It was another great day in Siberia. It has been very cool and rainy. Tonight we had an Oklahoma style thunderstorm. It knocked the power off for about an hour. I ended up telling stories by candlelight, which is really the way stories should be told for maximum impact. The kids listened very well. Russian kids seem to have a much longer attention span than their American counterparts.
This afternoon I did a storytelling workshop where I taught about 20 kids how to learn a biblical story for telling. We were working with the story of Jesus calming the storm. I had them go through a series of exercises and after about 30 minutes most of them were starting to get the story down. At the end of the session, I asked if anyone wanted to come up and tell the story for the whole group. A young man named Marat,who I’m guessing is about 15 years old, came up and told the story in English. In English! Not only was he working in a second language but he jumped up and told from memory a story he had just learned. When he finished the story everyone gave him a huge round of applause and my translator almost started crying because she was so proud of his courage. It was a beautiful moment. Maybe the highlight of my trip so far.
Telling Stories, Asking Questions, Learning Lessons