French toast or just plain double dutch

When doing discipleship with new or newish believers you always come across difficulties due to words that crop up in the course of studying the bible that perhaps have never been encountered before.

Doing this in Spanish has been challenging but now, after four years things are certainly easier and I do not have the fear that I used to have when I had to open my mouth in public. Although between you and me, I feel as though the more Spanish I learn the more I realise how much I do not understand, but life goes on. I will always be a foreigner here!

So about 4 months ago when I started meeting with a guy called Sylvain I realised that him being French and me being Australian would sometimes prove difficult. So in my wisdom (or foolishness) I found a discipleship book that was in French and English and was downloadable and gave a great explanation of the Bible.

With almost 10 chapters of the book under our sleeves we are getting close to the New Testament. We have covered the whole of the Old Testament: sacrifices, crossing the Red Sea and the construction of the tabernacle, what a whirlwind.

So far we have been talking something like the following, remembering that we are reading in our native language and speaking in Spanish.

"So Sylvain, what did you like this week?"

"Oh, I like the part where the men cross the water"

"Oh the crossing of the sea after the important man from Egypt decided to chase them?"

"Yes that's it, it's in this paragraph here."

"Oh... Yes I see, yes that part, mmm I like that too, it's like, mmm, great.

And so for 1.5 hours every other week we get together and discuss the bible in our limited way. But even though it is limited in the ways we are able to communicate, it is not limited at all as we are reading in our own native tongue the history of our ancestors, the Israelites, and how Jesus is the one who is proclaimed about in the pages of the Bible.

Want to use this same material yourself? Go to www.goodseed.com and check it out, they also have the whole bible story as a flash video to watch at your leisure.