Long Haul, Worth the Trip
Praise & Prayer Report #4, June-July 2023
Prayer & Praise Report # 4, June & July 2023
Long Haul, Worth the Trip
Many of us experience various projects throughout our life. Some projects are quick and others feel like an everlasting gobstopper. Several years back we set out to redo our websites and to combine God’s Story and Simply The Story under one banner. These tools work so well together, we felt they needed to be easy to find on one website.
The initial prototype presented to us by the web developers looked and felt very much like a western church with worshiper on the banner. This did not fit who God called us to be and it started a very long path to get a site that worked for our needs. We spent time praying and testing the rebranding of our ministry, went through Covid shortly after we started the new website, experienced other serious delays, and had several tests and bug fixes. At the same time that our website was being developed, our shopping cart also received some much needed upgrades.
All this to say, our long haul project is done and our website is now live for everyone to enjoy. We encourage you to watch Gods Story, learn about our oral Bible schools, experience the ease of ordering MegaVoice solar players, and so much more on the site. We plan to make all of our God’s Story languages available on our website, but this is a much longer process as about half our languages need to be upgraded before they are put on the site. Please be praying for this next step as we slowly roll out more and more languages.
Thank you everyone for your patience and your prayers during this time and for this project. Thank you to the kind donor who saw the value and vision and need for our new website. Thank you to everyone who helped test the site, work on the content and to our developers!
Why all the expense and sacrifice?
Our language workshops and launchings continue this month in Congo Brazzaville. Six languages are being recorded and several other completed languages are being premiered. Below are a couple of testimonies from this workshop.
Our leader wrote recently, "One of the narrators was prayed for this morning. He has been a drunkard for long time, but after a week in the Camp (working on God's Story), he said 'I must confess that I have been inflated so much, not with the food, but with the word of God. I know I am not the same anymore. My family will be surprised about the sudden change.' He was welcomed like the prodigal son back into the house."
Another post on Whatsapp shared the following, "We are very grateful to the God's Story project, we are full of testimonies from more than 50 churches planted through the God's story film.
"I asked myself a lot of questions, namely: why all this expense and sacrifice? But I now understand it was worth it. We won the whole bun village, because the village chief himself agreed to follow Jesus."
This man sums up the reason why our volunteers put their hands to the plow and don't look back. We know God is bringing thousands to Himself and we get to be part of this harvest.
Around the World in Brief
Our oral Bible schools throughout the refugee camps continue to multiply in ways and numbers we could never have imagined. The leaders are continuing to raise more leaders, and people are changed when they spend time in God‘s word together. They continue almost every evening showing God’s Story in different languages. The radio teams share Bible stories weekly in 6 different programs and languages.
India continues with many workshops and Oral Bible Schools. Our STS family in Manipur struggles to survive with all the fighting and destruction of homes. Pray for the people who have fled to the forest to avoid death.A team of STS storytellers returned from Turkey helping the earthquake victims. STS storytellers were specifically asked to come help and God worked in amazing ways.
The STS instructor teams in Europe recently finished training people in Ireland, Finland and a joint Czech-Slovak workshop.
Pray for the instructors, God’s Story teams, and Oral Bible School students as they carry God’s Word to their regions.
Thank you all for your prayers,
Andrea & The whole staff of STS & The God's Story Project (TGSP)
Executive Director