Here are some photos of the first day of teaching to in our area. We and the handful Mwinika believers were just absolutely thrilled to be able to teach Scriptures to our friends who have never had the opportunity to hear about God’s redemption to all mankind.
Francois co-teaching with Mwinika believers! We are so very, very thankful that we have this privileged to co-teach with 5 men (not 4 as I wrote before!) who have listened to the first round of teaching and now confess Christ as their Lord!
Continue to pray for them. The guy on the right, Dries, is tomorrow’s main teacher. The guy on the left, Shafr, is HIV+ and became a believer through our partners, the Henderson’s friendship and ministry. He already had full blown AIDS when Phil asked supporters to pray for Shafr. Shafr later became a believer and we are sure that this experience had a lot to do with that… Another example of your partnership in this ministry through prayer!
People listening to the teaching.
Enjoying the skit!
A skit, portraying a local court case as an example to show that one should listen to the WHOLE message to understand what was said (read: come to the teaching each day!). The guys participating are all believers.
Pray with us that MORE people will come, hungry to hear the Truth and that the Lord will open their understanding.
Showing a translation of the Bible in another language. The reason why the Mwinika people invited us to come and live among them, was because they wanted to hear the Scriptures in their own language. Therefore, in today’s introduction lesson, Francois illustrated this by asking one of the traditional religious leaders (Dries) to read the Scriptures in the original Hebrew language. He couldn’t read or understand it, of course…
Francois then asked another religious leader (Vrydag) to read the Scriptures in their religious language. He could read it, but neither he nor any of the other Mwinika could understand what was read. (He was the guy who told us right in the beginning when we arrived here, that he so much wants to understand what God says, but he does not understand their religious language. He was thrilled to illustrate that today!).
The listeners participated and enjoyed the illustrations and the skit! They could really grasp what was said. Praise God!
One of the men who did the Literacy course and is now trained as a Literacy teacher, was asked to read that same part of Scripture, but this time in the eMwinika language. People reacted with a whole hearted: “NOW we understand! We could understand everything he read, because he read it like we talk here at home.”
What a long ways we have come… Isn’t God amazing? One supporter wrote us and reminded us of the significance of the number “7” – the number of years we have been here in Mwinika Land (and the date of the first day’s teaching!). We pray that the harvest will be great, that many, many more Mwinika will come to listen… and that they will BELIEVE!
