mybeautifulfeet on Xanga

How Beautiful are the Feet of those who bring Good News! ~Romans 10:15

Sunday, 18 October 2009

Prayer for Peace in Guinea

I have an important prayer request to share with you. Perhaps you have seen Guinea in the news the last few weeks. Tensions have mounted in the capital, a day 2 drive from where we live. We have always felt safe but this is still a serious concern for us. My teammate and I are in Mali for trainings the next 3 weeks and will be accessing the situation for our return. Please pray for Guinea that peace will reign and that we can return and share the Prince of Peace. Pray we will have wisdom to know the best decision for our situation. We are working with the leadership of our organizations to make the best decision and are thankful that our welfare is of highest priority.
Got Mud?

Our drive out from the bush of Guinea to the big city of Bamako is a 2 day adventure. We left our town around 7:30 am for the first leg of the journey, which was around 6 hours on muddy roads filled with ruts. We made it to the hotel in our stop-over town around 2:30 to rest up for next day. Hit the road on day 2 around 7:15 am and had to wait for 2 trucks to dig there way out from being stuck in the mud. We simply pray as we drive through and Jesus lifts up our tires so we never got stuck!

After 6 or so more hours on bad roads we make it to a large city where we get gas and begin our off-roading (that’s what we call driving on pavement). From there it’s a couple hours to the Mali border where no one really looked at our passports to notice our expired visas (praise the Lord) and then a couple more hours to our final destination of Bamako.
That Reminds me of a Story...

After a story we ask the following (American version/African version):

*What did you like about the story?         What is good inside the story?

*What did you not like about the story? What is bad inside the story?

*What does it teach us about God?           What did God do in the story?

*What does it teach us about man?           What did people do in the story?

*What can we obey from the story?          What should you obey?

*How can you remember this story?         How can story stay in your head?

*Who are you going to tell it to?             Who will you tell?
Road to Storying

1 RESEARCH – use many translations and commentaries to prepare English version of story

2 CRAFTING – African crafter hears story from several sources and retells it for us, we work through parts we do not understand until we get a good 1^st recording

3 BACK-TRANSLATING – literal line by line rendering of story in English

4 TESTING – several diverse groups of people hear the story, retell it, and answer our questions to check for understanding

5 ANCHORING – give Scripture reference to justify each line, send to supervisor for approval

6 FINISHING – testing or supervisor notes may reveal areas needing rework with crafter before any editing and final recording

Pray for God’s favor in each step of the storying process!
Grace vs. Law

We have revised our story set theme to be God’s grace as opposed to salvation through keeping the law. I considered what aspect of the gospel our people struggle with and realized we need to help them see the need for Jesus as Savior. So after stories on creation, fall and Abraham we want to use Moses stories to establish man’s attempt at reaching God though keeping the law. We will include the foreshadowing of God’s forgiveness in the Passover as well.

After an Isaiah story to tell of God’s promised Savior we have many Jesus stories (birth, baptism, selected miracles, death and resurrection). We emphasize that Jesus is in fact God and then use a Romans 3 story to show that our way of being made right with God is through faith in Him. The coming of the Holy Spirit and a few stories on the early church highlight baptism and immediate obedience. Because these people are so set in their ways I wanted to include the story of Paul’s conversion because it will take a similar work of God’s Spirit to reach them. We conclude with a story on the 2^nd coming of Jesus.
God Just 1 Upped Himself!

A mining company has a station on a mountain about an hour from our house. We have been up there several times and whenever we go it is like God outdoes Himself each time. This last time we went we finally greeted the right people so we can easily use the Internet there. Our new African friend was impressed with our language and that we wear African clothes. We explained that is because we want the people to realize our message of God’s love for them is not just a religion for white people.

After using the computers I was ready to leave when our new friend invited us to lunch. I am glad we did not just rush off because we would have missed a great opportunity. We learned he speaks good English and he asked to discuss religion so I shared the story of Jesus healing the demoniac. We hope to continue this new relationship since he seemed genuinely interested.
Mandu and Miamu's Anniversary!

October 11, 2009 was our 1 year anniversary of being in Africa! Amanda and I celebrated by making a quote book of all the funny things we remember from the past year.
Faith Trek

Because it’s the tail end of rainy season we had not made the trip to our Internet town five hours away since April. But we learned there is another road so we left not really knowing where we were going. We simply ask directions as we went. At one point there was a fork in the road and we did not know which was to go. So after a potty break and a prayer God sent some men to direct us. When all you have is God you realize He is more than enough! This trip reminded us that we live by faith, not by sight.
Wedding Bells? More like Wedding Drums!

Our village mom’s younger brother lives in our compound. At first he never talked to us and we called him the illusive hunter (he caught us the snake that we ate). Then one day he saw us in town and his face lit up with a big smile! He recently got married and so his young wife lives with us now too. She does most of the chores like getting water, washing dishes and helping cook.
Village Mom

Our dad in the village has 2 wives. The older wife (on my left) has 5 kids and 3 grandkids. Both wives have their own bedroom and help with the cooking. Right after we first got here this wife left to visit a sick relative in another city. It was neat because when she left we could not say anything more than basic greetings but when she came back we could talk more and start to share stories with her.