Earlier this month, I received a cryptic text from our national translator, Jake, telling me he would be late for our scheduled call.  But it was only when I talked with him the following day that I discovered the grave danger he had been in. 

While he was at the local university visiting his brother, a medical student, three gunmen from a radical religious group attacked the campus and killed 22 students. Jake, his brother, and a number of other students hid in a basement room.  As a new father, Jake was acutely aware of his wife and child and their vulnerability if something happened to him. But he realized the students around him were trembling with fear and were without hope. So Jake stood up in the room and said he was going to pray for everyone’s safety (not in the usual Islamic way but extemporaneously in his own language). It was after that prayer he sent me his text.

About an hour later they were told that the area was secure.  As they left, many of the students thanked Jake for his prayer for safety. But Jake’s brother was angry at him for praying so boldly and visibly as a Christian. Jake was still shaken when he connected online with me the next day and asked for help to get out of the country. Why were we doing nothing for them except praying?!

I understood Jake’s anguish.  We do cry out to God daily asking him to give our teammates and their children a peaceful life (1 Timothy 2:2).  We pray for peace, but strangely God sometimes does not rescue his people out of dangerous places or conflict zones. Instead he sends them there! Yet He promises to always live with his people. I reminded Jake that God sent our son back into the country after he completed university in the States, and that we too have experienced the pain of losing more than twenty co-workers and friends due to the violence in this country. 

So, after some more talking and prayer online, Jake and I got back to the work at hand, which that day happened to be in Titus. A few days later the in-country team decided to meet weekly with their wives for worship, (alongside of the days the men meet for translation checking). In part they decided to follow the principle in Titus that older women should be teaching the younger women in matters of faith and practice. What a beautiful Bible application immediately in the lives of the translators! We praise God that the team is coming together even more than before in these difficult times.

Field story from two World Outreach workers on a Bible translation team. Names and locations have been changed for their safety. 

Living in a country that holds one of the largest Muslim populations can be daunting, but the Great Shepherd has other sheep that are not currently of His fold.  After joining World Outreach two years ago, we moved to our city of a million people, and saw no one reaching out to the Muslim community. No Christians in our city had seen any Muslim come to Christ.  We began befriending and interacting with Muslims, while training local pastors and youth to do the same. This task can be laden with challenges, but we have seen fruit from this kingdom work and wanted to share two testimonies with you, showing the ways God has revealed himself and save our Muslim neighbors.

The King Cobra is considered one of the most poisonous snakes in the world; many in this country die every year from its bite. One night our believing friend, Nadia*, woke up to a hissing sound. She saw a cobra wrapped around the neck of her daughter, Mirai*, viciously biting. Nadia got up quickly and rebuked the snake in the name of Jesus, unraveling it with a stick until it left. After praying together, she and her family went to bed. The cobra bit Mirai six times. By any accounts, this should have killed or dangerously hurt her. But thanks to the grace of God, Mirai was spared – not even needing medical assistance. What a wonderful testimony Nadia has to Jesus’ power to save!

God is doing wonderful things in the house church we recently started.  In doing home visits with a family, we met Aanya*, their daughter.  She had been tormented by an evil spirit for months. She would see troubling things whenever she tried to sleep, and had horrible dreams. Desperate for help, Aanya’s mother and grandmother had taken her to a Muslim Imam, but that  only made her sufferings worse.

As we visited in the home and prayed for Aanya’s healing, God broke through! She is 90% better now, and continues dramatic improvement. She and her uncle put their trust in Jesus, and the other family members are very close to fully committing their lives to God!

These are just two testimonies of how God is moving in the lives of Muslims. The LORD Jesus is calling out to this other flock, through us, and they are listening to His voice.  We’ve seen this fruit in both long-term and short-term missions’ trips – in the States and abroad. Therefore, our challenge for you is to pray for Muslims every day and find a Muslim community near you to share the love of Christ with. How you can participate with God and other believers in this kingdom work to call those that are not yet part of the fold?

