February 2007 Email Update

Short Version:
--Precious, one of our story crafters is noticing a difference between our God and hers
--I’ve been trying to come up with creative testing situations
--Forgiveness- a tricky issue to communicate in a culture that doesn’t practice it!!!
--P & P

Long Version
“Will you please pray for me?”
“Precious” one of our story-crafters called one night this past week and explained that her stomach was hurting her a lot. I asked if she wanted one of us to come over or get medicine for her. She said, “I’m just calling to ask you to pray for me.” A little embarrassed that my first reaction was to help her by human means, I then told her I would pray for her. Then I hesitantly asked, “Do you want me to pray for you now, on the phone?” She said, “yes, please.” We prayed, she said thanks and hung up. The next day, she came over and said, “Thank you for praying, I feel much better and know that it’s because God helped me because you asked him to.” From coming to our prayer time each week, Precious has heard many stories and seen us pray for each other. Earlier last week, Precious told her mom about how we (Robin and I) pray for other people. That really impressed her as it’s different from how she would typically pray to her gods.

“Let’s see who can retell the story better, you or your grandmother”
When listening to stories, people often get distracted by the goats, breakfast, other guests who drop in, the weather, washing clothes, fetching water, etc, etc…It’s hard to find ways to keep them focused for more than 5-10 minutes. While I’m not trying to make a competition out of these stories, today, I tried to make a game out of remembering the story by saying. “Yesterday, Aama (grandmother), remembered and told this story really well, let’s see if you can remember it better than her, or if she can tell it better than you!” It was interesting to see their attentiveness to the story after that!

“We don’t really forgive people here…”
Recently we realized that part of the reason people haven’t been able to retell parts of a few stories that talk about someone forgiving someone else or God forgiving someone is because they don’t really practice forgiveness here! They understand the word and maybe even the concept, but as one testing subject said, “Why should we say sorry and forgive, if we are just going to fight again? I’ve been in a fight with my sister-in-law for 15 years and we haven’t spoken in 15 years.” Pray that we find ways to illustrate this concept through the stories.

Praise for:
finding new neighbors with whom to test stories
being able to craft stories with new story-crafters, “Heather” and “Gina”
“Precious”- one of our story-crafters coming weekly to our story/prayer time.
being able to connect with various local Christian leaders regarding the storying workshop, and being able to get a list of several people who may attend!

Prayer for:
Pray for our story-crafters as we figure out how to communicate the concept of forgiveness.
Pray for creative ideas to help people stay focused on to the story in testing situations, and that they don’t distracted by life around them!
Pray for preparations for the storying workshop (February 20-21st!!!).
Pray for the Kahani people to see Truth in our lives and in these stories!

Thank you as always for your continued support and prayers…

In Him,
~ Elizabeth
“The earth is the Lord’s and everything in it, the world and all who live in it. For He founded it upon the seas and established it upon the waters.” ~Psalms 24:1-2