Today’s teaching, like every day since we started to teach through the Bible here in our village, was a real team effort!
We rejoice in seeing our Mwinika brothers co-teach with Francois. Today however, Francois was sick and could not attend (I insisted! :)). Although it is not yet ideal that the Mwinika helpers teach on their own, they were able to continue today without a glitch! We got a glimpse of how it would (and should) be one day, since we do not want to have ownership over the newborn church. Too many times churches planted by missionaries disintegrate when they leave… We hope that when we go, we will leave a strong, mature church behind:
Salim did the review of the previous lessons.
Since Jati taught the last lesson on Friday, he asked questions to see if the group tracked well and understood. They did!
Vrydag taught the lesson today about the tower of Babel. The teachers are doing better each time as Francois coaches them to communicate well. The group really engaged well today and Vrydag prepared so well that he hardly needed looked at his notes!
The Scripture reading today was done by Amer, one of Francois’s helpers (but not a teacher) and Pwisir, one of last year’s literacy students. Each day another person is reading and those that completed the literacy course are happy to show off their skill! This helps too to get there readers engaged with God’s Word as well as participate in the teaching. To be able to read also gives them some status in the community and encourages others to take the literacy course.
A short skid today was acted out by Swarthand and Jati.
The group loved it! They really understand well that Satan likes to mislead us, even though he may pretend to be our friend. This points directly to the many Mwinika healing ceremonies in which they will ask a stronger spirit the help heal them from the sickness brought on by a weaker spirit. However, they are not really being “helped”, but only mislead!
Salim also filled in some of the gabs of the teaching to make sure the group of people tracked well. At some stages he and Vrydag were teaching together – beautiful to see! These two guys are respectively leaders in their religious houses, but of opposite sides of the spectrum! Still, here they are teaching now together as brothers in Christ. Praise God!