I was writing a teammate about how our storying went yesterday and realized you might enjoy hearing the story too. This is a story of a Muslim lady with 5 kids who works in the market selling and assortment of staple foods for West Africa. Her husband is without work and she is the bread winner for the family trying to sell things that range in price from a few cents up to about a $1. She is from Mali and her French is not great. Storying with her usually entails making a wide circle to describe what it is I am trying to say. It doesn't help that my French lives a little to be desired. Anyway, we usually get there, but I had an especially good day with her yesterday as she is reaching the end of the evangelism set.
We had a slow day yesterday at Vridi, but the story I got to tell went great. As usual, Djenaba was in her normal spot waiting for me to get there. She shoved over her company and gave me preferred spot and after the formalities of greetings jumped right in with "On dit quoi?" I was a little hesitant becuase I had no idea what her relationship was with the lady I just ousted. I asked her if she was ready to hear another story and she immediately piped up with the wrap up of last week. I started telling the resurrection story and she was confused, not by my French, but she was really puzzled about if Jesus wasn't there, where was he. I convinced her to let me keep going after I was sure she was understanding the words, just not the story. I thought she was going to jump up off of the bench when I told her the part about the disciples being together discussing what was going on and Jesus showing up there with them! It was so cute. She totally understood them being afraid, but seemed to piece things together right along with the disciples in the story. When I told the part about Jesus ascending to heaven, she was blown away. I had planned to leave the set as before and go with the Philippian Jailer next week and a recap of creation to Christ. I still will, but at the end of the story she said, "What do we do now?" So I did a small recap of us being seperated from God, all are sinners, Jesus was the perfect Son of God, he suffered the consequence for our sins and died to save us. Salvation is found in turning from our sin and belief in Jesus and his death and resurrection.
As well as this was all going I felt like I needed to wait and let the story unfold next week. I told her we were going to look at a story next of someone who heard the stories of Jesus and wanted to know what to do now. She thought that was a great idea. I told her between now and then, she needs to be thinking about the stories and deciding what she thinks about them. A couple of weeks ago, she saw my story notes in my bag and pulled them out and looked at them. She can read OK and as she started reading what was on the page, she looked up surprised and said, "These are the stories just like you tell them." I told her that the stories come from the Bible and I want to get them just right and so I carry them with me in case I forget something. So when I told her she needed to think about the stories, she said something that made me worry she wasn't connecting the stories with reality. I reminded her that the stories were really true and that they came from the Bible and she said, "Yes, that's right. I saw." We wrapped up with a prayer, because she won't let me leave without praying for her and her family.
Please pray that God works in her heart this week. Pray that she'll count the cost and choose to follow.
Love,
Heather
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