It was February! The best month of the year weather-wise. In the afternoons it became so hot in my little wooden dwelling that I would take Mossie to cool down in the late afternoon in the river.
NEPAL!
Nepal is a very closed un-reached nation yet God has somehow orchestrated it that SandBoxBible will be entering that nation in March 2022!
May many kids and adults hear about the Creator and experience His tangible love for the first of many times.
Filming Genesis
This morning I cut and painted Jacob's nightmare job.It took me days to film the Jacob & Laban story. I was so familiar with the story, that until I actually placed the figures word by word, line by line into the sand for the stop-motion video, I NEVER saw, just what Laban actually did to Jacob!
Jacob told Laban that he would take the spotted, striped and speckled, but then sneaky unfair uncle Laban took the same spotted, striped and speckled goats and sheep and gave them to his sons, placing 3 days between them and Jacob!
Like WHAT? Jacob started with NOTHING.
30:32 Jacob said, "...let me pass through all your flock today, removing from it every speckled and spotted sheep and every black lamb, and the spotted and speckled among the goats; and such shall be my wages.
:34 Laban said, “Good! Let it be as you have said.” 35 But that day Laban removed the male goats that were striped and spotted, and all the female goats that were speckled and spotted, every one that had white on it, and every lamb that was black, and put them in charge of his sons..."
I think I would have packed my bags and donkeys right there and then! Come Lea, come Rachel... come kids... you have an uncle deprived of humanity and who had to figure out by divination that the God of Abraham is actually blessing me. Yet Jacob stays and somehow God blesses him with so much more than he could have imagined. By the time he left, the threat on his life was also gone - his own brother Esau embraced him. It is a fascinating story of cheating, lying, blessings, prophesy, witchcraft and more.
STUDY GROUPS AT MY HOUSE
So much can be drawn from this story above. The questions are: If you had to place yourself in the story, where would you fit in? Who would you relate with? How would it feel to be them? How does this relate to your own current life story?
These are the simple yet profoundly provocative questions asked of the two bible study groups each week when they come to my house for Sand-Box Bible study. Then something wonderful happened last week with the teens. We are working through the New Testament in Chronological order.
The young girls did not know where to put themselves in the story of John the Baptist. Once they finally figured out how they could relate to the story, I asked them to turn what we learned into a prayer.
They stared at me with blank faces. "We do not know what you mean by it."
Again I asked, "How can we turn what we learn in this story into a prayer back to God?" They had no idea. No one has ever actually taught them how to pray scriptures back to God. This dawned on me when none of them knew what to pray. It was the first time they saw this practice, practically modeled to them.
I started by pointing to the clouds in the box. We just read how God just spoke to Jesus. I asked, "Do you think we can pray that we can start to hear God's voice more clearly in our own lives?" I asked. "I guess so", the one girl said. Then I pointed to the tree with the fruit, and the dead tree with an axe at the root. Again I said, "Do you think we can ask God to help us bear fruit like this tree, even if people come and accuse you like the pharisees did to John?"
The youngest (11) looked at the sandbox and her eyes literally flickered. She got it and was so excited about it. That night I went to bed with such joy in my own heart.
Wednesday came. The other group is chronologically in Matt 4, in the desert where Jesus had those extra-ordinary conversations with the devil himself. This was interesting but theologically more difficult. No, we solved nothing. Once you start to dig deeper into this one, the line of questioning can become extra-ordinary too. There are biblically three heavens, but many dimensions as we know.
I think we came away with, "as long as we live on The Bread of Life which is Jesus and what He speaks to us in our current daily lives, then all is going to be ok!" Our fellowship with Him needs to be unbroken so that when the tempter comes into our wilderness, where Holy Spirit sometimes leads us, we can say, "He told me this and that, so buzz off this mountain he told me to climb."
Continuous seed along the path of training
What a joy it was once again to receive an email from one the our YWAM base directors on a continent far far away. I have never been to Peru myself but it is always fun for me to see where YWAM leaders still use the books I compiled to train students and staff. This time it was the Spanish version.
