Grasshoppers for lunch

Well, it's back to classes on Monday the 30th. This past week was mid-term break (we stayed in Ndu for the most part; Charlie and I joined our friend Ally from the Peace Corps for a trip to the larger village of Kumbo to pick up some food supplies, etc., on Wednesday, but other than that little excursion, we were around the seminary campus), and the week before that we gave mid-term exams. So, starting Monday, we'll begin again with the typical routine of lectures, meeting with students, going to chapel, and grading papers. It will be good to have things back to "normal"!

One of the responsibilities we've been given most recently is supervising theses that the graduating Bachelor of Theology students will write this year. Tommy, Charlie, and I are each supervising at least one thesis, and it will take a substantial investment of time to do a good job. Each thesis will be 60 double-spaced pages (around 15,000 words), and as readers, we are expected to give input on the content, structure, grammar and syntax, formatting of citations, style, and readability, as well help the students find good resources and read them well. Once we start back full-force with the fall semester this week, this new task will consume a lot of our time and effort. Pray for us in this regard, that we'll guide and direct our students well, that our input and feedback will be helpful. (Some of the topics students are writing on are, for example: "Christianity and the Problem of Pain"; "The Gospel as the Power of God for Salvation: An Exegesis of Romans 1:16-17"; "The Church-Plating Methods of the Apostle Paul.")

On a lighter note, yesterday for lunch the three of us ate fried grasshoppers. Here's how I described the experience in an email to my dad, mom, brother, and sister:

"I tried my first grasshopper. In fact, I tried three. For the next two weeks or so, big, fat, bright green grasshoppers will be everywhere outside, like one of the plagues in Exodus, and adults and kids here love catching them and stuffing them into large plastic bottles. If you give a bottle full of grasshoppers to an elder Cameroonian, it's a great honor. … So a kid named Samuel helped us catch a few last night (they congregate around fluorescent lights on campus), and today Pa, our cook, fried them up for us in a pan (no need to add oil---when they fry, they kind of secrete their own oil), and then showed us how to pull off their legs and wings. I'll be honest, when I held the first one and looked at its small, black, beady eyes, I gulped, not wanting to stick that thing into my mouth. But when I tried it, I was really surprised by how much I liked it. Grasshoppers are kind of chewy and kind of crunchy, I discovered. And the aftertaste reminds me of shrimp (Linda Yong disagrees---she says bacon). I had three in all, Charlie videoed it and snapped a few pictures, and it was a lot of fun. Hopefully we'll post some of the shots on the blog soon."

-Wes