Last week my colleagues and I attended seminars on bible story-telling at an annual conference for workers from different Christian mission organizations and churches. When just beginning to tell stories, we were encouraged to just be willing to give it a try no matter how imperfect the initial effort. The goal is then to make sure the listener got the details right, and to gather feedback in order to improve.
About 6 months ago I began studying basic Taiwanese versions of some New Testament stories. Although I went through the lessons in class, my intermediate language ability left me feeling inadequate to tell the stories. Anyway, even though I’m not telling stories the way our speaker recommended (I’m trying to memorize and sneaking peaks at the written story instead of visualizing), the last few days I made the goal to start trying harder.
Two weeks ago I began studying vocabulary related to some Old Testament stories. So last Saturday I shared the first creation story in Taiwanese with a mother and son who came early to my English Club. Then today I shared with my friend Roger at the Middle School, who gave me very constructive and helpful feedback and repeated the story back to me. Surprisingly, he then invited me to share with the 8 junior highers whom I met with at the middle school’s summer school English Club.
11 people have heard the story so far in less than a week… Not a bad start, even if my Taiwanese story telling skills leave much to be desired! At least I’ll be able to tell the story of God’s creative Word better in the future because I’ve started telling people now as best as I’m able. Next week I’m going to back to the other book and try to start sharing some of those Taiwanese bible stories a bit more proactively as well.
2 comments:
Praise the lord brother
John will be encouraged that you're telling the stories! So am I! His able teaching wasn't in vain. Jya you!
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