Gospel in a hovel- June 14th

The whole time we were in Kellog it never got dark. So people kept some pretty strange hours and I got really exhausted. I was constantly in demand for translation and this began to wear me out. After being there for one week I got sick and began to lose my voice. We were all sleeping in the same room. Even at 2am as I lay in bed trying to sleep people were asking me to translate, I refused and told them I was going to sleep. To make matters more difficult, our hosts got up about 12pm every day and we usually had two meals, one at around 2 pm and 10pm. I got really sick, of bread, potatoes, plain pasta and fish after a while. The diet was pretty plain. Well we did have some salads, so I won't complain too much.

This is Gennady's house. It has a small kitchen and one room. The floor is dirty and the room has one bed in it and of course a tv. Gennady is a wonderful man. He is a hunter. But it did strike me that he lived in a hovel. Some of the other houses that were run by women were neater inside, but most only had one or two rooms (Russian's don't count the kitchen. None of them had a bathroom. That function is fulfilled by an out house and a Banya/ wooden Sauna.)



The day before I gave Gennady a little booklet with a testimony from an ex-Shaman. Gennady asked for more copies and he gave them to some friends. We promised to come back on the Saturday. Our whole team turned up. Within 10 minutes Gennady had pulled a group of 15 together into his tiny house. So we proceeded to share the good news with them. Yura shared his testimony and people were hanging off every word. Mika and Samuli sang some Psalms in Russian that they had prepared. I translated for Mika, but did not really share any of my own words that day.



Yura was growing rapidly in his faith. A prophet is not accepted in his home town, but here they listened intently to Yura's every word. They even asked him some questions that he answered well.


Some of the group that were at Gennady's house that day.


This is the River Elogui. "Elo" actually means river in Ket. Different Ket people disagreed, some said it meant widning river and others said it meant little river.



Fishing is the biggest past time in Kellog. Even the kids get into it, whether they catch much or not.


This little girl, Milana, aged 5, just loved having her photo taken. I would take a photo and she would always immediately say "show me, show me!" and then "take another one, take another one!"


Yura even came with a fishing rod in his bag. Where as a compliment for a Russian would be "you're a real Sibiryak" this doesn't work for an indigenous person, he told me I could call him a "real Tungus!" (Tungus is the old word for his people group, but not as accurate as Evenki.) Yura got tired of fishing in the Elogui because most of the fish were fairlly small. One time he caught 50 fish, but then it took him a long time to clean them all.