Once in a lifetime opportunity
Amsterdam 2000
Equip an Evangelist
Click here to
email, call,
write or fax The God's Story Project.
Scroll Down for latest reports dated and titled in red. Is there a language project here for which you could specifically pray? Some translations need prayer to overcome obstacles. Our leaders need continued prayer support. (Updated Mar 15)
VISION
OVERALL
The Lord gave us at The God's Story Project a
challenge. It goes like this...
In Jesus' day a little boy offered his lunch of five
loaves and three fishes, and the Lord multiplied it to
feed 5,000 men plus women and children.
The Bible says, "Man shall not live by bread alone." We offer our video to the Lord to be multiplied into
spiritual food for the over 6,000 languages of the world.
The reports coming in from around the world show us that
God is guiding missionaries and national Christian
evangelists and teachers to use chronological
presentation of the Bible as the most effective way of
teaching.
Whether or not a people group has copies of the Scripture
in their tongue, or whether or not they can even read the
Scriptures—the Old and New Testaments as laid out in
the God's Story video can deliver God's message
of redemption and hope to them.
Every tongue in the world can be reached as long as there
is one person who can translate a twelve-thousand word
script and someone who will deliver this storytelling
format of the Bible to the people.
Why stop short of this? Please pray and stand with us.
Expanding Translation Clinics: Now God's Story Translation Clinics can do 20 or more languages at a time. Recently 41 languages were done in Ghana, Tanzania, and Uganda. Nigeria will soon have this innovative use of recordist's time. Pray for the language teams on new laguages - for protection and provision.
Oral Bible Schools: Currently 19 Oral Bible Schools are running in Kenya alone. 6 are in session in Philippines., with 2 more starting soon. Pray as they are being started in 6 other countries. Wonderfully the schools are supported locally. Our part at TGSP is to supply small funds for sending instructors to new regions to plant and supply God's Story. Funds are often needed for solar-powered audio "Bibles." Pray for leaders to meet the many requests.
Radio Opportunities: Radio is opening up as an exciting field in interactive Bible study STS style. Pray for those with radio experience to help.
Curriculum Writers: Home schools and Bible schools are requesting curriculum for learning Simply The Story. Someone with curriculum writing skills could greatly multiply the reach of this oral style of learning God's Word. Pray for the right combination of skills.
Home Office Needs: Because of pilot programs in children curriculum and radio broadcasting, an administrator is needed to finish materials for TGSP and STS. Come volunteer to see the value of what is happening worldwide.
Answered Prayer : Regional Directors have been trained in multiplying instructors in their regions. Locally led Simply The Story workshops are being held world wide.
Rapid
multiplication in 2009. So far
this year God has enabled us to complete 15 new languages
of God's Story.
Simply The Story workshops in 2009
have been done in 16 new countries or new regions within
countries. Workshops were done in Zambia, Peru, Guatemala,
St. Lucia, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Middle East (new country),
Hong Kong (the small workshop done in HK Nov 08 led to a
March 09 with 7 countries represented among the135
trained there) Japan (July) Ireland, Scotland, UK, Kosovo,
Democratic Republic of Congo.
Hundreds more workshops were done in 2009 as well by STS
instructors we have trained. Instructors are actively
working in many of the 43 countries that have either had
workshops done in them or have sent representives to a
workshop in another country to learn STS. As well, scores
of added countries have asked for STS training. As
instructors are trained, and travel funds are gathered,
we hope to respond to these invitiations.
Please pray for those who are traveling to
areas hostile to Christianity to show God's
Story video and to tell the Bible
stories. As well please pray for those who are coming to
Jesus.
Asia Trip Succeeds: Sept - Nov USA teams,
carrying in copies of God's Story
on audio players, led workshops in Mongolia, Philippines,
Hong Kong and some unnamed countries. Nationals in 10
countries led STS workshops in their own countries. In
West Africa 5 workshops were held in 5 new countries.
Those trained are going back to teach others. We have an
invitation to train leaders of CAPRO, the largest African
led missions organization in Africa representing 26
nations. After STS in Uganda the African instructor heard
this from attendee Pastor Godfrey
Masaba, “I
have never in my life memorized five verses of scripture!
