What does it take to tell a story?

We loaded the pirogue at 5am and were underway less than an hour later. My goal for the 11_ hour pirogue ride is to master 4 kingdom parable in Lingala: the parable of the mustard seed, the parable of yeast, the parable of the mysterious grown of a seed sown, and the parable of the net.

Some people find it easy, but it's not for me.  Even in English, I make sure I've told myself a story 10 times before I present it to someone else.

In French, at least twice that...

In Lingala, 4 or 5 times that...

At first it's almost memorization for me.  Before I share it with others, I learn what the Lingala KJV equivalent and the living Kinsasha-language Bible has, and then I test it on a few friends and make necessary changes.  And then when I teach it, I listen intently for how people say the story in their own words.

For example I notice that instead of saying the archaic word for nest, most people simply say the birds build their houses.  Or I find that the term "flour medicine" for yeast is a word coined by Bible translators and no one has a clue what it means.  Really everyone uses the French word "levure".  We call this 'crafting the story', and for me as a non-native speaker, it requires diligence and faithfulness to communicate God's Word accurately in ways that my listeners can easily understand.

Even with all that, my work isn't finished, because there's the very real problem of pronunciation and accent.  You can take a girl out of the south, but you can't take the south of this girl.  So I record my crafted story told by a native speaker and listen to it when I walk in the mornings and when I wash dishes and cook.

As I write this, it's now almost 3pm.  We've been underway on the river for over 9 hours, and we know that today our trip will definitely be on the + side of 11 hours.  More like 13 or more.  We've seen beautiful sights and troubling sights out here on the rivers of the Congo.  As we have motored along at about 15 miles per hour, I've told my stories to myself at least 5 times each.  I've asked a couple of clarifying questions of my friend, Mahmi.  And before we arrive, I plan to say them to myself all again, at least 5 more times.

All in a day's work...

{Mahmi}

***Our arrival time was 8pm, so we spent 14 1/2 hours on the river.***