Ten days at home then it's time to hit the road again, but this time in the opposite direction, and more accurately it's mostly a sand track. Djambala is just 170km south-east of Léconi but the deep sand along 100km of the trip, a river to be crossed by ferry and a national border where formalities take over two hours even when you have all your papers in order all make for a long slow trip, exasperated by a truck engine that overheated six times (is it just because of the hard-toiling through the deep sand or is the water pump beginning to fail?). However, we (Alice, Albert and I) finally made it to the church hostel around 8 pm, 12 hours after setting out and were grateful to get inside and out of the cold - it was remarkable how much colder, or perhaps just more humid, it was across the border. We had all spent the two hours completing the border formalities at Lekana trying not to shiver too much as we waited around for the different authorities because none of us had sweatshirts or jumpers to hand. This was Tuesday so we had a free day Wednesday to recover and look around Djambala before the workshop started on Thursday. The workshop was to train people to run group Bible studies based on using audio cassettes of Scripture portions, since they already have two of these in the Teke project in Congo. The workshop had been organised by the Congolese Teke language association and a member of the SIL team in Congo. Ten people from local churches turned up, about half the number that had signed up. However, that was fine because these ten came faithfully and enthusiastically to all the sessions for the full three days. I was impressed by how well some read and write in Teke and all seemed to get to grips well with the teaching. Hopefully they will be able to put it into practice in their respective churches and people will start to really understand the Scriptures in a new and deeper way. From Albert and Alice's point of view, the workshop was not only an opportunity to learn about creating and leading Bible studies but a chance to ask lots of questions about how the Congolese association is organised, what has worked and not worked in terms of organising literacy classes, etc. A worthwhile trip all the challenges of the journey not withstanding. But we did still have to face the homeward leg! Thankfully border formalities only took 1/2 hour this time. The truck's engine still kept overheating but we had grown wise to it. We couldn't stop it happening but we at least had our Bible to hand and spent the waiting time developing study questions for the passages in Genesis we have been and will be translating. Looks idyllic in the photos but the grass is actually quite prickly and there was no lack on ants and other tiny beasts to make it rather more uncomfortable than appears. We also managed not one but two flat tyres on the homeward trip, but thankfully the second one only occurred very close to home so it was actually a day or two later when I noticed it - if it had happened earlier we would have been in severe difficulties as I don't carry two spare wheels! And there's no repair shop in Léconi so you have to find a reliable driver to take the punctured ones to Franceville for repair. Not fun!