IBD Training in Paraguay - February 2015

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 allowed for myself and Johan to also glean from their knowledge.

This is probably one of my favorite things about IBD, that being I get the chance every time to learn something new and continually be in a state of growing. I am constantly being challenged to grow and to push myself to grow in my knowledge and understanding of the Word. It feels like I am being trained by the Lord as much or more than I am training others. But then that is really what we are trying to challenge every trainer with who goes through the course. If you want to disciple others you must first be a disciple, one who is constantly seeking to be more like Christ.

Beyond the IBD training course we were also afforded the opportunity to identify potential target languages in Paraguay and Peru that our productions department can hopefully help to record in either 2016 or 2017. The languages we are targeting currently have no audio and only portions of text available. That said our initial goal will be, with the help of the translators, producing a Bible 365 in each language. Bible 365, for those unfamiliar, is a set of 365 scripture portions(stories) from Genesis to Revelation. It is intended to give an overview of the Bible while only being about as big as a NT, thus allowing for it to be completed much quicker than a Full Bible. Additionally as it is Scripture portions and not paraphrased stories it allows the translators to continually be working towards the ultimate goal of a Full Bible translation while in the meantime providing discipleship tools for those working with the targeted language group.

All in all it was an awesome trip and one we are hopeful will open more doors for the Word of God the living Davar to be made available to every oral learner in South America. Please be praying that the Lord would continue to develop the relationships that have been initiated through this training and that His Word would flood every tribe, every tongue, every nation in South America!