The Gambia Welcomes NOBS
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by Juliana Rowe continued from Part 2Part 3 - The End is Just the BeginningOn Saturday morning when Janet, my hostess, and I arrived at the hall at 9:30, for a 10:00 workshop, we found three people already seated in the room, waiting. They had come from the farthest point, Brikhama. By 10:00, all 30 seats, for the number of people we had anticipated would attend, had been taken. To our amazement more people continued to arrive.We started promptly at 10:00. God was in control, because the whole workshop had become bigger than I had ever envisioned. Again, I prayed and turned the event over to the Lord. I asked him to speak through me and lead me. That He did.
My last assignment was as a guest in a late night television program on Sunday night called Talking Christianity. I was interviewed by Father Edu and Reverend Junisa, whom I had met and worked with during the week. Here I had the opportunity to introduce NOBS and its work to the wider Gambian audience. On Monday I met a couple of people whom I had not met during the week but who had seen the television interview. The work of NOBS in the Gambia has only just begun. At the same time, I believe that the Lord will also open doors in Sierra Leone in His own time and make a way for planting biblical storytelling there. The Chairman of the Council of Churches has formally invited NOBS to The Gambia during the first week of March 2008 when churches in The Gambia celebrate Bible Week. He wants NOBS "to introduce a wider audience to the simple but effective techniques of biblical storytelling and to enable our own group to become more proficient in telling the stories." The Board of Directors of NOBS -- through current President, Dr. Lynn White -- has graciously accepted the invitation.
The program will include workshops, story swaps, favorite stories, a plenary. And the highlight will be sending NOBS members to individual churches to tell stories during their worship services on Bible Sunday. While there, they'll also advertise to each congregation the Epic Telling, which will take place that Sunday evening. If the Lord wills, it may be televised for the wider Gambian audience. The team has answered the call, "Will you go where you don't know and never be the same?" And as they go, they say: "Lord, your summons echoes true when you but call my name.And when it is over, they will never be the same. To God Be the Glory! |
By the end of the hour, we had 80 people in attendance, all in attention and participating fully. Several leaders offered to keep watering the seeds that we had sewn. Hopefully, there will be a strong Gambian presence among the tellers involved in the Festival Gathering we'll help to coordinate for them in 2008. The spirit of the Lord was definitely in that place, leading that many people in a workshop and holding their attention was beyond me. A Higher Power was most certainly in that place.
A team of about ten people has already responded to this call. They are making travel plans to venture out to a place where they have never been before to fulfill the mission of NOBS and to sow seeds of biblical storytelling in The Gambia. 
