Benin …
What drives 65 pastors/leaders in Ketou, Benin to sit for 5 days in 35+ degrees and 85-95% humidity with no air-cons or fans?
It is a love for God and a hunger to grow in his Word and relationship with Him that drives these leaders.
What really hit me the first week of training was that there were no cars outside the church in Ketou where we met for the training - 65 leaders and just a few motorbikes - many of them came from far - they either walked, or used motorbike taxi’s
The Letter to Philemon in Yoruba
Want to know a bit more about the Yoruba language - CLICK HERE
And then there was the language challenge with this group in Ketou. We had the French translation ready for “How to Understand the Bible and live it” and had it printed in Nigeria and sent with great effort to Benin. But very few of them could understand or read French - they were Yoruba speakers. I missed it from the previous training as then we only had the English so we had to just work on the translation in any way. But what an exciting time we had - we found the Yoruba translation in the YouVersion Bible App - copied the Philemon text to Word - divided the text for exegetical purposes together as a group on a projector screen (which ran on 3 power banks connected to each other). Then printed a copy for each person so they could work on it for the week. Technology is just amazing when used for the Kingdom!!
I am not sure if I am just getting older, but the constant heat and humidity really got to me this time - only a few degree difference in the high and low in a day. But it seems that it does affect the local people as well - after 4-5 hours training a day they struggled to concentrate, but I was impressed with their focus, input and discussions for most of the time we were together. God is working and transforming lives through his Word and Spirit.
The second week we trained on the outskirts of Porto Novo. We were about 45 mostly French speaking leaders. What is great is that some of them started to train others in the “Kingdom of God” training after our training in March. Our prayer is that more people will start training their own leaders to better equip them for God’s call to serve.
In both these groups the letter of Paul to Philemon spoke to all of us on so many aspects of our lives - forgiveness, restitution, dignity, relationships, discipleship, culture. The discussions surrounding the handling of the Bible and its application in and on our culture was really lively.
Pray with us:
Thanking God for the opportunity to share the transformational power of his Word and Spirit with others
That the seed that was sown in these past two weeks in Benin will grow (it has changed me) and will impact individuals, churches and communities
Thanking God for the men that served as translators in both places - that they allowed the Holy Spirit to guide them in their translation and explanations
Thanking God for the support - service of printing the material (120 books) at lower cost in Nigeria, prayers, words of encouragement and financial that made this training possible
For the planning of training for 2024 as well as the last visit at the end of November to Nigeria for this year.
