The First Three Days

Well the first three days of teaching have come and gone and it has been a whirlwind of excitement, hard work, and a testament to God’s moving.

The first day of teaching we had roughly 80% of the village there by mid-point through the lesson. About 40-50 stayed just outside the teaching house watching to see if the spirits were going to start materializing and killing people, or if anything unusual was going to happen. By the end of the first day, when no one had died and no spirits had been seen, most settled in to see what exactly this “talk” was.

On the second day we taught on God’s attributes of eternality, omnipotence, and omnipresence. To close the lesson we ended with our first skit (God always present with a Yembiyembi man as he went about his daily routine) and the teaching house (which has a dirt floor no walls and the YY’s sit on every side) turned nearly dark because of the crush of people pushing to see. It was an eye opening event and showed us what a powerful tool skits can be in the coming days.

Last night we taught on the Trinity, creation of Angels and Lucifer, and God’s creative power and contrasted it with the sorcery/black power/magic that they know of. We had probably 90% of the village there, but even more exciting has been the faithful attendance of 4 out of 5 of the existing “church” leaders, two of which are very keen about the “talk”.

Next week the schedule will be as follows:

Saturday-Days1-3 of Creation

Sunday –Day 4 of Creation

Monday-Day 5 of Creation

Tuesday-Day 6 of Creation, Man and Woman, and what it means to be made in the image of God

Wednesday-Adam being placed in the garden

Of all the days Tuesday is going to be the most ground shaking for the Yembi’s. Most believe that at death their “being” splits into 2 or 3 parts (depending on the person you talk to), part goes to the land of the dead (the spirit world), part goes to heaven with God, part to Rome (Catholic influence) to become a “white skin” or evaporates into thin air. I don’t need to explain the hurdles we will have to cross and how the meeting of the two worldviews is going to be explosive. Pray that God would give us wisdom as to how to teach and gently raise the light level.

After each day’s lesson we hand out written copies of the lessons so that they can review them on their own (our literacy class graduates eat these up), and on Tuesday we handed out the first translated verses of Genesis 1:1-25. There are lots of stories of how God’s Word is impacting, it would take too much time to tell them all, here are a couple.

We have representatives of 6 other language groups (people that don’t speak Bises but other tribal languages) in the teaching as well (Yembiyembi is very tied into the surrounding area through marriage and trade) and one of them is a 20 year old girl named Kordia. She has been attending the teaching but can’t understand large portions of it because she doesn’t speak Bises. So at night she sits by the fire with her uncle, who graduated from the literacy class 2 weeks ago, and he reads the lesson to her and catches her up on all the questions that she couldn’t understand. Kordia was supposed to go back to her village today, but has told her uncle “this talk is sitting well with my bel (mind) I’m not leaving until I have heard all of it.”

One of Tony’s brothers (Dennis from the Toucan Clan) stood up on the first day of teaching and said; “This talk is going to come, I am not going to miss a lesson, and anyone that downs this talk (talks badly of it) or tries to stop others from hearing, will get spun (beat up) by me.”

And finally Kerobim…

The first day of the teaching Kerobim said that “anyone who goes to the teaching would die.” My language helper Job (He and I put together the lessons in Bises) was walking by Kerobim’s house when he heard what Kerobim was saying. Job went into Kerobim’s house and sat down beside him and said, “Father, (Job is his clan son) the talk you are against-ing (fighting) is coming from God. I now know (Job is clear on the fall and what being born “In Adam” means) that your mouth is being used by the great evil spirit, and the path you are on is not fighting New Tribes Mission, or the white man, but you are fighting God. Be careful because the path you are on is one of deception and great pain, don’t be fooled, open your ears”.

Kerobim has been coming to every meeting, he has been quiet and he has been listening. Don’t get me wrong he doesn’t promote what we are doing, but he has not been an antagonist to us thus far. KEEP

PRAYING!!!

Guys that should do it. I am sorry about not updating you sooner, our home computer took a dive the day of the teaching, and we have tried to get this older one up to speed to do e-mails. Thanks for your patience.

Remember if you want a picture of one of the Yembi’s to pray for they are at http://www.flickr.com/photos/yembiyembi/ and all these update e-mails as well as other links are on our blog http://bringingthesecrettalk.blogspot.com/

These are the opening shots in a 2-3 month battle that is not going to be won without a fight, so keep praying for your people, and the particular material they are going to be hearing that day.

Thanks guys, we appreciate you all,

Brooks for Nina and Beau

P.S. I hope you mourned on my behalf as the Chargers went down to the Patriots…..those guys were lucky we were at less than 50% health.

P.S.S. Because we lost our laptop computer, if any of you sent me your e-mail address to be added in the last month, resend it so I can add you to the list.