a day in the life... // chapter 4: we've a story to tell the nations

You’ve heard much from Jay about telling God’s story.  Read, enjoy, and praise the Father for these summarized excerpts from the newsletters of our precious friend and colleague, Kathy Daniel, as she shares about an influential training that she and Jay were recently involved in:

 I received news from Togo this week.  Their main market in the capital city burned.  The fire trucks from Togo arrived, and they had no water to fight the fire.  The fire trucks from the neighboring country of Ghana were trying to come, but the border guards would not allow them to enter the country because of formalities.  Seems unbelievable, I know.

In the days in which I find myself, I feel like the fire is burning stronger and spreading way past control, and I’m praying that the fire trucks will never arrive.  We are in the midst of training 24 people from 4 language groups about how to craft stories from the Bible in ways that are accurate, understandable, and reproducible.  Most all of the participants have been trained in how to use the stories for evangelism and have been doing that for a year or longer.  That track record was their admission ticket to this training.  Now we want them to be able to have an arsenal of well-crafted stories, continue to fill this arsenal with stories, and now expand into discipleship with these stories.

Today, some of the embers of this fire were spread between language groups and countries as they shared testimonies of how they have been using the stories up until this point.  Let me spread some of the fire your way;  one people group has started 6 churches using stories, another people group started 8 churches, and for the trucker stories, they are now being broadcast on the radio in Togo, and the director of the radio station and her husband have accepted Christ.  And by the way, he has felt called by God to be a pastor and has enrolled in school.

The training continued through Feb 1^st.  Many folks were involved from the trainers to the participants.  The Lord orchestrated so many things logistically in the lives of almost 30 people for these two weeks to take place.

• What happens next and how can you pray? The “long haul” is beginning now as the trained teams return to their towns and villages with assignments to craft, test, and record 4 stories before we come together again in March.  Please keep praying that they will be faithful to complete the task.  Pray that they will accurately handle God’s Word as they craft these stories and that they will “shine like stars in the universe as they hold out the Word of Life.”