We are part of a tribe who values the word of God. Last night you may have been able to tune into the Thursday Night Gathering in Ohana Court. Bruce Kuhn, an accomplished Broadway Actor did an awesome job of telling the story of Paul by quoting/re-enacting LARGE portions of the book of Acts, Galatians, Philippians, and the last chapter of Romans. It was so awesome! What was strange was the before story. On Wednesday we did local outreach. We had two encounters with two different couples. One from South Dakota and the other was a Buddhist couple from Tokyo, Japan. The encounters were friendly, lively, and engaging but just did not appear to yield any fruit. It has been my habit of taking my gospel encounters back to the Lord for constructive feedback. He promised that if I would follow Him He would make me a fisher of men. So I asked Him, "Lord what did you think about these? What did I do right? What did I do wrong?" He gently said, "stick with telling my stories, you will be ok." There is something that rises within you when you know you have heard from the Lord.
The next lady (at work in a local market) we spoke to quickly began to tell me of her niece who lives in Frisco, TX and hates it. She told me the stories of how judgmental and fake the people in Frisco are (we know we have readers in Frisco -- I am just retelling the story). I asked if there was anything I could do or if there was any way I could help. She seemed to be moved that I would even offer, but feeling as though these are my people, I felt I should offer. I then said I would be happy to pray for her. This unleashed a flurry of stories about how church leaders in the Dallas area have brought severe judgement to this young lady.
So I said, "can I tell you a story about another young woman whose activities ran her afoul of the religious leaders of her day?" She said YES!. So I told her the story from John 8. She was incredibly engaged in the story and was so eager to find out what Jesus did to this person. We did not get to really adequately finish the story but the lesson was well learned for me, stick with the stories of Jesus. Learn the art of story telling.
So I asked the Lord if He would teach me to tell stories like He did. Then, as you may have seen, on Thursday Bruce Kuhn presented to our assembly speaking of the need to 'stick to the stories.' So I asked the Lord again if He would teach me and I sent off an email asking for more information about the Word by Heart school here in Kona. THEN, we walk the kids to their class and run into Bruce. He invited us to his class this morning where we got to sit and watch 5 or 6 people retell a large portion of the Gospel of Luke in both English and German! It was an incredible experience and extremely powerful.
One thing I noticed is that even though I do not speak German very well, a good story teller, helps bridge the language gap. I knew pretty close what these ladies were saying in German!
It is fun to walk through this time. Walking with our Lord is an adventure unlike anything we can dream up on our own.