But because of STS, I was able to do so on 10 verses
within 10 minutes, what a powerful tool!” Please pray for our
instructors to teach clearly and that this STS spark will
light a fire of going back to using God's Word (not men's
opinions and preachings) as the anchor of evangelism and
discipleship.
Mission
Africa Alive Success: Pray for
the newly trained leaders now fanning out into 12
different countries carrying God's
Story video and audio
and the Simply The Story
way of using the Bible for evangelism and discipleship.
Africa Alive: In
June 160 leaders from over 12 East African nations (as
well as from South Africa and Nigeria) converged in
Nairobi to be trained in oral strategy. The 3-day African
initiated MANI conference on orality featured Sinply
The Story. At least 1/4 of these
attendees had experienced STS in either a workshop or a
vision casting in this past year. Three instructors from
the US joined 22 Africans, already trained in STS, to
lead this workshop. Afterwards, we hosted a 2nd smaller
workshop expressly to train instructors. These county
contingents are largely leaders of ministries (some heads
of seminaries an Bible schools.) They, by God's grace,
have now gone back to train others in their countries.
In August and September 08, workshops were scheduled for
West Africa that had attendees from 17 nations. We went
to Asia and Philippines in the Fall to share God's
Story and run STS workshops. In
2008 our goal was to lead workshops in new regions, and
leave behind STS instructors with the vision and skills
to carry on the training in their regions. In 2008 alone
workshops were done in 10 states of India, 10 countries
of Africa, Thailand, Nepal, Spain, Australia, New Zealand,
USA, 3 locations in the Philippines, Hong Kong, Middle
East, China, Mongolia and more.
Please pray for the now thousands of literate and non-literate evangelists, leaders and pastors who have been trained in Simply The Story style of oral inductive Bible study. Whole villages in India, Nepal, SEA and Africa are being affected by this practical way to study and share God's Word. Ministries and denominations are incorporating STS into their work.
We Need Prayer
for this work to continue unhindered. This
report reflects the thousands of responses we are seeing...Even
though in Oct we sent a fledgling team of STS instructors
that was still learning how to train others, God has
greatly honored the STS way of telling and discussion of
the stories recorded in His Word. These leaders ask their
pastors to tell and teach a new story Sunday in their
main churches. Then, during the week, their house church
leaders tell and discuss the same story with their nearly
10,000 church members. [This leader shared his stats with
us, showing that since October their rate of church
growth rose by 50%.]
Afterwards this Mumbai leader wrote, "It was great [again]
to receive ministry from your team. All the leaders who
attended the STS Training are blessed immensely. The fire
of revival has flooded every one of them. Regular
practice and application is going on in a big way. By now
more than 300 people are trained and twice in a month STS
Trainings for down the line leaders is planned. All our
Sunday Services and House Churches have switched over to
STS method, which means regularly our whole congregation
of 9000 plus is getting the taste the goodness of STS.
There is great excitement all."
Oct 2007 trip
to India and Western Europe to train in Simply
the Story in Oct leaders from TGSP set off to
India to train Indian leaders in Simply
the Story and the use of God's
Story. Ministry teams of 22
instructors from 3 countries are converging to train in
Goa, New Delhi and Mumbi. The goal is reaching non-literates
and oral learners. Tentatively the last leg of the trip
will be in Western Europe to a place and people who want
to use oral strategies to reach a darkening region of the
world. Please pray these trainings come together
perfectly as God wills.
In
the Past 2 Months, 12 Timothy Church Planter Trainings
Were Held in 3 Countries. Please pray for the
over 400 graduates, 150 of whom received a solar-powered
audio-player formatted with God's Story, 66 told Bible
stories and a New Testament in their mother tongues of
Swahili, Nepali or Kannada.
One
more Simply the Story in USA set for 2007! If you haven't "Experienced
STS, we recommend coming to CA for a memorable time of
equipping. Sept 10-13th. Email for details info@gods-story.org At least 4 continents
are represented among the attendees and 12 country works.
[42
attended and those graduates are now out training others.]
