Upcoming Table Talk Program: Responding in light of Covid
This month, we’d like you to pray with us about our upcoming Table Talk program. If you’ve seen our newsletters, you know that we’re collecting the stories of refugees and turning them into bilingual storybooks. We believe we’re uniquely positioned to honor Amarillo’s refugees in this exciting way. And the response from refugee communities has been really positive! Antoinette, a Burundian woman, is eager to develop a series of storybooks that focus on her life story! Lual, a Sudanese pastor, is excited about sharing their history. He even hopes to share some children’s Bible stories which can then be sent back home to South Sudan. How cool is it that right here in Amarillo we can have such global impact?! We envision that refugee communities will send these stories to their communities in other cities, refugee camps, and back into their home countries. This is going to be very big!
We plan to resume our exciting Table Talk program next month, focusing on the stories of a specific refugee community each Thursday night. We hope to share a meal together, then send children to a childcare program while adults discuss a story together. Next, we hope to divide into small groups to brainstorm new stories, and even to begin recording them right then and there! This is a great chance to involve local churches so that new relationships can form.
It sounds so exciting, doesn’t it? But there are so many pieces of this plan that we just haven’t been able to nail down. First, with COVID-19 cases rising in Amarillo, we’re struggling to know what our responsibilities are. This is especially complicated when you deal with multiple cultures who have very different responses to the pandemic. Pray for wisdom about how to respond to COVID.
Second, it’s difficult to get groups of people from a refugee community into one place at one time. Like, really difficult! Please pray that we can find a way to coordinate this. We are hoping to schedule a Thursday for each of the following groups: Burundi, Congo, Somalia, Karen (Myanmar), Chin (Myanmar), and South Sudan. Pray that we can get each of these refugee communities scheduled for a Thursday night this semester.
Third, and most importantly, will you pray that these events glorify God? The purpose of our storybook project is not to take advantage of painful stories for our entertainment! Instead, we hope to honor God by honoring these men and women who have had their voices quieted by the world. Pray that we do this right! We want to be ethical, honorable, compassionate, and loving. And we want to draw our broader community into those ideals along with us. May we be strong ambassadors for Christ as we carry out this unique project!
