I was sitting on a hard bench with two other missionaries. One of them spoke the local language; and, as the congregation prayed together, he whispered to us what they were saying.

The meeting began quietly, but without warning people started shouting, everyone talking over each other. My body tensed as voices rattled in the cement church.

“What’s happening?” I asked my friend.

“They’re talking about whether or not something is a sin,” he explained. My first thought was conviction. When was the last time I got that upset over my sin? Then my heart broke as the pastor stood at the front of the church, a copy of the New Testament in hand. He humbly summarized the feeling in his congregation:

“We want to follow Jesus, but we don’t know how.”

He had a New Testament in a language he didn’t read very well. There are millions of people like him in the world without access to Scripture in a language they truly understand.

Training Ground

How did someone from a small town in Oklahoma end up in the bush in the middle of Nigeria? Like all of God’s plans for us, the path was laid before I was born and, in hindsight, is extremely ordinary.

My parents taught me to look outward to people from different cultures of the world and invite them in (usually that meant into our home). My mom taught English to spouses of international students at the local university, and our house was always filled with people from all over the world. When my brother joined a Malaysian drum team, I spent a Saturday afternoon scraping cowhide for new drumheads in the backyard while listening to people talk in languages from all over the globe.

My love for linguistics began in elementary school. I took Latin with a local homeschool group and immediately became obsessed with grammar. I was one of those rare kids who actually enjoyed diagramming sentences.

I also loved to read, especially missionary stories. They were like adventure novels, except about real people living out their obedience to God. Because of this, I jumped right in when my pastor at Stillwater, Okla., RPC asked me to make a presentation about missions each month to our children’s Sabbath school. He gave me a book to use called From Akebu to Zapotec about the Bible-less people groups in the world.

I distinctly remember one Sabbath morning while I was talking to the children, God’s path for me became clear. I saw the way forward. I loved missionary stories, I loved languages, and I loved interacting with people from different cultures; and there are thousands of people groups in the world who do not have Scripture in their language. Here was my passion, and here was the need. Romans 10 nagged at my mind: “How can they believe in whom they have not heard?”

All of these events are very ordinary. Participating in the life of my family and the education my parents provided laid the groundwork for loving people and languages. Growing up in the church gave me opportunities to see the need for the Word of God. Reading the Word continues to provide the scope and motivation for the work.

In Genesis, God says He will bless the nations through Abraham. In Haggai and Zechariah, God promises money from all over the world will come in for His purposes and gives a vision of people from many nations coming to worship Him. At Pentecost, the Holy Spirit causes the gospel to be shared in the heart languages of all who are there. In Revelation, God shows a glimpse of heaven filled with people praising God from every tribe, tongue, and people group.

God has always been about redeeming a people for Himself. It is the most straightforward thing in the world to join what He is already doing.

On the Ground

After graduating from college, I took the next step and traveled to South Sudan for a mid-term trip with RP Global Missions, teaching at Cush Christian School. God used this experience to grow me in many ways, especially in keen awareness of my dependence on Him. I had spent most of my life reading about missions and thinking about living in another culture someday. However, when that finally happened, inspirational stories were not enough motivation for the humility I needed to learn another culture. I had to pray about things I didn’t even think about in my own culture, like visiting people and going to the market.

A woman in the church there convicted me of this dependency on God through prayer. We were struggling through a language lesson, neither one understanding what the other was trying to communicate. I was ready to give up, but, instead of getting frustrated with me, she stopped and said, “We need to pray.” That much I understood!

While I was in South Sudan, my particular role in missions began to take shape, and I started to understand the need for Scripture engagement. Possessing Scripture is not enough; it needs to be used by the community. One way to get Scripture into people’s hearts and minds is through “storying”: translating stories from the Bible in a natural way that can be passed from person to person.

This is not a substitute for a full Bible translation. Rather, it is a way to engage with the least reached who have no access to truth in any form. The process of storying can be used to tease out the best ways to translate key terms in Scripture like “angel” or “sin.” Storying groups are natural places for evangelism and discipleship as a young church grows. It is like an appetizer. It is not the full meal, but people are hungry now.

After returning from South Sudan, I began my master’s in linguistics to be better equipped for Bible translation. In an ordinary conversation with a teacher after class, I heard about a possible storying project. That led me to Nigeria, a beautiful country in West Africa, and to Wycliffe Bible Translators.

On a visit to Nigeria to meet people and pray about joining the team, I met the pastor from that little cement church I mentioned earlier, filled with people eager to follow Jesus. After the prayer meeting, the pastor came by, and I watched storying in action for the first time.

My colleagues read a passage with the pastor several times in a trade language and then discussed it in his own language until he could retell it himself. To help remember the order of the story, we found objects to represent different key parts—sticks, stones, even our shoes! The pastor chose an object for each part of the story and laid them out in order as he told it.

Later that evening, the pastor invited several of his neighbors to learn the story. They gathered in a circle and listened and asked questions. People offered up items they had with them to help each other remember the sequence of the story. Different people volunteered to tell the story and were quickly corrected if they forgot one of the key points.

By the end of the evening, everyone was able to retell the story and talk about what it meant. They wanted to follow Jesus, and God’s Word showed them how.

An elderly woman in the group caught my attention. Not only was the Bible not written in the language she spoke, she had never been given the opportunity to learn to read in any language. Yet she could learn this story and apply it to her own life. Here was Scripture in a language and form she could clearly understand!

Solid Ground

Through living and working cross-­­culturally, as a child in the United States and as an adult in South Sudan and Nigeria, I have seen the big picture of how God works throughout the world. All people are made in His image. All need to follow Jesus for salvation. But without God’s Word in their language, they will not know how.

God continues to lead me through ordinary means. I need a team of monthly financial partners to send me to Nigeria, and God brings people onto my team at just the right time. As the doors continue to open, I have peace following the path forward, knowing I have the promises of Scripture to lean on and to lead me, my church, and my partnership team.

God has shown me that His Word is “a lamp to my feet and a light to my path.” Sometimes it is only enough light to see my next step, but I know the end of the journey: God’s glory among all peoples, tribes, and languages.