English or Lingala – Commandments Still the Same

TOPEKA, KS (January 12, 2005) - He's not one of those kids who stands out in a crowd. He behaves like a lot of questioning adolescents bent on testing the rules - and no doubt the parents' patience at times – in an effort to discover personal identity and establish a personal code of conduct.

His name is Walo and he lives in Zaire. He's a fairly typical lad – loves playing soccer and tries his best to avoid the schoolyard bully. He's currently studying the "rules" for conduct at his school and wondering why his village needs so many "rules."

Thanks to the work of former Evangelical Covenant Church missionary Gretchen Samuelson who lives in Topeka, Walo is helping teach new generations of African youth (in their own Lingala language) practical applications of the "rules" of Scripture through a newly published book, Walo Ayekoli Mibeko Zomi, where the fictional Walo learns about the Ten Commandments through village-centered stories and intriguing illustrations drawn by an African artist.

The idea for the book originated when Gretchen and her husband, Dean served in 1978 as short-term missionaries to Congo (formerly Zaire) with the Evangelical Free Church. The couple later ministered from 1981 until 1997 as Covenant missionaries, primarily in Wasolo, where Dean served as a medical doctor and Gretchen worked in areas of education.

"Besides the myriads of other cultural adjustments, we were especially struck with various moral issues and how to confront them," she says in describing the couple's experiences in Congo that provided the impetus for the project.

"It is always easier to spot the sins of another culture than those of your own," she continues, "and we wanted to be kind, loving missionaries rather than harsh or judgmental, especially when most situations involved a lot of factors we didn't yet (or now) understand. I dealt with these problems (such as children stealing fruit from our trees, adultery in the church or questionable tribal customs) by sighing loudly, continuing my work and saying to myself, 'I won't say anything yet, but someday I'll write a book about the 10 commandments in Lingala. So THERE!'"

The idea never left her over the years filled with other jobs and responsibilities. She decided to read through the Bible once again, but this time with "new eyes" to glean from individual chapters and verses what Scripture has to say about the commandments, especially in the context of changing cultural practices. Her notes eventually led to story ideas about a Zairian boy named Walo who during his struggle to understand the need for rules asks his father, "Why can't we just do what we want (especially if the schoolyard bully can do whatever he wants)?"

As the stories unfold, readers encounter situations that deal with each of the 10 commandments. Each commandment has a village story, a picture and a corresponding Bible story that Walo's father either tells or reads around the family's cooking fire each night. "I can't tell you the conclusion of course, or it would spoil the ending," Gretchen notes. "But the 12th chapter does tell what God's laws can do (give us a clearer picture of what God is like and how He wants us to live), and also what God's laws can't do (save us - only Jesus can do that.)

"The pictures were fun," she continues. "My friend Leann Christy in Salina called one night and said that she had seen a display that Karen Andrews (from Minnesota) had brought to their church, which included a book with some interesting pictures. Karen sent me samples, which were wonderfully done by a Central African artist living in Bangui, Jean-Noel Ndiba. Karen promised to hunt him down when she returned to Africa if I would draw up a list of exactly what pictures I wanted him to do . . . and we obtained 12 beautiful, totally authentic color pictures, detailed and exactly what I'd envisioned. The Lord worked overtime arranging all that!"

The book project involved lots of people, including her husband. "While I'm the person with ideas, my husband, Dean, ends up doing a lot of the actual work because my Lingala is strictly 'missionary' Lingala - the Congolese can understand in general what I mean," she explains. "Dean has a wonderful gift for languages, nuances, editing and grammar, so he heavily edits the first drafts of any literature work that I do.

"At this point we had a visit from Minnesotan Jody LeVahn, our longtime mentor and colleague, who brought with her our friend from the Wasolo days, Sapo Gelega, a hospital administrator," Gretchen recalls. "Sapo read through the stories and made corrections to them. By the time we had worked on those corrections, Pastor Ngendema, then head of Christian literature for the Covenant Church of Congo (CEUM) was visiting in Kansas City. He graciously stayed up several nights reading through about 20 manuscripts and children's Lingala-language books that I'd prepared over the years, to give us advice on what he would like to see reprinted, and in what priority. Ed and Lois Olson and I met with Pastor Ngendema, who had many ideas and suggestions. He was very frank about what books he didn't think would be particularly helpful. But then he held up the 10 commandments manuscript and waving it in the air said, 'But this, this is what we need. Our young people must have the morality. This is what I want you to print.' I'll never forget how excited I was to hear his words since I had believed for so long that this could be a useful book."

It was an experience in 1988 that implanted the sense of call and passion for the Lingala language work. "I was pregnant in Wasolo," she says. "As I cleaned the house, I glanced at our bookshelves and realized that we already had more - far more – English-language children's books for our UNBORN baby than the total sum of books that had been written on all subjects, for all ages, in Lingala. This new baby only needed to arrive to begin to benefit from the dozens of Bible stories, devotional books, silly stories, character stories, heritage stories, biographies, folk tales, children's encyclopedias, poetry books, picture books, Winnie the Pooh and Anne of Green Gables on our shelves. Children in Congo have no books, no libraries, no textbooks - and even worse, neither do their teachers nor parents. That's when I began longing to write in Lingala, hoping to give Congolese a glimpse of the possibilities, to stimulate their imagination and creativity so they could begin to write and illustrate for their own people.

"Some of the Congo women's literacy leaders asked me to write a book about health, and then one on child-rearing, and so I began work on an assortment of fun topics, many illustrated by Suzanne Straton, an artist in Kearney, Nebraska, whose drawings of Africans reflect a peace and dignity I've rarely seen," she continues. "She and I collaborated on several books and talked many times on the phone, and maybe 15 years later decided we should meet for lunch. We drove to a halfway meeting point in northern Kansas and were both shocked when we met - she and I could easily be mistaken for each other, looking more like sisters than my own sister and I do, which shows what a sense of humor our Lord has."

Three thousand copies of the 10 commandments book have been shipped to Bangui in the Central African Republic for use in Congo. "There are many ways that the books will be used," says Pete Ekstrand, regional coordinator for Africa for the Department of World Mission of the Evangelical Covenant Church. "Some will be used in the homes with families. Individuals will use them for study purposes, as will Sunday school classes."

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