Well, we have been doing English Evangelism School for over a month now so I thought I would give you an update on what kind of things have been going on.  Right now we have 2 basic groups.  The beginners and the intermediates are one group and the advanced speakers are a separate group.  So far things are going pretty well for both.  In the beginners/intermediates group we sing songs first in English.  It may sound strange, but this actually does miracles for the students' pronunciation.  We then break up into groups where I (Jon) teach the beginners and Jenny teaches the intermediates and a fter 1 hour of class we get back together to listen to a short Bible teaching.  So far we've covered some pretty interesting ideas for many of the non believer students.  The group listens to I or Stas (local pastor, fellow church planter, and my director) as we talk about  questions such as; Who am I? Who is man?  Who is God? Who is Jesus? What is the Love of God? The students have listened attentively as we tell them what it means to be a follower of Jesus.   The advanced speakers group is even more interesting as we dove directly in the gospel of Mark.  We spend our opening time getting acquainted with the myriad of English idioms and then we simply start reading from the paraphrase known as "The Message" with the students.  The Message is written in a natural American English, which is more than challenging for even our highest of students.  Jenny and I provide expanations and my usual animations as we read the story of Jesus.   All in all we have about 30-40 students per week, that we have the privilege to talk to about Jesus.

... Because they are not so fair-you-see.  I couldn't help but think of this Sunday school song this week as we worked with our advanced students going through the book of Mark.  "The Message" is so rich with phrases and idioms that we only get through about a half a chapter a week.  But it's been good, because students here are often frustrated that they have studied English in school for 6 years with an additional 3 years at the university level and they still don't understand Americans when we speak naturally.  Mostly because our speech is chocked full of idioms, phrasal verbs, and pictorial 'like' statements.  The Message has presented a great way for them to see these things in print and therefore get a much better understanding  of how to deal with them.  For those of you who are not familiar with the first three chapters of Mark we find Jesus coming into constant contact with the stiff necked hypocrisy of the pharisee's.  It's been a real treat to see how the students react to these religious hard nosed hooligans as we see them in the text.  And even more fun to watch them savor Jesus' unparalleled quick witted responses, that reveal the pharisees true and less than Godly intentions.  The characters are so real to them because they are faced with the same type of tradition over truth and fake piety over love for others mentality everyday.   I am so excited to take them deeper into this story and to see what God does with their hearts.  How will they handle Jesus claims of exclusivity as the only way in the light of our increasingly pluralistic global community?  Time will tell, stay tuned to hear more about how this adventure goes.  Pray that God with soften their hearts to His message of salvation.