By Grace Thornton
The Alabama Baptist
Mike Stonecypher proposed through the mail — from Nigeria. And it was a long, anxious and hopeful wait until Becky’s letter made it back from Indiana with a “yes” a month later.
“It was an unusual kind of getting together,” Mike said.
In the months and years leading up to Mike’s question the couple had swapped a lot of letters and found they had a lot in common — not least of which was a love for Jesus, missions and Africa.
Becky, a pastor’s daughter, had felt like God was calling her to Africa since age 12.
Right after college she served in Nigeria for two years as a journeyman with the International Mission Board (IMB), then came back to the U.S. to work on her master’s degree.
The year she left Nigeria — 1982 — Mike showed up there as an IMB missionary.
“I’d grown up in a church that really taught us about missions and got us excited about it,” he said. And over time God called him to Africa.
The rest is history
But the couple didn’t meet there. That didn’t happen until Mike was back in the U.S. on his first furlough.
Some mutual friends realized the two had Nigeria in common and decided they should meet. The rest is history.
“We married in January 1988 and two and a half months later we were back in Nigeria serving together,” Mike said.
And 31 years later First Baptist Church, Glencoe — the church where they got married — threw them a “welcome home” reception as they retired from a long career of missionary service.
“It was an exciting, adventurous life, and God blessed us in so many ways,” Mike said.
In Nigeria, Mike worked with Baptist schools and Becky worked with special education programs and raised their two children, Rachel and John David.
For a while, the couple’s role also included researching and engaging the area’s unreached people groups — about 200 groups in total.
Then in 2011 the couple moved to Niger, where only 2 percent of the population claimed to follow Christ.
Both countries had their challenges and their blessings, Mike said.
He remembers one struggle in Nigeria — a day when everything that could go wrong did.
“The Baptist high school was devastated by a windstorm, and Becky went into early labor with John David,” Mike said. “I had to stay there at the school, and she had to go down country to the hospital.”
In the end the school was rebuilt, and John David was born healthy.
“In everything God was always more than faithful,” Mike said.
Captivated by Christ
During the years in Nigeria the Stonecyphers also faced the reality of occasional fighting between groups in the area. And soon after arriving in Niger the new school where they were working flooded, forcing them to find a place for classes to meet for the rest of the year.
But even so God provided and people heard the gospel.
“As I think back on our time in Africa, I see faces,” Mike said. “I see the faces of people who were captivated by and caught up by Christ and changed and transformed in beautiful ways so that they became lights in the world that are helping other people experience that same transformation.”
Vince Whittington, retired pastor of First, Glencoe, said working alongside the Stonecyphers on a missions trip to Nigeria in 2004 was the “highlight missions experience” of his life.
“Mike and Becky Stonecypher rank high on the list of God’s servants in my estimation,” he said. “They have been faithful, devoted, dedicated, persevering, trusting servants of the Lord.”
Mike says he’s just grateful for God’s faithfulness and for the support of Alabama Baptists who over the years prayed, visited on missions trips and gave faithfully through the Lottie Moon Christmas Offering and Cooperative Program, which fund the IMB’s missionary force.
“Southern Baptists and Alabama Baptists have made it possible for us to fulfill a dream that God gave us for our lives and it’s been a most wonderful life,” he said. “We just want to say ‘thank you’ and encourage people to keep on keeping on with supporting the work of missionaries around the world.”
To contact the Stonecyphers about speaking at your church, email them at stoneymike517@gmail.com.
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