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This past weekend, we decided not to attended a church, mostly for security reasons and we ended up meeting with a few folks in a lounge at a guesthouse. I wrote this while i was there.
Crc missionary Dr Van Der Stien (sp?) shared in our little family church meeting this morning a fascinating story. There were 5 Wycliffe families / couples and a ywam family in this little room. We read about who does God call from genesis covering the story of Jacob. He was very pro using national language in church and training, he knew of Wycliffe and he was so encouraging about our work here in Nigeria and around the world. He was talking about the NKST church movement being a huge success of pioneering mission work here in Nigeria and around the world. He said that when he first came to the church, the pastor (who has since been recognised by the queen). Pastor Sye said ‘you must learn my language tiv so that way you will know my heart’. An interesting challenge but it started to dispel the ‘why don’t we teach them in english question’ in the Dr’s mind. They had printed out 1,000,000 of the good news tracks used for evangelism in TIV to bring with them, but Pasteur Sye didn’t to want to use them because he said that his people should be out speaking to their people not simple giving them paper. So eventually the termites ate all the copies of this booklet. Dr Van Der Stein said that we don’t have all the answers coming to a place like this, in fact , the Nigerian pastor knew better how to work here. How true is that! It is encouraging to hear that people were learning that lesson all those years ago – I hope we don’t have to continue to re-learn that lesson when it comes to serving in cross cultural mission.
