming you as their own, and claiming you as their own. Although we have experienced these things in minute ways, the foretaste is inexpressibly sweet.
Moreover, we are beginning to be able to be called friends. Our friends call us when we travel, stop by our house when they haven’t seen us for a few days, invite us to meals, ask us to help them work, and introduce their family members to us. Perhaps there is a time where hospitality changes its form for a guest and a friend, and familiarity is the bridge of that gap. Moreover, perhaps familiarity breeds the kind of living in which help is received and given, love is felt and offered, and joy is mutually celebrated: in other words, life is shared.
~ Matt and Sukey
