How many of us have been fascinated by the stories of those itinerant preachers who traveled the American Old West and brought revival and spiritual life to our pioneer families? Big tent revivals and preachers who moved along from town to town bringing messages from 'The Good Book' have played an important part in the spiritual development of our country.
Partners in taking the oral gospel all over this East African nation
Now imagine that same thing going on today in rural areas of another country, far away in East Africa. One of our partner organizations, e3Partners, has trained and equipped one thousand itinerant evangelists to travel all over Ethiopia bringing light and life through God's Word to the people groups there. One story came to us recently from Rick Eisemann, an e3Partners representative:
"A national missionary was walking down the road carrying his TapeTalk cassette player when a rider on a horse started walking beside him. The missionary, thinking this may be a God appointment, started playing the GRN messages and then asked him if he would like to listen to the words in the player that were in his language. The man listened intently and then said, 'Will you come to my home? I want my family to hear this good news.' The evangelist was willing and ended up following the rider forty miles to his village. The family and others delighted to hear the messages in their own language. The end result was that the man and his whole family accepted Christ and now a church is meeting in their home."
The vision of e3Partners is to see God mobilize His people to equip 10 million Christians with tools and training to evangelize 1 billion souls and to establish 1 million multiplying churches.
THE SHEBA RECORDING PROJECT
A couple of years ago recordists from Sierra Leone traveled to Ethiopia to work on the Sheba Recording Project. By God's grace they recorded Bible stories in 24 heart languages.
Later this year GRN plans to send more recordists to Ethiopia for phase two of the project. In partnership with Words of Life churches, they aim to record messages in 30 more languages.
With 76% of Ethiopia's people being oral communicators and with over one hundred heart languages spoken, GRN materials will be very useful for proclaiming the gospel message, especially since only 22 of the languages having any scriptures.