Faith comes by hearing

Wednesday, November 10^th

Photo taken through bedroom window

It’s early morning, and I am writing this in the bedroom of a guest house in the village of Ikuwo, in the Vwanji language area. As I look out of the window, the morning light makes the red brick houses glow and the mountains look so inviting – my legs long to climb them! While that’s not possible right now, I have at least enjoyed a couple of lovely walks along the red dirt paths and roads since I arrived yesterday. Less than a stone’s throw from my room, a lady is wielding a hoe and planting potatoes in the freshly turned earth, in faith that the expected rains will come soon, and I can hear the sound of hens clucking and the occasional twittering of birds. I am here to do a three day workshop to train Sunday school teachers, at the request of the Lutheran church.

Project Land Cruiser parked in front of some shops, the 
guest house is right behind them.

I met my former colleague, Casto Nyambo, just before we needed to turn off the main road and onto a dirt road. He had come by motorbike from his home on the other side of the Vwanji area (there are mountains and steep valleys between his home and Ikuwo). He left his motorbike at a café run by people he knows and joined me in our project Land Cruiser for the rest of the journey. After a while the road deteriorated, with some very rough and steep patches – I spent most of the time in first or second gear and was glad to arrive safely at our destination about an hour and a quarter after leaving the tarmac.

So you may be wondering why I was travelling with a ‘former’ colleague. If you have been able to keep up with my newsletters, you’ll have read in the last one that we had to retrench all of our literacy/Scripture engagement workers who worked in areas where they now have a New Testament in their language. He was one of them. But thank God, he still has a heart to reach his people with the Word of God in the Vwanji language, so when he has time he continues to distribute Vwanji books, show the Jesus Film and facilitate the spread of the audio Scriptures, and he also helped with the arrangements of the workshop and willingly gave his time to accompany me.

As I have walked around the village and spoken to people and listened to children at play, I have realised that the Vwanji language is not being used much by the younger generation. During the workshop I hear the participants switching backwards and forwards between Vwanji and Swahili, depending on who they are talking to and what they are talking about. At least one of the pastors isn’t Vwanji, and this is a common reason for finding that Vwanji is not being used much in churches, because the church leaders are not Vwanji speakers. In some ways I find all this discouraging and  start to question whether Bible translation is really worth it.

But then yesterday evening, I listened to Casto tell me story after story of how the audio Scriptures in Vwanji have changed people’s lives. While it is true that people are not so interested in reading the Vwanji Scriptures (it just doesn’t feel natural to them to read Vwanji, as Swahili is the language they learned to read in at school), many people love to listen to them, especially the elderly. I wish I had been able to record all he said, but here are some of the things I remember (I may have mixed up one or two accounts, but the sum total is still true)…

There was an old man who listened to the audio Bible and said how the words he had heard hurt, they pierced his heart. After listening he wanted to be baptised. His family were overjoyed. There was another who can’t get to church because he is old but a youngster in his family got a memory card for him so he could have the audio Scriptures on his phone or radio. And there are others who, after listening, started attending their local church. There was also a lady who had a MegaVoice player (a solar powered audio player – we have distributed 40 of these across the region), but her husband wanted one too, because he couldn’t get hold of it when he wanted to listen as it was always in use! His wife listens to the MegaVoice players with groups of other women.

And I love this one: One day Casto was getting his motorbike fixed. While the mechanic was at work, Casto got out his MegaVoice player and the people hanging around there listened to the Vwanji Scriptures. They listened and listened until eventually he said that he had to go. He gave one of them a lift somewhere and he continued to listen and talk with Casto as they went. He wanted the MegaVoice player so he could carry on listening! That wasn’t possible, as we try to distribute them among people who we know and trust, but Casto told him who had a MegaVoice player near where he lived and then phoned that person and told them to expect an elderly gentleman to visit them and that they should lend him the player. He did visit and I think the outcome was that he started going to church.

Truly faith comes by hearing (Romans 10:17)! As well as relating the impact of the audio Scriptures, Casto also shared how he is invited to speak at funerals, because people know he will use the Vwanji language and Scriptures, and he has shown the Vwanji Jesus Film at these funerals as well as in many churches. In fact, this evening he will show the Jesus Film in the open-sided market hall, using a special projection pack provided by the Jesus Film Project.

---

Learning to use skits to teach

It is now Wednesday night and all is quiet. Tomorrow is the last day of the workshop. Today was hard work – the teachers really struggled to understand how to teach and apply Bible stories. Many teachers are used to just telling the Bible story and maybe giving a one-liner teaching point, but not really explaining what the story means and how it can be applied. After giving them lots of examples and time to prepare, some were given the chance to stand and teach. One just spoke without engaging us at all (despite my continual emphasis on engaging the children), another went off the topic and another basically read straight from the curriculum booklet with little real understanding. I will try again tomorrow to help them understand a little better about how to explain the meaning of the story, but when good teaching hasn’t been modelled in church or even in schools, it’s hard for them to get a handle on how to go about doing it themselves.

Thursday, November 11^th

It’s 9pm, I arrived home a couple of hours ago. The drive took longer coming back and was pretty tiring – I worked out that my average speed on the dirt road section (which took about 1.5 hours) was 12.5mph! I have returned with a sack of maize and a sack of potatoes – as always, I am so touched by people’s generosity.

With more explanation and examples, the Sunday school teachers did a better job of teaching today, so I hope that the workshop will have helped them engage children with God’s Word more effectively. It’s great that the Lutheran church there has recognised the importance of teaching their children and that even the pastors joined the workshop!

Children play together on their way home from school

A little aside… On Wednesday we invited the children from the local school to come for a Sunday school lesson, so that the Sunday school teachers could see a real example of how I teach. Before they entered the church, they lined up their hoes along the side of a building. Yes, their hoes! They have to take their own tools to school for working on the school farm. What would children in England think if they had to start tilling the soil so that they have food to eat at school?! But these are valuable lessons to learn in these farming communities.

*Note: ‘Faith Comes By Hearing’ is also the name of an organisation who’s main focus is making audio Scriptures available in all the languages that have New Testaments. We have sometimes partnered with them to record the audio Scriptures in our project.