Kaberamaido TLT - Teaching the Christian Faith

By Anthony:

I recently finished the fifth manual, "Teaching the Christian Faith" in Kaberamaido.  Here is a video from worship time.  This is a song most of you know, but in the Kumam language.  See if you can figure it out!  I'll put the answer at the bottom of the post.

The week went very well.  Here is one of our two groups in the photo below.  We majorly focused on how to teach children in Sunday School.  One interesting issue that came up this time was that most churches don't have any Sunday School curriculum, materials, or even a blackboard to use.  Many of the TLT members thought that the solution is to find donors or missionaries who could give such materials.  This led to an interesting discussion (the topic of which intersects with my When Helping Hurts Training).  I shared with them stories of when children's programs died when such materials were given.  Children get used to the fancy materials, and when the church can not afford to keep buying them and has to go back to their local resources, the children become disappointed and stop coming.  We encouraged the pastors to begin using what simple materials they have, rather than waiting for handouts from missionaries, and saving money in order to buy blackboards. 



We have to get up and do stretches a lot.  It's tough to sit all day!



We enjoyed listening to reports from the last manual, "Preaching."  So many of these leaders went out and trained others in the preaching manual, and I would say that all of them vastly improved in their own preaching through utilizing the new method they learned and even giving constructive evaluations to one another.

One leader even went home and trained his own pastor (who was not at TLT), how to preach using the new method.  That pastor must be a humble pastor!

One pastor went home and his congregation noticed an enormous difference in his preaching.  As a church they said if this is what TLT does for him, they want to send him back for more.  So now that local church is paying for their pastor to come back to TLT, instead of him having to pay for everything himself as he has been doing.

As we did in my Amuria group, we divided into small groups to make Bible lessons to give to Sunday School children.

Then they presented their teachings with some of them pretending to be children.  In the picture below, they are praying, and one of the naughty children is peeking through his hand.  The presentations were very funny, but I didn't manage to get any of the funny parts on video.

At the end all of the participants made action plans.  Most plans were to go back and train their Sunday School teachers how to teach Bible lessons to children.  Some members don't have Sunday School programs in their churches yet so they are going to start them.  Another leader is going to help children memorize Scripture.  And some are going to teach other leaders this TLT manual.  A group of pastors and development leaders are going to attempt to train 500 people (youth leaders, Sunday School teachers, and pastors) in this manual from all over the district.  It's quite a bold plan!



Driving back home I always have a very full vehicle.  I never have enough room for all the people that want rides, but I fit as many as I can.  Here is Joseph, one of my TLT co-leaders sitting with about 4 bags on his lap.

Last, here are some more worship videos for you to enjoy.  The song from the first video is "He is Lord."  Did you get it right?