Training Success

A participant placing rocks to vote on his community's
biggest problems

When the daily salary reached one billion Francs, everyone in the room started to have an "aha" moment. It was clear that this simulation we were doing, comparing a large salary that is simply added together versus a 1 Franc salary that doubled every day, was really important. The numbers on the multiplication side were just so much bigger. It was a flashy way to emphasize one of the main pillars of CHE, that if we want to help transformation happen, we must do things in a way that they can be easily multiplied. And we need to expect that people will go on to teach and multiply what they've learned rather than rely on professional experts to simply add trainees one by one.

Behind the many hands-on activities and stories we heard, there is so much to unpack from a great week of Community Health Evangelism training. We had 25 pastors and evangelists from one region of the country gathered to learn from the only other group using this method in our country. These CHE trainers have been working with communities near the capital city for about 5 years after developing CHE networks in another West African country. Their experience and organization of how CHE can be put into practice in this culture was invaluable. The way that the evangelists stayed engaged with the material and started to digest the ideas was very encouraging. I was so pleased to see the church’s new National CHE Trainer work so hard and responsibly to help the logistics go smoothly, but also to learn so much himself. God provided just the right timing and just the right people for many of the important parts of the week to come together. And so as we recover and plan to return next week to do some final prep with the four evangelists who were chosen to start implementing the program first, we are so thankful and so grateful to have your prayers and encouraging support!

--El Padre