September
Consultation for CEOs of Mission Organizations Pray for our director
as she, along with other leaders in the movement to reach
oral learners using Bible stories, interact with the
leaders. [61
ION leaders and mission CEOs met at a 3-day consultation
in Orlando at the Campus Crusade facility. A wonderful
time of dixcovery took place.]
Current
Surge in Production of New Versions! Right now 20 new
versions of God's Story
are being recorded in Europe, Africa and India. As well,
in the next 6 weeks, Simply the Story workshops will be
held in nine different countries. Most workshops are
being led by nationals who themselves have recently taken
on STS. They see it an effective Biblical way to empower
believers to learn and teach others.
One leader in Thailand just wrote regarding the STS
training he has been doing... "He [the
Holy Spirit as teacher] is already working in a
mysterious way and many leaders in China, Myanmar and
Thailand have been transformed. They have found the new
beginning of lives in Him. They wrote to me this the
message they have been preaching and teaching over the
years has now become life-changing message. This new
message is not only for the congregations of the Church
and communities but for themselves as preachers and
teachers etc., This new way of transforming message only
come from the Word, the inside. Amen!
We ask you to pray for
us at TGSP headquarters and for our national partners as
we arrange the recording of the 66 Bible stories in
various languages. Jula & Bambara TCPT are soon to
begin, to join those being done in Mandarin. Very soon we
hope to have in-hand the recorded Swahili, Kannada and
Nepali stories so that Timothy Church Planter Training
among non-literates in India, Nepal and Africa can begin
in earnest.
More Hemet Staff Needed. Prayers are being
answered, thanks to God, for mission organizations to
stand with us. The rise of agencies helping TGSP and
using God's Story
is going up very quickly. Still, home office staff is
needed. At the epicenter of TGSP is the shipping, data
entry, purchasing, production, correspondence, co-ordination
of new languages and oversight of Simply the Story and
Timothy Church Planter Training. We need hands here to
keep up with this exciting move of God.
Storytelling and Interactive Inductive Bible Study, Oral
Style
We
have Godly dependable volunteer TGSP staff members world
wide. They are being called on to lead Simply the Story
workshops, record 66 Bible stories for Timothy Church
Planter Training and to continue to orchestrate and
record new language versions of God's
Story.
Recently we have experienced a rise in the number of
leaders in mission organizations who want to work with us,
for which we are grateful to God. Please pray that added
responsible helpers and leaders in mission organizations
will come along side to help complete the tasks and
utilize these tools.
World Changing Inaguration! (See Bible At Last for
results.)
Early
in January 2007, 35 of the Masaai and Komba people will
be the first to participate in Timothy Church Planter
Training. All attendees will be non-literate Christian
pastors, church planters and evangelists! Each will learn
the Simply the Story method of teaching the Bible. STS is
telling pure Bible stories (nothing added, nothng left
out) then finding the spiritual treasures they contain
and formulating and asking discussion questions to lead
people to those treasures. Graduates receive the gift of
a hand-held solar-powered audio-player that holds Swahili
God's Story,
66 Old Testament stories and the New Testament.
Additionaly 2,500 literate Kenyan pastors are set to be trained in STS. Already Simply the Storyt is empowering pastors and evangelists in the USA, Asia, Africa and Latin America.
Expanding Tools
Call for Partnership and Prayer! Our 5 Asian country 42-day
vision casting trip opened up evangelism and discipleship
results like nothing in world history. How can we say
this? The Word of God is our Sword. Our newly
inauguarated Timothy Church Planter Training puts the
stories of the Bible, told in people's mother tongues, on
solar audio players.
Now
the non-literates and oral communicators who make up the
vast majority of the unreached can study the Word of God,
be taught by the Holy Spirit and deliver life giving
truth to their own people. The TCPT teaches by
demonstration the method of inductive Bible story "oral"
style!
Please pray for those formatting this new concept to
employ God's wisdom, and for many added ministries and
mission organizations to join as a body to help lead and
utilize the TCPT.
Increased Blessings Call for Increased Hands: Please pray for key leaders to join us from countries in Africa and states inside India that are not yet active in TGSP. Also we need a few more key staffers for CA office who are good in administration and video production. (Note: All us TGSP staffers world-wide are self supported volunteers.)