If you lead DTS Discipleship Training Schools or 2nd level schools - here might be some optional free workbooks (PDF) to help you.
Or email me at uofnbooks@gmail.com or sarahberiyth@uofn.edu
Contacted by Wycliffe South Africa.
The Orality Movement
Good news to cover me in prayer with, is that I was contacted by Wycliffe. They saw the SandBoxBible YouTube videos and understood that it could potentially cover scripture portions, for un-reached people groups where there is no translation or written portions of scripture readily available.
For this to work, Wycliffe use dynamic equivalence translation. (This is really difficult!) I cannot tell you the hours and days it took for us at Create International to convey already translated portions into films - for Wycliffe to venture here is like: "hats off to you guys!" I personally think prayer into this will not be time wasted.
Dynamic equivalence Translation: In translating a verse, dynamic equivalent translation is less concerned with providing an exact English word for each word of the original text as it is with communicating the basic message of that verse. Considering the original context, culture, figures of speech, and other effects on language, dynamic equivalence seeks for today’s Bible readers to understand the text in the same.
WHY?
REACHING THOSE WITHOUT SCRIPTURE Frontier Peoples are un-reached groups most needing pioneer church planting. They are less than or equal to 2% Christian Adherent and an approximation of groups without a known self-sustaining gospel movement.
2,007,461,110 - over 2 Billion un-reached.
Look at this scary list! (visit the list here)
No Jesus film, No translation of scriptures - this is a small screen capture of a VERY long list of people groups. Millions of people with zero Bibles.
Do visit joshuaproject.net and become more familiar with the status of evangelism in the world. It gets updated very often.
THE HOUSE SITUATION
IT WILL TAKE A MIRACLE... but then again - my entire life has been miracles based on obedience so far. This is nothing new. It's just a tad bigger!
Most people are not aware that I am not actually living in an actual house. Though I made it really livable and nice for nearly 2 years since loosing my visa to Thailand, it is not a long term solution. I make it work but a home will just be so much more... like home!
When I film, I shift things for filming. When I do counseling, I shift things for counseling. When I write, I shift things again for writing. When I receive people... I shift and shift and shift. Not to mention that I am surrounded by noise. I think, when loud banging from beneath while I was trying to film hit my ears again today... I was so over it. Thank goodness I was not in a zoom meeting.
House prices unfortunately shot up with at least a million per home since covid, and my town specifically is one of the more expensive towns in South Africa when it comes to buying property (500 000 for an empty plot of land). I am a full time volunteer that has not earned a salary for nearly 3 decades. I cannot buy a house.
After 25 years in full time ministry and continuing with what I am doing, I am finally asking God for a permanent home debt free. I know God can do it. It is how he trained me from the start, not to owe anyone anything but to trust Him with all things, including a house.
I have lived on 5 continents and stories like my car, or my truck-moving story shows me that if I stay in His will, then miracles will always be part of my life.
Timing.
This is the difficult part. To fundraise and for it to be in the right time. It seems that the 3rd world war has also finally started.
I am asking you to pray with me for God to speak to that individual to prepare his/her heart, and that they would be willing. This is all I can do from my side.
How God will lead me to this type of Christian that gives this extravagantly, I have no idea, but there are business men and woman who does sow into God's kingdom like this.
I got to a place in prayer where I said, Lord, should I even ask you for a house? Maybe I am praying the wrong prayer. This is the first time this week since I started praying 2 January 2022 for a house, I felt Holy Spirit guiding me to a verse I am quite familiar with.
Matthew 19:29 "...everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or wife or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times as much and will inherit eternal life." I kept reading and paged to Luke.
Luke 11:8-9 says, "I tell you, even though he will not get up and give you the bread because of friendship, yet because of your shameless audacity he will surely get up and give you as much as you need. “So I say to you: Ask and it will be given to you; seek and you will find; knock and the door will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives; the one who seeks finds; and to the one who knocks, the door will be opened.
I have permission to ask! I have learned that receiving might take time. Lets see what God will do.
Please be in prayer with me. I think my tiny doggies will also love a garden finally!
