I [Chris] just returned from 7 weeks in Texas. It was 7 busy weeks of class, 7 weeks of
missing my family, but 7 wonderful weeks of being with my arts colleagues.
I was at the Graduate Institute of Applied Linguistics,
where many Wycliffe and other missionaries are trained before heading to the
field. This is the same place that we
lived during 2012, before heading overseas.
My purpose this time was to take a couple of classes that
will give me more tools to use when we return to Cameroon in July. The first class was four and a half weeks and
was entitled Scripture Engagement Strategies.
I would have liked to have taken this class before going to Cameroon the
first time, but we didn’t have the time to fit it in. I especially enjoyed this class because the
lead instructor was the guy who literally wrote the book on the subject – one
of them anyway. Dr. Dye has a ton of
experience and has been the leader in this field worldwide for decades. It was great to learn straight from the
horse’s mouth, as they say.
 |
| Loved seeing beautiful Texas sunsets over the nearby lake |
The second class was a two-week intensive entitled Arts
& Trauma Healing. The course was
designed to give us the training for conducting trauma healing seminars that
our mission has done for years, but with the twist of using the arts as
therapeutic intervention. It was a lot
to do within two weeks and I was glad to finish the class and the accompanying
projects. This course will have
application in Africa with the many trauma healing workshops that happen in our
area. I don’t know how soon I’ll start
with facilitating trauma healing in our area, but I’m now equipped and ready.
One other retooling that happened while I was in Dallas was
completely by accident. I learned a lot
about the practice of Bible storytelling.
Bible teaching through orality is becoming a big deal and I was
fortunate to meet a couple of the key people that are masters of this technique
within our mission. I was fortunate
enough to get some basic training so that I can start to experiment with
storying in our area and hopefully generate some momentum so that more folks
can hear the gospel. It was an
accidental meeting and I’m so glad to have learned what I did.