Breakthrough:We now format God's Story onto solar-powered, hand-held audio players. As the players make it into the hands of indignious evangelists and church planters, the responses fly back to us. Families come to Jesus and then take the player to another family and they are saved. Considering 50 at once can hear God's Story in their mother tongue, this great impact is no surprise. Well-known leader in North India Dr. Alex Abraham stated, "I have waited for this 40 years!" We need sponsors to supply these players and hands to carry them in to strategic locations.
Next orality conference will be in Nov in Colorado Springs. See www.oralbible.com The content of God's Story, and the vision of TGSP, dovetails with the vision of the International Orality Network (ION) which is a network of missions organizations. We serve as part of their leadership that hosted the 4th ION conference titled "A story for the Nations: Making Disciples of Oral Learners," in CA, USA September 2005.
Would an oral learner (who is one of the 80% of the population in the USA who cannot read or does not prefer to read) be comfortable in your church? If the answer is "no," do come. Invite your pastor and church leaders to come as well so together you can discover what many North American pastors and leaders are doing to reach the oral communicators of the USA!
Beyond that, those interested in using the most effect methods of evangelism and discipleship on the mission field will discover pure gold at this conference. We can promise all who attend an array of very informative plenary speakers and fascinating workshops.
Safety: As more languages being produced for use in Muslim, Buddhist, Hindu and Spiritist dominated areas, we need to pray for the faithful evangelists who go village to village showing the movie that brings light.
Supply: The number of new languages being translated and recorded by our national partners continues to rise. As missionaries and nationals see and experience first hand the impact of God's Story in local languages, they are adding to the teams of partners preparing new language versions. God has faithfully supplied. We need prayer for added supply to cover the recordings soon to arrive.
Africa, India, Nepal,
Myanmar, Bhutan & SEA: Soon we hope to have our Flip Charts printed for
use in third world countries. The 150 pictures from God's
Story can be shown as evangelists story-tell through
the Bible or the pages turned as villagers hear God's
Story played on cassette tape. Sponsor tape players
and / or flip charts.
Low Cost-High Yield!
USA: Still a need! We continue to seek God for missions-minded volunteers who can devote 3 months or more of their time at our Southern CA headquarters. Our office is the epicenter of information, production and distribution of the amazing evangelistic tool, God's Story. Christians with office and business backgrounds and data entry or missions experience are needed. Email for further details.
India:We completed a trip to North India due to an invitation from leaders and church planters. They had experienced the effectiveness of God's Story in Hindi and wanted to know how to partner with us on added languages. New teams born out of the training are beginning translation on new versions for the unreached tribals of the northern states. We warned these new language partners that those who take on this project always experience great opposition. Please pray for these team of translators and for the narrators they select.
Location Undisclosed: 2nd Flash!!! The version is completed and in use. The hard ground of Buddhists' hearts is being penetrated and they are coming to faith quickly. Flash! one month after this request was posted, on the 7th try, Tibetan was recorded. Please continue to pray for the production phase and then the distribution of this strategic language. 5 times our team has tried and failed to record Tibetan! Obstacles such as equipment failure (it resumed working after the narrator had to go back home.), the narrator losing his voice for the week he came back tobe recorded.
Afganistan: [Another update on the update! Dari is completed now! and the Pashto is back on the translatio track] [UPdate on the earlier request below... No word yet on the Dari []and the translator for the Pashto has suddenly been taken ill and according to the doctors will be out for at least 3 months. Please contine to pray.]
After four years of false starts and dead ends, we expect to have copies of Dari available within in a month or so. Thank you for your prayers on this one. We have great hopes of Pashto coming soon afterwards. Please keep in prayer the final completion, distribution and ultimate impact of these two versions.
DVD: We hope to have God's Story available
soon on DVD and in MPEG3 formats. Each disc will offer
multiple languages. We ask for God's direction and wisdom
on the decisions being made on these two projects.
Covering the World:
We are drawing up plans for
major training seminars in at least six key places in the
world. We plan to visit one key place at a time to train
hundreds of national orchestrators, translators and
recordists. By training hundreds of leaders, thus
spreading the work among many, we hope to see multiplied
hundreds of languages come into existence very quickly.
