A couple weeks later, I went to return the booklet to him, so I asked Marissa & Neil to go back with me. Before we went to his house, we studied up on Mohammed & Islam and looked at the website www.carm.org and searched Wikipedia, etc just so we would be better prepared. We ended up staying at his house for 3 hours!
Twalib is very nice. He is an artist and ended up giving us each one of his art pieces. Mine was worth $145 USD!! Crazy! We met his mother, auntie, uncle, cousins & sister as well. We had a very interesting chat about Islam & Christianity…he has read the Bible so he knows what we believe but he is a very devout Muslim and our conversation never really got very far. We did challenge him though what his thoughts were on child slavery and of course he is against it, and then we asked why Mohammed would marry a 7 year old girl and get her pregnant at 9 and asked if that was not a form of child slavery. He denied that was true and we told him it’s from Mohammed’s history. He can simply do a search on Mohammed and see that it is recorded that the child was one of his 15 or so wives. So he invited us to continue emailing him questions to research because he loves to learn.
We left Twalib’s place wondering if our conversation was going to change anything. We were glad we prepared but weren’t sure how handy it had come in. I was a little disappointed.
After we left, I jumped in a Matatu (taxi) with Marissa to go pick up her dress that she was getting made from a seamstress. She ended up needing to get alterations so we had to wait for a couple hours. I wandered next door to a video library (one of the millions of stores that sells copies of any movie or tv show for about $1 USD…breaking every North American copyright law, but completely legal here as long as they have a license to sell). Inside the store was a girl about 20-25 and her 1 year old baby.
I was chatting and smiling and she told me I was very friendly and asked what I was doing in Uganda. I told her that I came as a Christian Missionary. She said that she believed in Jesus but that she was not a Christian, but a Muslim. I asked if she believed in Jesus as a prophet or as a Saviour and she said she believed him to be the Saviour. This shocked me because this is not an answer a Muslim would give. I found out more about her…her mom is a Christian, but her father is a Muslim. She attended both Christian & Muslim schools as a child. Obviously, she had a very confusing upbringing and had to be different things for her mother and different things for her father. She ended up taking the faith of her father but says that she finds Christians friendly and likes them. I told her all of the things that I had learned on the internet earlier that day as I was studying for my conversation with Twalib. I was able to share with this young woman the differences between Christianity and Islam….I explained how God is a God of Love in the Bible. I explained a testimony I read of an East African man who converted to Christianity from Islam and the 3 things he observed in a Christian friend that made him convert. 1. He was open to discuss questions about religion 2. He loved & showed interest in his wife & children. 3. How he prayed is so different, so free. I emphasized the second point to this girl. I said how I knew that the Qur’an only mentions the name of one woman, Mary, because they believe she was special. I told her though that it’s not just Mary that is special. I told her that God created man & woman in his image. The Bible says “husbands, love your wives…” (Eph. 5:25). I explained how God describes the church of believers as THE bride and he is the husband. He speaks how man and woman will become ONE when they are married…..not man, woman, woman, woman and woman will become one. I said that God didn’t intend for to be someone’s second or third wife. She then said “or fourth wife” and looked down to the floor. She is a man’s 4th wife!!
We continued to talk for awhile and I ended up asking her what she believed…not what her mother or father believe, but what is it that she believes. She said she didn’t know. I explained what Christ did. Muslims don’t believe that Jesus died, never-mind that he was crucified…so I explained that to her and said that when Christ died, he offered forgiveness of sins for free, that it is a gift for her to receive and asked if she wanted to receive the gift from Christ. She said YES. I also let her know that this meant she cannot serve both God and Allah. She said she was ready. I led her in a prayer of repentance and acceptance to become a Christian! I also told her she should attend the Alpha course at a nearby church. She is in need of finances to continue education and to keep her and her baby fed…so I told her Proverbs 3:5 “Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding; in all your ways acknowledge him, and he will direct your path”. I prayed for finances for her schooling and told her to let the group at the alpha course know her needs and they might know someone who is looking to sponsor someone (that’s sometimes how it works here). Please pray for this girl (for her family’s acceptance, for her role as wife #4, for her to feel the love of the Father, for her husband & baby, for finances, etc)
I was preparing myself to hopefully win a different Muslim for Christ….but God had other plans and led me to this girl.
