CORYDON — A 57-year-old Wayne County woman just returned from a two-and-one-half week trip with Story Runners to an Asian country where 90 percent of the people are Muslim. 

"I came home a changed person. They're like a second family for me now," said Angela Gambill, the owner of Angela's Portraits in Corydon, while sitting in her studio Friday, May 1. Her passion for Story Runners has had her addressing church groups, clubs and organizations in Iowa.

Gambill took her first trip with Story Runners in the spring of 2008. She accompanied six other woman between the ages of 32 and 64 as the photographer for the organization's Web site and brochures. 

"A friend sent me their Web site, and they were asking for women willing to go," Gambill said about Story Runners. "Because the only real way to reach Muslim women is through other women.  Muslim women are not allowed to speak to western men. I mean, that's just not done."

This year she was more involved with Story Runners, whose members take Wycliffe-translated Bible stories to villages worldwide with obscure languages passed on through oral traditions.

"Sharing the Bible. Sharing Christianity with oral tradition. And telling people stories from the old testament and the new testament while sitting around a cup of tea," she said.

Gambill asked that the name of the country bordering Pakistan and Afghanistan — considered to be the poorest in the region — not be used. The request was made to protect Story Runner members still living in the country.

Gambill said her team stayed in a house in the capital city and drove daily to villages in the countryside. Some trips were made to rather remote locations with primitive living conditions and no running water or electricity.

Gambill's entourage was a short-term mission designed to supplement and encourage the permanent mission workers and let them know people in the U.S. are praying and helping them. The permanent team runs a training center and couples placed in villages sign on for a two year stay.

The teams are nationals who can speak the local language, not Americans. They just move into a village, rent a house, live as the local people live and become part of the community," she said.” And they're in a much better position to see what the needs are."

Most of the villagers are isolated from the capital.

"The teams learn the Bible stories and carry them into pretty obscure places," Gambill said. "I've done the training, and this year I got the opportunity to tell stories. I drank a lot of tea in a lot of villages." 

Gambill said her motivation is to bring the word of God to women who live in a country with a culture that devalues them.  They are treated like a piece of property in a male dominated culture.

"My number one job, as I see it — I believe in the great commission," she said. "And that's how I feel about Christianity. You don't keep that to yourself. I believe in God's love for every human being on this planet. And those women who are watching their children starve to death are no less valued by God above than you and me.

"The fact that there is a God that loves them and values them. We take that so for granted here," Gambill said. "But Muslim women, they don't believe God even hears their prayers. They have never heard that there's a God who values them. It's totally foreign thinking."

Gambill talked about two events that changed her life. In 2008 during her first trip, it was a young woman named Mahvgi Gambill met in a village during the last day in country. 

Mahvgi was sitting alone in the corner, not participating, Gambill said, in the sewing group that the team in the village had started. Mahvgi had been a local mullah's number two wife who was left behind along with her six children when he decided to leave the country with wife number one. During the winter, two of her children froze to death.

"Just deserted her. She had no family. No friends. She was in this totally falling in awful house with not even a door. He just abandoned her."

Mahvgi was very bitter and resisted any efforts of help. A Story Runners member told her God loves and values all people, and she helped her find a job. 

"I think of her everyday of my life. She touched my heart so deeply. I just feel like I was put into a position to meet her," Gambill said. "It was the first time I had seen a local woman cry. All these woman are so stoic. And just accept that this is God's will. She just fell into my arms sobbing, and that did it for for me. I've been helping feed her family this past year."

Gambill saw Mahvgi again this trip. Now two of her children are in school.

The second memorable event occurred during this year's trip she took with four people from the states and a young couple based in northern Iraq. LIttle did she know something so small, plentiful and inexpensive in the United States could be so valuable elsewhere.

In Gambill's luggage was a sack of vegetable seeds she had purchased from Pamida along with seeds donated by a friend's garden club. Her first day in the country she met two men who were visiting agronomists trying to start a test plot vegetable garden to raise food to feed the poor, but they had been unable find any seeds. So she went to the vehicle, grabbed the seeds, and set them down in front of the two.

The reaction from one man was to break out in tears, she said.

"That alone made the trip worthwhile. And it was only the first day," she said. "The thing with the garden seeds. That was the most powerful thing."

Besides spreading the word of God to villagers, members of Story Runners, which is a mission of Campus Crusade for Christ, are also in the process of building a school, helping village women start micro businesses and supplying basic needs.

"They try to share Christian ethics, Christian beliefs and Bible stories, but they also bring in food and clothing and have tried to help women have sustainable incomes," Gambill said. "And they've begun these sewing centers.  I've taken donated money to buy sewing machines for these village women."

She said the village with the new school building in progress is a two-and-one-half hour drive from the capital.

"The walls are up, but the roof isn't finished because they ran out of funds. I've sent them $6,000 so far that I've raised speaking in churches and in any organizations that will have me," Gambill said.

Unemployment in this central Asian country is very high and 50 percent of the country's gross national product comes from wages sent from out of the country, she said. It's estimated that half the workforce is outside of the country due to lack of employment opportunities. The country's main exports are electricity and cotton. Common commodities like gasoline and flour are expensive because they have to be imported.

"They used to have a huge textile industry when Russia was in power. But when the Soviets left, they took all the technology and all the machinery and the equipment and took it home to Russia," Gambill said.

In the capital live one million people in a bustling, but not a thriving, city. Inside the city the people have a written language and an education system. Normal city life. 

"It's a country that has survived a lengthy civil war, and there's still concrete rubble and a damaged economic infrastructure," she said. "It's somewhat like Kabul looks now."

Leave the city and the terrain, living conditions and outlook change.

"But the life out in the villages is far different. It's like stepping back to the 15th Century where your kids help tend the goats out on the mountainside, and the women hand dig irrigation canals from the river or the creek to try to grow a garden. That's  what they live on." 

The terrain is mountainous, and the land is barren.  The people are a mixed ethnic group of Mongolians, Greek, Russians, Iranians and others.

The Islamic religion was a result of the Iranian and Persian influence.  During the Russian takeover, religion was banned and mosques were burned. She said Russian was the official language of the government. 

"So if you want to do business, you speak Russian," she said. 

Now back home in Iowa, Gambill said the experience has left her feeling somewhat guilty for having so much.  "It's tragic that people have to live in such abject poverty," she said. "People live in truly barren conditions, and they have to live off the land. There is no industry to provide jobs"

She called humanitarian aid a "moral imperative."