The adversary will try to stop us. We need your prayers
more than ever!
Due to the sensitive nature of the areas we plan to cover,
our training forays will be described after we return.
Please do pray for our current trip. It could birth
hundreds of languages to reach multiplied millions who
currently live in the dark. God knows the details, please
ask him to protect, guide and anoint our staff, and the
nationals with whom we work. Prayer results: A trip was made to India in Oct
2003 and was an overwhelming success. We trained team of
29 recordists, left 10 recording units throughout India
and Nepal and set up final adminstration for all India
and Nepal. Second trip to North India in 4/04 completed
the training. Now national leaders can carry on the new
language and distribution process.
As a resut of the South India trip and training seminar,
multiple languages are now in some phase of translation
or recording. Many nationals are stepping forward and
sacrifically giving of their time and talents to bring
these new language versions into existance. These
believers need prayer support for wisdom and for time to
do this exacting work.
One of our newly trained hard-working Indian leaders just
wrote us saying..."It took 11days to do the whole
recording but 11days are spread over two months.
Anyway GOD has helped alot in our recording. i learned
many technics and i found while i was recording.I thank
LORD for HIS wisdom HE gave.
i am also on another language "Erukula" which
is used by professional thiefs here.
they are the people with no transcription or written
language.
Muniyappa [Our India Director] and myself visited their
place and interacted with them. they almost bursted into
tears when we told we wanna to so the movie in their
language.
they really touched by the decision and this is the first
instance in History that people are trying to honour
their language."
[FYI There are 300,000 Eukula (Yerukula) speakers living
in the state of Andhra Pradesh and neighboring states as
well. They are nomadic.]
(See Current Praise
for a report on our India trip.) Now,
as a result of this first one of our seminar trips,
hundreds of languages are being orchestrated and
translated. So far, a few of these are are funded. This
work is not easy, and there will be many attacks by the
enemy. Please pray for the funding of each new language
as it comes time for production. Also ask for protection
and wisdom for the partners. In India, this land of 1.2
Billion, hundreds of millions who may never read a Bible
soon will be able to hear and see the Gospel as revealed
in the Bible through God's Story.
We contine to need
prayer for a few more staff members at our California USA
headquarters. Just a few people who have office and
computer skills, and who would be prepared to face the
warfare and enjoy the daily blessing of being part of the
center for this world outreach would do the job.
We asked for prayer in Nov for numerous up-coming recordings in progress. About 1/3 met with success. The rest are still in process, experiencing some kind of difficulty. Please contine to pray (we asked in Feb) for these recordings and specifically for the completion of Cantonese, Yao, Done 6/04 Bemba, Done 6/04 Tonga, Done 5/04 ASL, Hatian Creole, Swahili, Telugu Done 4/04 and Tamil.
June, 2003 we are seeing great progress on all the above except ASL, Hatian Creole and Swahili.
June 2004...The ASL is almost completed and we hope to see the Haitian Creole in August! Tamil and Malayam recordings failed on 4th try, scheduled again for July 2004.
Over fifteen vital languages (with
evangelist ready to use them) are scheduled for recording
in November. Some are in restricted areas that we can't
list are having problems. We have scheduled Tamil, Telugu
and Kannada for Southern India to be done in February.
Five for North India were ready but the scripts were lost
and had to be done again. Four in Nigeria [two are done
and two had recording glitches and have to be redone.
Three in East Africa are ready but a recorder has to be
hand carried in by suitable operator. Please pray for
sessions, the narrators, directors and the technitions.
Many of these people groups have less than 3% Christians
in them.
Nearly half of the recorded languages that come to us
have to go back for more work. These problems slow the
delivery of the Gospel, are very labor intensive and
expensive.
Afganistan. Still need prayer on these. They
didn't make 2002: DARI /PASHTO
An experienced translation group has agreed to partner
with The God's Story Project to complete these two vital
languages, but certainly they need our prayers. We hope
to see these completed in 2002. We do not yet have the
funding for the work, but we believe this is the BEST
foreign aid we can supply to the devastated Afganis!
