the power of a story...

(written for the WHI anti-trafficking blog)

There are stories all around us.  We each have a story.  Stories of life, experience, joy, love, turmoil, hardship…lessons learned, lessons to be learned.  We live our stories and we share our stories.

Stories are incredibly powerful.  Through a story we see into a life that is not our own.  We can experience things beyond the boundaries of our own world, peering for a moment into the vast world of another person, another time, another place. 

I have discovered the powerful gift of writing God has given me.  The opportunity to unveil realities of this world to those who would otherwise not know or see.  To take people to experience another world, beyond their own.

It is easy to live in the context of our own stories.  To get caught up in realities of our present condition, present situation.  It is easy, especially for us in the West, to lose sight of the stories that compel us to follow Jesus’ teaching to love and care for the least, for the poor, for the widows and the orphans.  Number and statistics can be compelling, but also pushed out of sight and out of mind, our attention changed as easily as the channel on the TV.  But a voice, a story, is hard to ignore.  It is an invitation to imagine, just for a moment, what it would be like to walk in another’s shoes, to live another’s story.

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I have been living in Freetown, Sierra Leone as a Hope Corp volunteer Field Writer for WHI anti-trafficking program Faith Alliance Against Slavery and Trafficking.  My job is to write the stories of trafficking survivors.  I often tell people I have the best job, because amidst the dark evil of modern day slavery that still exists and enslaves hundreds of thousands throughout the world, I get to tell the story of hope.  The story of freedom.  The story of beauty in the resilience of humanity.

I have been here in Sierra Leone for over four months now.  I have written stories that make me cry, and stories that make me laugh – I have met children who have experienced more injustice, exploitation and horrors in their short lives than I can even imagine – yet I have seen them smile, as a child should, and it is in this smile that I am reminded of why I am here.  I want the world to see this smile.  To experience, if just for a moment, the joy and peace and freedom of a child who has been redeemed. 

At the beginning of December I led a training workshop with the FAAST staff on story and report writing.  Earlier, in November, I traveled to Makeni to lead a training on story writing with the WHI staff there as well.  I have loved these opportunities to teach for it is in these moments that I get to share my heart, my passion, my love for writing the story. 

For the staff, it is about the chance to take a moment and reflect on the reason we do the work we do. The story of the face behind all the hard work, the long hours, the frustrating challenges. The story of the one.  The one reason we believe that little by little this work is changing lives.  And if I can teach and empower them to write these stories, I truly believe it will not only give others around the world a glimpse of why prayer, emotional and financial support is extremely necessary for more of these stories to be written, but I believe it will also give my colleagues a chance to realize the power behind what they do.  The smiles that are renewed because God has placed them here to do His work. 

I believe God has given me a powerful tool in the gift of writing.  But as with all of His gifts, the true power comes from taking the opportunity to share them.  I hope and pray that when my time comes to leave this place, I will leave more than a few stories I have written.  I hope and pray I will leave knowing that the stories will continue – continue to be lived, and continue to be written.