The Chronicles of Meng

Davar Partners International and OM Malawi have begun a three year partnership to impact Malawi for Christ. The initial launch event will take place in three weeks time. A group of 9 cyclists and 9 support team members will be cycling and driving across Malawi praying and seeking outreach opportunities for future outreach teams who will come in 2016 and 2017. Additionally each cyclist has been challenged to raise $300 either through sponsors giving a lump sum or by get sponsors to sponsor per kilometer that the riders cycle. The money raised will go towards various OM and Davar projects within Malawi ranging from early childhood development and feeding programs to distribution of Audibibles and scripture engagement training. I(Matthew) will be driving in one of the support vehicles this year and possibly leading an outreach team next year and 2017. In addition to praying as we ride and drive through Malawi we will be having a focused day of prayer on Sunday May 24th. Our outreach...

Over the past year or so I have mentioned Interactive Bible Discovery a number of times and talked about getting to facilitate a number of IBD training courses. As some of you following our newsletters and blogs are not familiar with IBD I wanted to take the opportunity to share a bit about what exactly is Interactive Bible Discovery and what it means to facilitate an IBD course. Firstly, Interactive Bible Discovery is a method of communicating Scripture that integrates storytelling and Audio Scripture Engagement to create an ongoing process of discipleship within an oral community. Rather than teaching or explaining to communicate meanings from the Word, questions are used to promote discussion and interaction from all participants. Additionally, while some other Bible study methods encourage the reading of scripture, IBD specifically encourages the telling of scripture. When you pull out a book(Bible or otherwise) in an oral setting you are basically telli...

In December Davar was approached by the South African Theological Seminary with the purpose of partnering together to create course curriculum covering the subjects of Orality and Disciple Marking Movements among Oral Learners. The courses would be for inclusion in both Bachelors and Masters programs offered by SATS. This is an amazing opportunity for Davar to gain a foothold within the academic world to advocate on behalf of the oral learners around the globe. In response to this request, myself and Gerhard(Davar VP of Scripture Engagement Services) made a brief research trip to D'kar, Botswana to interview a Naro San Bushman and his family. Our goal is to gain insight and understanding into how oral learners pass on important values and worldviews from one generation to the next. We want to see how story, music, art, dance, drama, rituals, poetry, and proverbs are employed by the Naro San in the transmission of important life information. From this research we hope to form...

Back in February of this year I(Matthew) had the opportunity to travel to Asuncion, Paraguay along with my Director, Johan Louw. We had been invited by SIM(Serving In Mission) Paraguay to come and train their team along with a few other missionaries in Interactive Bible Discovery. What was unique about the group is that it was largely Americans and, with the exception of one or two couples, most had been serving full-time in the South American region for over 10 yrs. Truth be told many of them were more experienced in orality than either Johan or myself. Due to this Johan and I felt it best to focus less of our time on giving information about orality and oral strategies and rather spend our time asking questions and creating discussion. In doing this it allowed those who had quite a bit of insight and experience already in the field to share with those who were new to orality or the challenge of empowering oral learners to engage with the Word of God. Additionally it...

Well we made it to the end of our time here in Kenya. All said and done there were 32 people trained in the IBD Method of Scripture Engagement and from their feedback everyone was very pleased with the course. I look forward to hearing there testimonies in the coming months and hope and pray that this will be a stepping stone to a greater hunger and passion for the Word of God amongst the oral peoples of Kenya and beyond. Below is a picture of those who completed the course, pray for them that the Lord would use them mightily in carrying His Word to those who have not heard!

Yesterday I promised that I would post some pictures of the training and so here are a few. We had a few new people join this morning who had been traveling from other areas so we are up to 29 trainers now. I must say that this has been by far the best training that I have been a part of to date. Throughout the course the trainers are taught how to learn and tell Scripture Stories accurately in order to take them to the oral learners whom they work and live with. They are broken into small groups to practice the various stories. Then each group must decide on one person to tell the to the larger group as a whole. During the second day we practice what it will be like for them as individuals to be sent to another group, church, village, etc. And so when they have decided within the group who there "missionary" is they lay hands on that person and "commision" them to go and "send them to their target village" (Read other group) to...