Have you heard of "storying"?

Storying is a particular method of sharing stories from the Bible. Rather than rotely memorizing scripture or opening your Bible to read a particular story to someone, you memorize different stories from the Bible in your own words, but being careful to keep the accuracy of the story. Then when you find yourself in a conversation or dealing with a situation, you can use a story that is relevant to help in the situation.

For example, perhaps you're talking to someone about an illness that they're struggling with, you could share the story of the bleeding woman who received healing after 12 years. Or if someone is in a time of fear, you might think of the story of Jesus calming the storm, or of Jesus walking on water, or one of many other stories where Jesus is teaching us not to fear. 

This method is also very effective in sharing with non-believers because you aren't preaching at them or "quoting scripture"; you're just telling them a story. 

We have a friend who has been in the ministry of teaching Storying in many places around the world. Last year, in October, she and I attended the same women's retreat and she shared her own story. At that time, it suddenly hit me that storying had great potential to be used among the people in our villages. It is specifically geared toward regular people, not pastors, who want to share with people in their own community. I met with our friend, Jolene, and we began praying and communicating about having this training in Uganda. 

Well, on August 26th, we picked up Jolene and her partner Jenanna at the airport. They stayed at our house for two weeks (with a weekend trip to Jinja in the middle). We were able to do two complete training sessions. The first week, we held the training at Victory Living Word Church Kapeeka (one of the original church plants that Christ Fellowship participated in here in Uganda),  and the second week we did training at Kapeeka Baptist Church on the other side of town. Both weeks we had an exceptional turn out and the people were so excited by this method of sharing God's word. The second week, we also had a big group of kids who participated in the training. They had never trained kids before and we didn't plan on it, but when they were sitting in the church, we just let them participate. They did an excellent job! We're working on implementing some of the method into our school program. 

Since I got to drive our teachers and interpreters to the training each day, I also got to participate in the learning. I am excited to see how the local people move forward with what they learned.
Here are some pics:

Flying to Uganda takes many hours but our guests were all smiles on arrival!

Acting our the story of Jesus calming the storm during the first week.

Our time of worship before each training session was a bonus for all of us!

The group of kids acting out Jesus' parable of the four soils. 

Our leaders and a small portion of the group the second week. 

Of course, no trip to visit the Stanleys is complete without a rope swing into the Nile;
although I'm not sure we'll ever get Pastor Rafe to do it. :)

There was definitely some nervousness, but Jolene did not back down. She actually did it 3 times. 

Jenanna was in for the challenge as well.

And everyone was glad they went for it. :) No matter how many times I am in there, it is still surreal to be in the Nile!