Alain joined ITA in November of 2019 as the Coordinator of French Language projects.

From Gérardmer, France, Alain is the son of André and Monique Soudrain. His parents became Christians around the time of Alain’s birth. There was no church in the local area. So, a pastor couple came each month to teach the family. In addition to the visiting pastor, the family’s spiritual nurture came from a Christian radio broadcast.

Alain became a Christian at the age of 14 after a poor grade in math. He gave his heart to Christ and promised to follow Him wherever he would send him.

Alain is trained as a nurse and served for a time in the French military service. In 1979, he joined the mission organization SIM as a nurse and went to the country of Benin to serve as a nurse in an evangelical hospital. During that time, he became convinced that God was calling him to be a long-term missionary. At that point he decided to study, attending a Bible College, which is where he met Christiane. In 1983, Alain and Christiane were married and went as long-term missionaries back to the country of Benin. This time, their ministry was church planting, disciple-making and leader trainer for 23 groups of Christians.

Following a serious car accident, in 1992 the family returned to France where Alain worked as the mission’s public relations director until 2000. From 2000 till 2010, Alain served as director of SIM France. It was during this time that Alain first did the Leadership Matters Course in English. Alain’s own testimony is that “the LMC transformed my leadership.”

In 2011, Alain and Christiane returned to Benin to work in leadership development. From that time they began organizing different LMC-type courses for church, ONG and hospital leaders.

In 2012, Alain was invited to become a trainer in the very first LMC in French. After that, he served as a trainer for all the French LMCs (known in French as “PLM”) in 2013, 2016, 2018, and 2019.

During the 2018 session, Robert Bryan ask Alain to be his assistant lead trainer, and then in 2019 to actually be the lead trainer as well as the coordinator for the French part of ITA, which is what Alain continues to do.

Alain and Christiane have four children and raised a fifth:

• Jonathan (35) is married to Esther, they have two children and live in La Reunion.
• Anne Sylvie (33) is married to Benjamin and they live in France with their three children.
• Philippe, (31) is married to Morgane and they are missionaries in Cameroon.
• Joel (27), is engaged to Salomé and lives in Guyana, South America. They are all Christians and involved in service for Jesus.
• Sebastien, (37), although not their son, he lived with them until his wedding with Gladys. They have 3 children. Alain & Christiane consider them part of their family.

Alain loves to disciple and train people so they can be more effective, to train leaders to be transformed and desires to be more and more like Christ. He loves to develop new projects and ideas. His dream is to make the LMC (PLM) course understandable and teachable to everyone who has a leadership responsibility, Christian or not, literate or not, poor or rich, whatever the culture.

Loves: walking in the forest, nature, and just being with my Christiane

Hobbies: watching sports, relationships