Geeked!

Ok, maybe most normal people wouldn't get excited about dressing up in a tie on a 45 degree (celcius, north of 100 in Fahrenhuit) day to spend seven hours giving lectures on the nature of the Pentateuch and the Gospels, but, I am a ministry geek, and so I am geeked!

Tomorrow, from 8:00 am until 4:00 pm, I will be at the denominational headquarters (refer to earlier blog entitled "Haiti's 2850, sort of") teaching these courses.  Over the past two weeks, in between unpacking and learning to drive and shop and count my money in Haitian Gourdes, I have been poring over my seminary and bible college notes and creating two workshops which I will teach tomorrow (through an interpreter) to 21 pastors and church leaders from the ECRH.

Here's me in one of the offices here, eagerly typing away in anticipation of the courses I will teach.  Notice the large floor fan, it is on full blast but not quite keeping up with my bodies capacity to produce moisture.  If I had hair, it would be blowing.  

I started writing the courses by taking Zachary and Sharon Segaar-King's notes (all in Creole) and plugging them into Google Autotranslate to produce a rough outline of what I should teach on.  Then, I scoured the 100's of pages of seminary and Bible college notes so wonderfully scanned into PDFs for me by Tammy Prince and Mary VanderMunnik before I left the church we shared in Cambridge (what an awesome gift that is turning out to be -- thanks SO much!)  Finally, today at three, I pressed "print" and now have about 20 pages of notes which my translator, Kerby, will speak into Creole for me tomorrow.  

I can't wait to learn and teach and share the day with these pastors and church leaders from all over Haiti.  I am eager to be a small part of what God is doing here.  The Pentateuch course in the morning will be a teaching of the first five books of the Bible, what they mean, what they reveal about God, how to interpret them, how they fit in the rest of Scripture, and so on.  We will review God's holiness, mercy, power, covenantal love, and the many different natures of the law and how it is to be interpreted today.  I am eager to hear stories from the participants about how these books apply in their context and how I can be of service to them in the future.  The course of the Gospels will compare and contrast the four Gospels -- Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John -- noting their essential unity but unique emphases.  Sprinked throughout all of this will be a host of teaching about methods of interpretation.  

I also look forward to sharing with you -- in pictures and hopefully by video -- how the day went.  Join me by praying for me to rest well tonight, have a clear throat (having a fan on all the time is messing with my sinuses and throat :() and that the teaching tomorrow will be well received and helpful.  

I am geeked!