Nepal Still need funding on these: The reports coming back of salvations from the use of the newly completed Nepali God's Story version are astounding! FIVE more new recorded languages of Nepal and surrounding regions will soon arrive at our USA studio for final production. Only one is funded. Each of these people groups have little or no Scripture in their language and are considered "unreached." We have evangelists ready to use GS to reach them as soon as it is ready. Could you or your church sponsor one of these four?
Latest Requests: We still desperately need staff at our Southern California headquarters. Are there some tentmakers out there (or a few folks who only need a small salary to supplement their "stash") who are at least a little bit computer literate and can multitask? The challenges and the rewards here are huge, but spiritual maturity and ability to cover a lot of bases efficiently is mandatory. Write info@gods-story.org for more information and please tell us a little about yourself in your letter.
New versions: In addition to the 10 languages in Nigeria that have begun the recording phase, 10 other new language versions of GS are right now being recorded and produced. These include Cebuano and Tagalog which have long been requested. Please pray for us as we encounter ongoing obstacles in these processes.
We are not quite to the
place of having our backs to the Red Sea and of seeing
the Egyptians coming, but it is getting close to that!
Faithful national evangelists are completing scores of
diverse languages of their regions, and now we need to
send multitracker mini-disc machines to them to record or
help transport them to one of the eight regional TGSP
recording centers. This takes money.
Other languages, such as Cambodian and Nepali, need the
funds to pay the studio for its work so we can get the
new language videos duplicated and the masters into the
hands of the front-line workers who will be distributing
them.
Wonderfully the
Lord is helping us to set up recording centers in various countries to record the languages as
they are translated. We now have (or soon will have)
centers with multi-tracker mini-disc machines or
partnering studios in Nepal, Romania, Zimbabwe, North
India, Calcutta, Kenya and Nigeria. Each will be
orchestrating the translation of multiple languages for
their counties and for neighboring countries. Please pray
regularly for the leaders each center as the attacks
against them, the machinery and the staff, and for favor
with their local governments.
NEPALI is recorded and the masters are delivered! Read the letter below that we got from Nepal, exactly as it came to us to feel the excitement of the evangelists who will be risking their lives by going to unreached of Nepal delivering the Gospel via God's Story. One man who is involved with GS there has already been called to appear before officials to be either reprimanded, loose his citizenship or be tortured.
"Dear Madam,
Greetings in the name of Jesus Christ the coming King !
To day we have seen the video God's Story and we like it.
It is a simple video film and people will like it. And
with the short time people will come to know about the
bible and its story. It tells about why Christ came in
this world and why he have to dei for us and how we
became sinners?.
Let me tell you that in Nepal we have lots of people who
never been in Schools and they can't read Bible and most
of them don't know all the story of the bible. This film
will give clear picture about the sin, reason of Jesus
coming in this world and second coming of Jesus Christ.
And this is
very good film for the non christians [Hindu].
"I got this video film in LA during my visit in USA
on 29th of Sept'00 , where I had meeting in LA. One of
gentleman who was in that meeting gave me this video to
see and think about it.
"God willing ,we would like
to dubbed in our Nepali language and wants to us it for
our ministry. As well we would like to make several of
copy of it and we will encourage our people to use it to
reach out the Hindu people.
Please kindly help us to know about it. Thank you !
Yours in His service
________________
XXXXXXXXX
National Director
Nepal YFC
Kathmandu,Nepal"
AFRICA-Nigeria & Kenya As a direct result of
evangelists and pastors we met at Amsterdam, 15 languages
are translated or will soon be completed. We need the
funds to do this. Some of the tribes who will be able to
see and hear the Bible in their heart languages are
virtually unreached!
We are praying that a few churches will get the vision to fund some of these languages and that their members will take existing GS languages verions and translation packages with them on ministry trips. Then, when the new language versions are competed, these supporting partners can carry in the new masters and be part of some movie premiers that will be greater and vastly more important than any extravaganza Hollywood has ever hosted! Some day the hoopla about Gone With the Wind will be gone, but the Wind and the Fire of the Holy Spirit reaching the hearts of the lost for eternal salvation via God's Story will be the heavenly box-office hit for ever!