stories, part one.

Names have been changed.

John and Iman are newly engaged, and their affection for one another makes everyone around them smile. In North Africa, when you become engaged, you exchange wedding band-style rings, and wear them on the ring finger of your right hand. At the wedding ceremony, the rings are moved to the left hand.

John is an engineer and Iman is a veterinarian, and they volunteer with the branch of this missions agency in the city where the youth conference is being held. Iman owns her own vet clinic outside of the city, and treats both small and large animals. She has sparkling eyes, bubbling-up energy, and her smile lights up a whole room. I desperately want Amie to meet her because they’d be kindred spirits in their love for animals.

But Iman’s biggest passion is the millions of unreached people in her part of the world. She and John tell us that they’re praying together about where God will send them, but they’re hoping for one of the least reached areas. They long to share the truth and hope of Jesus with people who haven’t heard of Him.

They remove their engagement bands to show us the engravings. When you put the two bands together, what looks like a decorative engraving becomes a map of the world. This reminds them to pray for “every knee to bow and every tongue to confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.”

They’ll use their professions to discern where God’s calling them to live and minister. Iman tells me that her heart is specifically for nomadic peoples and livestock are her favorite animals to treat. She’s short but strong and energetic for the regular work of wrangling sheep and donkeys and delivering their babies. She hopes to use this love for helping animals to show love to people who’s livelihood depends on their animals.

 

 

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Sarah is a small and soft-spoken woman in her early thirties, with beautiful waist-length black hair. She grew up in a family that prayed specifically for one of their children to become a missionary. As Sarah grew older, she felt God’s call on her life to pursue full-time ministry, and she attended one of the agency’s training schools.

During this time, Sarah learned as much as she could about other North African countries that need Jesus, but God ended up calling her to a different part of her own country, to an area of several cities and 40 million people who don’t know Jesus.

She had an opportunity to get training in nursing, and now works at a hospital there whose entire staff is Christian. Some of her good friends at the hospital are missionary women her age from the U.S. and Canada who came to the hospital to train North Africans in nursing.

Sarah is enormously grateful for her family’s support and encouragement in her desire to be a missionary. She recognizes that this is rare, and said it’s made all the difference in her grief over leaving home to move to a strange place, especially as a single woman.

She’s now spent two years living and working in this area, and said the open doors are incredible. Due to all the violence and upheaval, many people are becoming disillusioned with their religion and are very open — even asking — to hear about another way.

The hospital staff has opportunities every day to show sacrificial love to patients and their families. They treat their physical needs with kindness, hand out New Testaments, and listen to their struggles. They’re invited to visit homes and families, and a leader of a place of worship nearby even requested a Bible.

Sarah’s heart is broken over the young girls and women in her area who sit in darkness.

They struggle with anxiety and depression and feel so much despair over their lives that many of them attempt to poison themselves. The hospital staff is praying for open conversations about the issues of depression and suicide, and for wisdom and courage to create more awareness about this devastating problem.

Sarah said she can feel the prayers of the saints on her behalf and begs us to continue praying. Many times she’s felt on the verge of burn-out, but God has strengthened her heart and body, and she knows it’s due to faithful prayer.

 

 

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Moudy is in his late-twenties, and comes from a rural village. When he started college, his desire was to be a pastor, but attending a missions conference about unreached people changed that.

He learned about the many needs in the Arab world, and the new hunger for hope. He’d always assumed “missionary” means “foreigner” and never considered that God may be calling him to be a missionary to his own part of the world.

He learned of the struggle of foreigners to learn Arabic — it takes a good 5-7 years of language study and practice to become fluent, especially to be able to preach in Arabic.

Moudy felt his heart moved, but he also felt very young, unqualified, and inadequate. But he began to pray that if God wanted to use him as a missionary to the unreached, He would do it. After a year at university, Moudy decided to transfer to a missions training school, where he finished his studies.

When he graduated, our friend Phillip told Moudy, “Keep the Bible in your right hand and a missionary biography in your left hand. They will grip your heart for the work of the Lord.”

And so Moudy read and read. He especially loves the writings of Watchman Nee.

He joined the military for a season, and it took him to a very violent place, where he saw and heard the great spiritual needs firsthand, and he knew God was confirming the call in his heart.

Now, like Sarah, he works in his own country, in an area with very few Christians.

As Moudy shared this testimony in one of the conference sessions, he encouraged the students, “My story has been very ordinary and unremarkable. I share this with you so that you can know that God uses even ordinary, humble people like me to take His Good News to those who need it. He may be calling you too.”

 

Missionary biographies in Arabic for sale at the conference