Celebrating the feast of the lamb

We celebrated Abraham’s faithfulness and God’s gift of a ram for sacrifice last Friday with Musxlim friends.  Jan Cone, Lori Shinar, and I went to various homes right here in “downtown” Gamboula:

We had some good conversations and some absolutely delicious lamb on rice – seasoned with kimbangi, a sort of a black pepper tasting seed skin.  Promptly at the 1:30 pm prayer time, there was a special gathering (sorry I wasn’t quick enough with the camera – you see the men disbursing after having joined in prayer) to pray for a young man in this clan who finished reading the Qu’ran.  The women were together also, but apart from the men.  A close friend of mine had tears in her eyes for the prayer –  I’m guessing she was thinking about the young man’s mom, who had passed away in the last year, and who missed this huge milestone in her son’s life.

Roy’s celebration was very different; he and Kim Cone, Josh Shinar, Bernard Bekosso, and Pastor Boniface traveled about 45 miles in 5 hours to a village north of us.  They went in the Cones’/Free Church’s jeep, which is the only vehicle we’re willing to use on that crummy road.  Roy stood in the back the whole way.  The road is bad mainly because of the broken up bridges – here they are widening the inner strip to cross over on one of the “okay” bridges:

Along the way, they stopped and visited at villages and were treated to meat and tea and rice and even sheep intestines, which Josh actually found tasty!  They celebrated the feast and handed out scripture in Arabic script Fulfulde, and spent the night, and then headed back home over those bad roads.

Please pray for our relationships with these friends, for the scripture in their hands, for God’s love to shine!!!!