Albania | Africa | Bangladesh | India/Nepal | KStan | Western Europe | USA
Two short stories come to mind. One is that of an illiterate village girl who sat in a week‑long training at the Baptist conference center near Dhaka, Bangladesh. The participants sat on the floor. Some had Bibles and took notes, but some could not because they were not literate. The girl was one of the illiterates so she was not able to follow along in a Bible or to make notes as I told the Bible stories.
The girl sat carefully listening all week, never taking her eyes off me or the teaching pictures I displayed as I told each story. She did exceptionally well in the two practice sessions of an Old Testament story and a story from the life of Jesus. Because she had listened so intently the girl was like a recorder playing back the stories. Some of the men, and especially the literate ones, at times lapsed into preaching or had to refer to their Bibles. At the conclusion of the conference on the last day as the particpants were preparing to return to their homes, the illiterate girl she expressed to me that "now she could go back to her village and tell the people what she had heard that week." If her two practice stories were an indication of whether she could reproducee the stories or not, I believe that she did. Several years later I met the girl who was now a young woman who had married with family. She was now marginally literate. If she is like many others who learned the stories, she could still tell them from memory, all of them that she had heard.
I had been invited to each Bible stories to a group of Bengali workers at a church located not far from the main ferry that crosses the Ganges River about an hour north of Dhaka. The very first training in that area we had conducted inside a church building. When the evangelist for that area invited me back he asked if we could move the teaching outside so that others might come and join after seeing the assembled group. I agreed. The church was near a major road leading to the local market. The evangelist had erected a tent between the church and the road.
On the second day of teaching the Bible stories about mid-afternoon as I began the stories of Abraham a tall stately older Muslim man was walking by and saw the group with a foreign teacher. He paused in his journey and stood on the road embankment for a few minutes and then proceeded down into the tent area and came right up to the front row just at my feet and sat among the trainees.
As a general rule we were very careful how we told those stories, and especially the comparison of stories between Ishmael and Isaac. We had some hotility in that area earlier so I was very cautious and at first inclined to skip over stories that might be inflammatory. But the Spirit urged that I tell them and directed me how to organize them for telling.
So after the call and promise story I moved on to the sojourn in Egypt and the acquired menservants and maidservants. Then followed the story of God’s covenant with Abraham in Genesis 15 and the Hagar and Ishmael story in chapter 16, the covenant of circumcision in 17 and Abraham’s longing for God to bless Ishmael, even if he were not the promised son. Then skipping to the sending away of Ishmael and the angel’s help to find water to save the boy, a wife for Ishmael from Egypt and finally the 12 sons God had promised. Then I went back to God’s promise to Abraham of a son to be named Isaac in chapter 17 and the three visitors, birth of Isaac and the substitute sacrifice story. I ended that sequence with the death of Sarah and the later death of Abraham and the two sons coming together to bury their aged father.
As we disbanded for the afternoon the Muslim man stood up and came to speak to the evangelist and then turned to me and embraced me and said something to me in Bengali. My evangelsit friend said: He is thanking you for teaching from God’s Word. He said that was a good story. Then he turned and went on his way. For me, it was an affirmation of the Spirit's presence and a reminder not to be afraid to tell the true stories whatever the circumstances.
In a third trip to that area to teach, the evangelist wanted to move up the road several kilometers from the church and set up the tent in an open field near several villages. The trainees were seated there before me. All around the perimeter of the tent were girls, women and some men from the villages. There was much coming and going. Some left the tent early and ran off and later returned bringing others. One of those who had returned came to the evangelist and said: Why are these stories being told here? Why aren’t they being told in my village nearby? The evangelist promised that he would go to their village and tell the same stories but that the foreigner needed to go to another place.
At the conclusion of that four days of teaching, after the intense stillness of the trainees during he Passion story, the excitement in the resurection stories and Jesus’ return to heaven and the conclusion of the story telling the words of the angels in Acta 1 that this same Jesus would one day return just as he had gone up into heaven. The group jumped up and began to sing and dance. They caught me and pulled me into their dancing for about 20 minutes. They were rejoicing and I suspect releasing some tension after the Passion and resurrection stories. The stories can do that to listeners—touch their emotions and trigger a response. Now that I am no longer in that part of the world, I miss those times and those precious brothers and sisters. For a time we dwelt in a community of story from God’s Word.