I was always scared of people from Afghanistan, I thought that they hated me and thought they all wanted to kill me. Until I met the amazing Pashtun people. They were some of the most hospitable people I have ever met. Even within a few minutes of meeting them they invite you in for a giant feast and even to stay at their house. They love to laugh and have lots of kids.
If you have kept up with my blogs you might remember the story of the wild “Jezebel” woman we met on the ferry in Turkey. As well as the Islamic school we went to and talked with the Imam and many men from there. Did I mention that we gave the Imam a bible and he keeps it on his desk and reads it? One of the guys from this Islamic school lived in Virginia for a few years and so he helped translate between us.
Before I go any further let me mention that I am Puerto Rican. Straight up. I love pork, Jehovah, and I will I beat you with my flip flop if you disrespect my family jk!… kind of. Puerto Ricans are proud of their heritage, to be Christians and to eat pig-skins with red hot. Can I get an amen?
So this translator says to me “You look a lot like my wife, she’s a Puerto Rican”. My ears perked up, and I gave him my full attention. This is when the devil entered and he stared at me and said “Ha! She converted to Islam” and he laughed. It was a laugh that came up from the depths of hell. My nostrils flared and my eyelids tightened and the innermost part of me rumbled with a rage and a confidence to destroy the work of the enemy. It was just like the volcano that blasted to make Hawaii.
OK, all right, back to the story, getting serious. After he said this I knew that I had to meet her. I had to love her and speak some truth into this sister that was kidnapped from the kingdom of God. That night during our team debrief I bawled my eyes out and cried to God that he would give me a chance to meet her. The very last day in Turkey as we were walking down the street I saw her from a block away and didn’t even notice her husband. I started to pray that they would stop, but they just kept walking on. Then she turned back with a smile and a wave, and her husband kept pulling her onward away from us. If I didn’t have a 70 pound backpack on my back I would have ran to her to talk but I couldn’t. I prayed for her fervently and believe that even though I haven’t been able to be there to see the results. I believe God has moved in her.
To summarize the month in just a few words: I got sick for two weeks, had a lot of lentil soup and corn from street side vendors aka David’s favorite, went to a lot of mosques, I got to walk where Paul walked and see many places that are in the Bible. We spent a few days in Antioch, drove through Galatia, Cappadocia, saw Tarsus, and the place where Paul’s ship landed in Antioch. God taught me patience with my teammates more than anything else that month. It was our first month as a new team and we had a lot of kinks to work out and learn to understand where each person was coming from.
