Orality Journal Volume 3, Number 1, 2014 | Page 29

Telling God’s Story to the Sweater People

stories from the Bible. They can’t
take this from us and we will share
them.” She then told me the story
of how Jesus calmed the storm.
“If Jesus could control the wind
and the waves, he could care for us
also,” Rubina explained.
Rubina also began to suffer spiritual
attacks. She would be walking
and all of a sudden be pulled to
the ground by an invisible force.
We prayed for her, and she knew
the story of the demon-possessed
man. She trusted in Christ to heal
her. Rubina also led a short-term
mission team in prayer walking
and distributing gospel literature.
The men of that team were severely
beaten. After all this, the church did
not meet regularly any more. We
encouraged them to meet, but they
didn’t. We did have one last meeting,
however, and that day we heard the
girls and their families (around 20 in
all) share from Creation to the start
of the Church. They had memorized
all 47 stories by heart.
About five months before our twoyear timeline was up, I was invited
by a Sweater woman to live with
her family for two months to test
our Bible stories. This woman was
a social worker. I told her I had
recorded stories about the prophets
that I thought would encourage
the Sweater Women. I wanted to

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find a group of women who only
knew Sweater talk and could tell
me if they liked the stories or not.
She asked me to go to her house to
share the stories with her grandma,
mom, and aunt. She lived in the
same village that Rubina had taken
the short-term mission team. It was
the same place where the men on
the team were beaten.
I was scared. On the way there I prayed
and recited our war cry and Proverbs
3:5-6. God was faithful. I ended
up sharing a room with grandma,
whom they called Nonnie. I loved
her so much. She was 85 years old,
wore a traditional head scarf, had no
teeth, and smoked a hookah. Every
night, she would listen to the stories
in chronological order and she would
cry She loved the stories from the Bible.
.
When I got to the story of Hagar,
she was so excited, because that
was her name. She also had a sister
name Sara and a brother named
Abraham. She exclaimed, “God sees
me!” I thanked God that he would
let me be the one to tell Nonnie that
Jesus loved her. Every night, Nonnie
would hear a story from the Bible
and every morning she would tell it
to the rest of the family They were
.
able to hear all 47 stories in the two
months I was with them. We would
always discuss the story afterwards.
I loved being with them.