Training Begins

I first want to address the folks at my home church, Wrightsboro Baptist, and thank all of you for your prayers so far and especially those that are following this blog and posting comments. I can't tell you how much it means to me! I love you all so much! A special hello to Brett Watts, one of my buddies in the RAs who called me and gave me a very special send-off last Tuesday. I told the guys about Brett at the beginning of our training this morning, so from the REAPsouth folks and volunteers, here's a big "Hello" to Brett! (read the whiteboard!) Thanks buddy! And a big hello to ALL of the guys in the RAs!

Today we started training for the task at hand - reaching native Peruvians in the mountain villages. We learned that the best way to communicate was orally through storytelling, as much of their worldview comes from oral history and what is around them. Literacy will be low in the areas we'll visit. The technique is called "Storying the Bible" and we got an excellent, comprehensive overview today along with a demonstration of storying Ahab and Elijah on Mount Carmel. For practice we were then tasked to fan out in groups of three and share that story with someone in a nearby neighborhood. Our group shared with two Peruvians - a flower shop owner and a street security guard. During the next several days we will return to these two (and maybe more) and continue to share more Bibles stories.

Spanish is the most common language used here in Lima and in the mountain villages. It turns out that most villages speaking Quechuan (native language) also speak Spanish. So how do we tell a Bible story when we don't speak Spanish? We'll have interpreters who are Peruvian - and we try to animate and gesture as we tell the story. It's tricky to do, so that's why we are practicing on locals. I'll keep you updated on training progress.

Thanks again to all those following and posting comments. Donnie and Andrea made a great suggestion for specific prayer requests, so I'll start adding those to the end of each blog. As you might expect, a key learning today is that EVERYTHING we do here is built on a foundation of prayer, and all of these missionaries recognize the power and necessity of prayer from stateside churches. I am very happy that my church is a praying church!

Please pray for :
1. Flowershop owner and her little girl (names to follow) that they hear and understand the messages in our Bible stories and become receptive to the gospel message before we are through.
2. The young security guard (name to follow) we also met that he too will be receptive to the gospel message through our storying.
3. Our small team - Martin (interpreter) and Jess and Greg (me) - as we practice to build the storying skills we'll need in the mountains.
4. The REAPsouth program in general.

In Christ-
Greg