Mission Ready?

While visiting our office recently, Pastor Dave said to us, “STS training makes people ‘mission ready.'”

Pastor Dave graciously introduces our new 12 episode video series implementing parts of Simply The Story (STS) designed to help equip people to share the Lord with people anywhere. This series, “Moment for Eternity,” is set to release in October on our Vimeo station https://vimeo.com/user99495912. We pray this helps make people “mission ready.”

This pastor also shared about the impact of their Vacation Bible School (VBS) over the summer. For the past 2 VBSs, they have implemented STS and they are finding tremendous results. Parents are asking to know the dates far in advance to plan their vacations around the VBS. The children also love VBS, and the church has seen an uptick in VBS attendance as well.

Pastor Dave shared this story about his family while packing and preparing to catch a boat. He explained to his 7-year-old daughter that they would be left behind if they did not make the boat in time. His daughter was concerned. Dave asked his daughter what she thought they should do. She responded by saying, "Trust the Lord." She then started sharing back the Bible stories from their VBS they learned a month earlier! These were not the children's version, but complete Bible stories!

Africa Moves from Heresy to Accuracy!

Sometimes people confess their sins during or shortly after learning how to do Simply The Story because they are deeply impacted by the truth they find in God's Word. We see this as a result of spending time in the Bible.

A recent training in Sierra Leone produced results like these. People involved in teaching the Bible confessed they had been teaching wrongly, and even teaching heresy, and were excited to return to accuracy!

One lady in the same training, who could not read, learned the Simply The Story process better than the others. In this same training, the president of a large denomination loved STS so much, that he plans to use the process in the whole church. Can you imagine literates and non-literates learning the Bible together?

The people are ready and asking for STS Oral Bible Schools and our leader plans to return in January.

Theologian Meets Oral Method!

Our European Directors shared about the exciting progress for Simply The Story (STS) in Europe and the impact it has had on attendees. At the July training in the Netherlands, one group spent time in the "Joshua Meets Captain" story (Joshua 5:12-6:5). One theologian in the group, who specifically assigns this passage to her students, discovered for the first time the faith of Joshua and the Israelites when the manna stopped! The theologian observed that the Israelites had to trust God in the land because once the manna stopped; the Israelites could not go back.

This theologian also realized that many of her students are not highly literate and that STS could help them grow and find depth in the Bible.

After one illustration about the statistics of literacy and communication, a pastor was shocked to learn that the assumption he made, of the people in his church as being lazy regarding Bible reading, was false! He never thought about the fact that many in his church are oral learners.

We are looking forward to more training later this year in Serbia, Netherlands, and Bulgaria.

God's Story: From Creation to Eternity Debuts

We recently completed 5 languages of God's Story for Sierra Leone (Limba, Krio, Loko, Themne, and Kono), and already amazing reports are coming in to our office. The translator for the Loko language, also a hospital chaplain, uses God's Story on solar players in the hospital and the patients love it.

We also started the God's Story language launchings (an official gathering in villages where we gift God's Story in different formats to the leaders of the village) in Sierra Leone, but the rains caused some of these launchings to be postponed until January. However, at least one God's Story language, Kono, had been aired on radio.

After being stopped, our leader mentioned to police that they were just returning from the launch of Kono. The police said, "We just heard this on the radio this morning." Our leader and the team were released with joy.

At these language launchings, we encourage the community leaders to use these gifts for the body of Christ and the people of the language.

In August, the Lord allowed a team to train some Maasai believers in Simply The Story. One Maasai woman gave a testimony of what this training meant to her and we posted it on our Vimeo and Youtube station (see link at end of report).

We thank the Lord for allowing God’s Story in Spanish to be aired on radio in Central California.

Myanmar Team Impacts Burmese in the USA!

Our top leaders from Myanmar blessed us at our annual training in Hemet, CA, this past July.  These leaders left our headquarters in California and traveled to Omaha, Michigan, Florida and Chicago teaching the STS process to Burmese speakers.

They said the Burmese believers are very interested in STS, but some of them could not take time from work. They taught mostly in Burmese, noting that the next generation born in the USA needed English. Our leaders reportd that some people do not attend church services, so the team went house to house, encouraging and praying for the people. As a result the people started to attend the church as well as the STS training! We all thank God for what He is doing in people's lives.

India Team Reaches the Northeast.

Praise God, our team has finished the recordings of the Hmar and Dimasa languages of God's Story. The Dimasa people don’t have Old Testament scripture, so God's Story will be a great resource to help them know about the Creator God. Please continue to pray for our India team as they work on more God's Story languages.

The STS team recently trained 83 Bengali believers in Northeast India. Many of  the attendees were young! Our leader wrote, "God touched their heart." Many received Jesus as their personal Savior and learned the STS process. Our leader asked us to please remember them as they go back to respective places to be witnesses with the Bible.

From the Village to the Heart.

A missionary to Southeast Africa wrote to us recently. He was asked by his organization to write an article. It starts like this, "About a year ago, I was off to Orlando, Florida to a Bible Story workshop called ‘Simply the Story.’ I wanted to know how I could share God’s Word effectively in a culture that prefers oral modes of communicating. I was growing discouraged at a lack of connection between my style of teaching (Western, literate) and my community’s style of learning (African, oral). In other words, I wanted to know how to teach people to understand the Bible even when they aren’t comfortable reading the Bible.

When I began the training, I expected that the greatest impact would be on my neighbors whom I serve in our village. I should have known better…."

Read More Here: https://www.worldventure.com/how-oral-storytelling-brought-me-deeper-into-scripture/

International Students Learning More than Just Information.

A leader working among international students emailed us an update. "Since our STS workshop …we have enjoyed using the STS method in a number of forums.  Firstly, we are using it weekly with our International Student ministry among seekers.  After telling the story with 30-40 people, we break into groups of 5-6 to discuss, using STS questions.  This is leading to some great discussion, and discovery." This leader continued to share that one Indonesian believer was amazed that within her group, which included Mu-lims, B-ddhists and non-religious people, all were able to discover the right answers from the Bible story. This believer wisely recognized that if someone had told these answers to these non-believers, these listeners would probably not have taken the truth into their own hearts.

More Blessings from the Lord.

Our new shopping cart is progressing well. Please pray for our designer as he continues the work.

We have a team conducting STS training in Timor for October. Pray for them and the attendees.

Grateful to the Lord,

Andrea
Executive Director
& the whole family of The God's Story Project (TGSP)