Only One Person

Prayer & Praise Report # 4, August-October 2014

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Dear Friend of God’s Story,

I am only one person, what can I do? Most of us see the spiritual and physical needs around us. But honestly, the needs are so overwhelming that we sometimes feel hopeless, thinking, I am only one person; I can’t make a difference. This is NOT true. If you pray for TGSP or if you financially support this work, you ARE already part of its global impact. Please know that praying, giving, or going, do combine to produce the evangelism and discipleship impact of TGSP.

This current newsletter, Only One Person, gives testimonies of individual people who use our tools of God’s Story (GS) or Simply The Story (STS) training and are seeing huge impact.

Stealth Team:

If you also want to “go,” and you have time to learn and practice STS, ask about becoming part of a Stealth Team. One person, using the STS stealth tactics, is clearly impacting a closed access country. Right now, this person is handing off advanced STS leadership training to uneducated villagers, but they doubted their ability to learn. They said, “No other teacher makes us think as much as you do.

“We’ve always been given shallow information. We’ve never been asked to think for ourselves before.” But they are getting it. And by God’s grace, they will use this simple but deep way of understanding and applying Scripture with others, who will then hand it off to others.

The fruit is worth the commitment to gain this innovative way of learning and teaching others.

Urgent Prayer is needed now for a team in Ghana that is launching ten new languages of God’s Story in ten different locations.

These are languages of smaller people groups, largely untouched by the Gospel . . . all recorded by one retired American. The team is traveling in a country with Ebola on either side. It is sort of like walking through the parted Red Sea! Leaders in each people group are receiving DVDs and 50 solar audio players with God’s Story. Some players also have Scripture, as available. Most villagers are hearing words of the Bible in their mother tongue for the first time. They also are hearing, learning, discussing and being ministered to by STS-told Bible stories. At the first language launching, 63 stepped out to make professions of faith in Jesus!

Medical Missions: Just this week we completed a brochure showing the usefulness of GS and STS in medical missions. As we were selecting some testimonies for the brochure, we celebrated. Millions of people in scores of countries have been ministered to body, soul and spirit. We discovered such reports as:

“In India we conducted 10 medical camps. Over 3,000 people were medically treated and more than 800 people came to the Lord through hearing God's Story during the camps. Twelve Home Bible Schools have started through these medical camps we conducted.”

More Medical Missions & a UUPG (UUPG is an unengaged, unreached people group) For several years, a Kenyan medical missions group had been ministering physically to the East Pokot. But these animists refused to listen to any religious teaching. The leader of this medical group decided to try something new. He asked these Pokot if they wanted to see a movie. They agreed, and watched the God’s Story film. Eight people professed faith in Christ after seeing the film, the first believers among the East Pokot!

The West Pokot have many believers and speak the same language as the animist East Pokot. But due to the resistance to Christianity of those in the east, these believers had given up hope of evangelizing their distant relatives.

The director of the medical group invited STS instructors to train 30 of the West Pokot believers. Those trained felt encouraged and empowered.

But the West Pokot live in such a remote region, that they could not be reached in time to join the medical team for the next trip. So the team took one trained STS storyteller with them.

While the medical staff tended to the patients, these animists showed interest in hearing Bible stores. In fact, Samson, the storyteller, told about 80 stories!

One listener, a chief, accepted Jesus after hearing a story and discussing it with the other animists of his village.

That day, he mingled among the villagers and told the Feeding of the 5,000 story five times!

The next day the chief stood in front of all the villagers gathered for medical care. He announced, “I have something to say.” All work stopped and the people grew quiet.  We Pokot have nothing. We are poor, so we demand help from the government but they give us only a little. We have no schools for our children and our people can barely provide for themselves. But God sent His people, not the government, to care for us. And this storyteller told us many things about the God of the Christians.

We, the Pokot people, must look to God to help, not the government. Now we must let God teach us how to provide for our people.” The trained believers from West Pokot have now asked to start an Oral Bible School among their own people and are planning to go to live among the East Pokot to evangelize and disciple using stories.

But it seems that already, due to the vision of the director of the medical mission group, and one man’s readiness to tell many stories, the East Pokot are no longer a UUPG!

Summit at Bethel: This Sept, The God’s Story Project celebrated 15 years of service, and Simply The Story completed 8 years. Thirty, multi-country directors and leaders met at Bethel, our center in Hemet, California. At this summit, they discussed where we’ve been, compared current strategies, and dreamed for the future. We also heard these leaders tell and lead discussions on Bible stories they had never before used. (Soon to be posted on “What’s New” is a report titled “Listening,” a surprise use of one of these stories.)

The directors, from 15 countries, thrived on the testimonies of the other leaders, each thinking of the others as the most amazing and humble leaders. I knew that one of our directors had expressed feelings of aloneness. So I asked all of those gathered, “Have any of you ever experienced aloneness?” Hands shot into the air so quickly that I was stunned. But really, it shouldn’t have been such a surprise considering that most of the significant followers of God in Scripture also expressed aloneness. The good news is that being part of this gathering of the “fellowship of kindred minds,” and hearts illustrated God’s statement in Psalms, “God sets the solitary in families.”

Even during the summit, we clearly saw the attacks of the enemy on the families and ministries of these leaders. At the last minute, the burning down of one man’s house was stopped.

Family members of numerous leaders became ill and the sad, but frequent heartbreak of human betrayal or staff being enticed to leave the ministry for money was taking place.

The Lord reminded us of the many times in Scripture that the same things happened to God’s children, and they made it through. That helped our directors through these trials.

One More Trained Man: Just one man, a director who attended the summit, plans to launch 35 new STS Oral Bible Schools (OBSs) in Ethiopia in the next two months. By God’s grace, within one year, these nearly 400 students will be able to teach deeply from memory 296 Bible stories and passages! They will be walking, talking Bibles!

Flash. Just Came In! Our Ethiopian director wrote: “I just returned home after a successful planting of OBSs. We had planned for five in this area, but when I got there, they were six. There are 72 students in total. Before travelling to USA for the summit, I had given out 4 MegaVoice players, which were distributed to four villages.

“In one village, the Christian who was given the player invited villagers to listen to God’s Story in the Oromo language. Night by night they gathered. The number of listeners increased every night. After listening for about a week, 61 villagers gave their lives to Christ as their Lord and Saviour. Some of those new believers attended the workshop we led last week. A church has now been planted in that community.

“In a second village, a man was given the player to be a custodian. His wife and son were very much opposed to the gospel and there was no peace at home because the man is a Christian. This brother begun to listen to Oromo GS, and the wife became interested to listen.

After a week, the son took the player and left home. He came back after a few days and said to his father, ‘Dad you are right.’ Both the son and the wife surrendered to Jesus as their Lord and Saviour.

“At the same time, this church that is hosting the OBS had an issue with some members who had split from the church. When this group that had split heard about the workshop and players, some attended our first workshop in August. Now this group has been reconciled to the church and asked for forgiveness.

“This coming month, we are going to the next place to plant 23 OBS there by God’s Grace.”

We thank you deeply for your prayers and support that help make possible the language launching, the gifting of solar players, the production of new languages, the trainings and

this strategic summit gathering. Your involvement makes you part of this family and part of this harvest as well.

We recorded many stirring testimonies of these leaders. We hope to post them on our STS website soon on ”What’s New?” I want you to be able to hear directly from your brothers and sisters.

Blessings,

Dorothy A. Miller