missionaries Archives - StoryRunners

She Said Yes!

Serving as a translator for the Aja (Benin) School of Storying, Dodji sensed God’s invitation. “But how could someone like me ever become a servant of God?” Young, single and inexperienced, he couldn’t see it. But God could.

Coached by Parfait Mitchai, Dodji began his missionary training by sharing the gospel on a nearby campus using oral Bible stories as one of his strategies. But Parfait wasn’t finished recruiting.

One day Dodji learned that a young lady would be joining the campus ministry and be trained, with Dodji, in how to lead future SOS’s in West Africa. “I was sitting there with Parfait when she came in,” Dodji recalls. “We were like brother and sister… people started asking if we were twins!”

As Dodji and Doriane began working together as trainers for the Fulfulde SOS, our American trainers could see that God was up to something. “They think alike, their personalities are so similar,” Hera remembers. “They even have the same sense of humor!” Liz, a StoryRunners intern, agreed. So, as might be expected, Hera and Liz put their matchmaking skills to work. It didn’t take much convincing.

“It was when the SOS ended in May of 2015 that I realized it,” Dodji recounts. “I knew she was the one God had prepared for me, and I knew she would be my wife!” Dodji didn’t waste a minute. Without one date, Dodji told her what he knew from God. “Will you be my wife?” he asked her. “I thought you might ask,” Doriane replied to him. “And I had already decided to say YES.”

After a year of preparing and getting to know one another, Dodji and Doriane were married last May in a beautiful ceremony that several of our StoryRunners’ staff were able to attend.

“Now that we are married, we want to continue working with StoryRunners as full-time trainers and missionaries. We are ready to go anywhere and everywhere God wants us to go!”

Dodji and Doriane will be dynamic and strategic in the work of nationalizing StoryRunners’ Schools of Storying in the entire region of West Africa. Together, they have already begun training many local believers and will be leading SOS’s for many unreached languages in the future.

She Said Yes!

A Mom With A Mission

Meet Sharon—wife and busy mother of one high- schooler and one college student—from north central Texas. So how did ONE WEEK in Orlando, Florida become, as she says, “one of the greatest gifts in her life”?

Back up to October 2010. Involved in a local church in their area, Sharon and her husband were in search of new ways to minister within their congregation and beyond. After hearing about a 5-day training in oral Bible storying, the couple set aside a week, made arrangements for their kids back home, and headed to Florida. What they learned and brought home with them was life- changing.

“Within 3 months, our church had asked me to lead and teach a women’s group in Bible storying. In another 3 months, I found myself on a church- sponsored trip to the Middle East where we ministered to women in Jordan through storytelling.” Imagine the joy she had standing on the banks of the Jordan River, telling a diverse group of tourists the story of Jesus baptizing people in that very place! Later, she shared with Jordanian women from broken homes the story of Moses—of how God uses the broken to be His messengers of hope. “Then the following year, I traveled to Cambodia, partnering with long-time missionaries in training pastors and church leaders from Thailand, Cambodia and the Philippines,” Sharon says. She taught them how to use oral Bible storying, and as they practiced their newly-acquired skills in the afternoons, Sharon and her group went outside the city to camps where they ministered to children. “It was beautiful to hear the creation story delivered to the children in their own language, and then to see the children delighting in answering the questions after the story,” she recounts to us.

Since then, she’s journeyed to Ethiopia to teach more pastors and church leaders how to use storying in their churches and ministries. “I received an email last week from a youth pastor who was very excited about the training and how it was impacting his church,” Sharon tells us. “He said that storying has changed the way the pastors are preaching. They no longer lecture, but use stories about Jesus—and this is CHANGING LIVES.”

A Mom With A Mission

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“The Lord gave me a voice…”

“I hardly opened my mouth to talk to anyone,” Corine* confessed. “Before coming to the School of Storying, I was quiet and reserved, and never knew how to talk to people about God.” But learning to tell stories has been life-changing for her! “It is like the Lord gave me a voice and filled my mouth with the words,” she says. “I can tell these stories boldly and with confidence.” Even her family and friends remarked about the difference, and Corine even found herself chosen to share a story at a nearby radio station!

* name changed for her security reasons

“The Lord gave me a voice…”

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Spiritual Avalanche

“The harvest is truly plentiful.” Those words of Jesus have never come more alive to me than during our recent School
of Storying project in northern Benin. Over and over again we were impressed by the evidence that the people are so ready to respond to the gospel–as long as you approach them in a way that is appropriate to their culture. If you come to them as one of them, speaking their language, holding out simple truths, then it is amazing to see the movement that God ignites! Over the 5 weeks of our training, we saw 25 ongoing small groups started.

From the first day, the people in these villages were begging our participants to come and share more stories with them. “These stories are just so interesting!” one man told one of our participants. “I want you to come back and tell these stories to my whole village.” Our non-believers that are involved in the training were also enraptured by the Word of God. “If these stories are true, then I’m going to become a Christian. Pray for me,” one of them told me. We knew at that point that the Holy Spirit was doing some powerful work, and we weren’t wrong.

Pastor Didier

Over the course of a few weeks, we saw all 11 non-believers that were involved directly in our training decide to follow Christ! One of them explained to me, “Before I came here, I was always worrying. I was obsessed with thinking about all of my problems and all the terrible things in life. But now that Jesus has come into my life, I have so much peace!” I could see the change in their lives as they became children of God. For me, this training felt like we were riding on the edge of an unstoppable avalanche. We were attacked from all sides by Satan, but nothing he could do could even slow down the advancement of the mighty kingdom of God. I am so overwhelmed and humbled to have gotten to see it. – From one of the StoryRunners team members

Spiritual Avalanche

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