Institute: Unleashing the Power of Biblical Storytelling

Our first week in The Gambia, March 8-13, 2011, we led an Institute in collaboration with The Gambia Christian Council. We called it "Unleashing the Power of Biblical Storytelling in Worship and Ministry."

This Institute took place in celebration of Bible Week and indeed unleashed a lot of power! The Gambians are excellent storytellers and the Bible is full of excellent stories. It was a good match.

Most of the workshops took place outside under trees or this gazebo.

The Institute was free. The participants invited were pastors, Christian educators and laity of every faith tradition.

Staying with us at the Gambia Pastoral Institute for the first week was Rev. George Vimensi Minang from Cameroon. He brought greetings from Cameroon which he presented to our group's leader, Mrs. Juliana Rowe.

George had not come as far as we had, but it had taken him just as long due to various travel adventures and misadventures. He finally arrived safe and sound.

We all thoroughly enjoyed George's company during the week as well as his participation in the Institute. We were very impressed by his dedication to learning about biblical storytelling and teaching others. Since our visit we have been pleased to hear from him; he has continued to enable the telling of God's stories by heart in his home country of Cameroon.

Tropical Paradise

The Gambia is a tropical country with sunshine, warmth and beautiful flora at times we northerners are shivering under grey skies.

The trees and flowers at the Pastoral Institute where we stayed and worked were lovely. The garden was well tended, swept clean and watered every morning.

This building is the residence where we stayed at the Gambia Pastoral Institute. Nice rooms, some even had hot water. The water was never REALLY cold--think "refreshing"--but we pampered Westerners did find it a bit of a challenge. We remembered the sign from our first visit, "Keep your bucket full." We had learned to take it seriously since sometimes during the day there was no water at all, hot or cold. But this trip that was never an issue; always water in the pipes. We followed the sign's advice and kept our buckets full so it wouldn't be a problem anyway. A little like carrying an umbrella to ward off rain.

Home Sweet Home: Gambia Pastoral Institute

The Gambia Pastoral Institute was our home for the time we spent in The Gambia. Behind this wall is a lovely Catholic retreat center with various buildings providing dorm-type housing, kitchen and dining room, administrative offices, chapel, lecture hall, and outdoor seating areas where we held workshops. Lots of lovely trees and flowering bushes, all swept clean every day and cared for tenderly. It is nothing fancy, but met our needs for housing, food and teaching very well.

The welcome sign in the airport helps it sink in that we are actually in The Gambia.

Now it was a BIG plane!

We arrived in Banjul, The Gambia on Sunday, March 6 at twilight. We had flown six hours from Brussels, Belgium where Tom and I had arrived Sunday morning after an all night flight from Philadelphia. So we had been on three continents in 36 hours or so. It's really hard to keep track of time when you cross all the time zones and then backtrack. All I know is it was a big plane! Reminds me of the way Tom tells Mark's resurrection story: "Now it was a BIG stone!" Anyway, that's Tom standing in the plane's shadow with Richard Rice. Glad to have made it safely across an ocean and a sea to West Africa.