*names changed

This is Rocky’s story. It’s a story of joy and delight, followed by horror and sadness, and then an unfolding of the goodness of God in a way I could not have dreamed.

Imagine crowded buildings, where one can only see cracks of light through the walls and roofs above; of groups of dadhi walas (bearded ones) in long white robes and topis (skull caps), and of women clothed all in black with only their eyes showing; and other women wearing shalwar kameez (baggy pants and tunic), flashing blues, reds, pinks, and all hues as they wander down the street; of roaming goats, scooters, bikes, and carts loaded with vegetables or fruit to sell. And through it all the sounds of running children, honking horns, and echoing calls to prayer reverberating from mosque to mosque. This is where I live, and this is where I first met Rocky and his family a few years ago.

I wish you could meet Rocky, beaming smile, infectious spirit, and an absolute lover of Jesus. He became a follower of Jesus about two and a half years ago (was baptized with a bucket from our bathroom!)… and then, in the grip of mental illness, unresolved trauma triggers, and following a medication switch, committed a terrible murder and went to prison.

It is hard to put into words those dark days — trying to manage the police investigation, helping his grieving and terrified family, and somehow avoiding the journalists flooding the area. I thought his life was over — such a promising young man with his life destroyed. And the one who was murdered — the grief of a life ended too early. Rock’s older brother told his sister, the only girl of the family, to take poison, because surely the family of the victim would seek retribution. Instead, she came and lived with me and my teammates for the rest of the year.

Two weeks before this crime, Rocky sat in my living room, fearing he would hurt someone, having tried to commit suicide. We took him seriously, but with no mental hospitals accessible at that time, we didn’t know where to turn for help. Despite being in South Asia, in a mega city of thirty million, this was a village with family feuds that went back generations. All my training on strategies and church planting, of sharing my faith with others, my training in discipleship, and those seminars in spiritual warfare, none of it quite prepared me for this. Even growing up (as I had) in the Muslim world had not prepared me for this! These were dark and grim days.

But it wasn’t the end of the story. As in the gospel, the story doesn’t end with a life taken, and a life destroyed.

Rocky turned himself in to the police and went to prison. He took full responsibility for what he had done and said he was willing to face whatever punishment was decided, even knowing the death penalty was a possibility. About a month after going to prison, Rocky had a dream where the person he murdered appeared to him and said, “I forgive you.” In that moment he felt God’s forgiveness washing over him. He began meeting with other young men and teaching them what he had learned about Jesus. We were able to smuggle in some Bibles through a Christian NGO that visited the prisons. Eventually, my teammates were able to visit him; he would mention the scriptures every time, hungry for the Word of God. He was granted access to the music room in the prison where he was able to practice piano and guitar.

Somehow this prison, where he struggles to get enough food to eat and faces constant threats of violence, has become a better place for him than where he grew up. It has given him opportunities and a place to mature in the Lord. He continues to lead a group of young men that numbers seventy and continues to grow.

I have never met someone who devoured the Word with more hunger. Before we left the country this past winter, he smuggled a gift out of prison for all of us: a beautiful letter thanking us for our love and sending us his love, his copybook filled with handwritten scripture.

I share this story not to prescribe a way to do ministry. In fact, what strikes me again and again is the messiness of it all — all the mistakes. But, in spite of the craziness, all the sin and brokenness, I see God’s grace all over Rocky’s story. May that divine grace and glory and love continue to pour out over Rocky and the many others we all may come alongside.

In the words of Paul, “For God, who said, ‘Let light shine out of darkness,’ made his light shine in our hearts to give us the light of the knowledge of God’s glory displayed in the face of Christ. But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us. We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. We always carry around in our body the death of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may be revealed in our body. For we who are alive are always being given over to death for Jesus’ sake, so that his life may also be revealed in our mortal body. So then, death is at work in us, but life is at work in you.”