At retreat centers outside Ottawa and Calgary last month, more than one hundred women from across Canada gathered together to draw their life stories on Korean-style fans, discuss previously hidden traumas, and listen attentively to workshops on “letting God tell your story” led by Voice of the Martyrs Korea Representative Dr Hyun Sook Foley, author of the book, “The Hero’s Journey: From Victim to Victor”.

The organizer of the Canadian events, Voice of the Martyrs Canada’s Vanessa Brobbel, says she wanted to bring to Canadian Christian women the same teaching on healing from traumatic life experiences that Representative Foley has been sharing in workshops with persecuted Christian women across Asia since the book’s publication in 2021.

“I invited Dr Foley because I believed that ordinary Christian women here in Canada need to experience the same healing that the Lord has used her to bring to persecuted Christian women in North Korea, China, and other countries,” says Mrs Brobbel, whose husband is the CEO of Voice of the Martyrs Canada. “The specific challenges we experience in living our Christian lives are of course different in Canada than in North Korea, but the need for healing from deep hurts is the same. And Representative Foley’s method of letting Christ tell your story instead of you being the author of your own life story is understandable and powerful for Christian women everywhere.”

The events, which took place from Friday evening through Sunday morning on consecutive weekends, attracted attendees who drove as long as seven hours to attend.

Mrs Brobbel says the event was life changing for the attendees.

“One of the attendees was a pastor’s wife whose husband died a few years ago,” says Mrs Brobbel. “Her husband had abused her for more than 30 years, but she never shared this with anyone. During one of the small group discussion times after Dr Foley shared her own story, the pastor’s wife burst into tears and shared about the abuse for the first time. By the end of the event the woman was beaming. Her face was bright, and she said she now had a totally different outlook on her past and for the first time was looking forward to the future.”

“We were never victims; we were always characters in God’s stories, and we just didn’t know it,” says Ann, a woman who participated at the Ottawa conference. “Through the event I learned that we can really benefit from reframing our stories away from what is victimhood and toward God’s perspective, which helps us understand where he’s leading us, and to better understand why he took us through what we went through.”

Representative Foley says that she first developed the Hero’s Journey method to help the North Korean defector Christian women she has been working with since 2005. She still uses the method primarily in that work but says that since the publication of her book she has received more and more requests to teach the method to Christian women in countries like Canada, Europe, and South Korea. Her first Korean seminar, offered by Voice of the Martyrs Korea at a location in Muju, will take place August 30 through September 1.

“What I have come to realize is that it doesn’t matter if we are from North or South Korea; every Christian needs to learn the narrative framework in which God has planned our lives to be victors’ stories,” says Representative Foley. “If we don’t learn this, our stories will always be about ourselves and about the people who have hurt us. So, in these women’s conferences we are learning how to go ‘from victim to victor’ by letting God tell our story, rather than us telling it ourselves. God never gives anyone a victim’s story. Because of Christ, he is turning all our stories into hero’s stories. Seeing Canadian women experience that truth during these conferences has been extremely encouraging for me.”

“For years I have been living a victim’s story,” says Samantha, a woman who attended the Calgary event. “But now I can see that we were never victims but were always victors in Christ. So I feel like it’s time for me to start living as a victor.”

In the workshops, Representative Foley makes use of art as a means of helping participants process and express how to see their difficult life experiences differently through Christ. For the Korean workshop, she plans to use traditional Korean dance as well, something she says has become fundamental to her work in helping North Korean defector Christians overcome trauma. “In many Christian conferences the attendees just sit and listen to the speaker,” says Representative Foley. “But watching the Canadian Christian women re-think their life stories by drawing them on Korean fans as they discussed their stories with each other helped me to see that the art and discussion times are sometimes even more important than the teaching times.”

Representative Foley says that she will be teaching the first Hero’s Journey workshop for Christian women in Korea Friday evening August 30 through Sunday morning September 1. Cost for the event is 250,000 KRW. Women interested in attending can call the Voice of the Martyrs Korea office at 02-2065-0703, or register through the organization’s website at www.vomkorea.com/herosjourney. Representative Foley’s book, The Hero’s Journey, is available through amazon.com.