Adventures WorldRace SethBarnes Sponsorship Giving

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*I’m sorry about not having pictures, the wi-fi hasn’t been strong enough to upload to my blog!*
 
My team has just left Casablanca.  We were there for about 4 weeks.  We are in another city in Morocco now, Imlil, in the high Atlas mountains, for the next few days before flying to Cyprus.
 
For my squad, Morocco has been our first Muslim country.  My team had a ministry host in Casablanca,  I’ll call him Youssef, and his friend and ministry partner, I’ll call him Sut.  They both became Christians many years ago, and then went to a Bible school for 3 years to become pastors.  From the first day that we met them, they told us that we had many restrictions on how we could minister in Morocco.   
1.  We were not allowed to tell our immediate neighbors that we are Christians, except if they asked, then we could say yes, but not share anything further about Jesus.  This is because they use the apartment that they chose for my team to stay in for different church gatherings, and guests, and they don’t want the neighbors to know that there is a church associated with the apartment.  I understood their reasoning completely, but that was the first moment that I thought “Wow, I am experiencing a taste of what it’s like to not be able to share your faith openly”.  It was difficult for me to hear and live out for the month.  Especially because I became very close to a teenage girl who lived next door.  I taught her how to play the guitar, and was able to encourage her a lot, and I told her that I’m a Christian when she asked, but I wasn’t able to share more with her, because I wanted to honor the ministry host’s requests.  However, I did get her e-mail address, and I’ll be able to stay in touch with her, and perhaps there will be an opportunity to tell her about Christ. 
2. We could share about our faith with people that we met around our neighborhood, or at the university, but only after having a few conversations.  I am very used to jumping right into to telling people about Christ, even during the first conversation, and that restriction was also very difficult for me this month.

We were able to spend time with the mininstry hosts Youssef and Sut, and pour into their church and families.  I taught one of their boys a little more on guitar (though he is 8 and practically as good as me lol).  And Bradley jumped in and did an awesome job of teaching many English lessons for them.  We also prayed for them and with them, and the Lord ministered to Youssef a lot through our prayers together, and I believe some serious spiritual warfare was happening during our prayers for him.  We are glad we could encourage the house church members, pray for them, and worship with them.  

Seriously, I need to write at least 2-3 more blogs about Morocco, but I want to write about a girl we met, I’ll call her Ayat. The first day we arrived, we were just walking around our neighborhood and exploring, and she walked up to us and said “Hi, are you lost?”  Haha 🙂  Apparently we live in a part of town where you don’t see a lot of tourists, and we really, really stuck out.  We told her, no we were staying nearby and were just exploring.  She said “Oh, well there is nothing to see here!”.  In that moment, I felt my heart filled with this incredible joy, and was thinking “Are you kidding me?  There is SO much to see here, and it’s you!”  It felt like the Father was pouring out His love for her into my heart, and it was awesome to know that He cares for her so much that He sent all of us from America just to talk to her. 

From that day, we became friends with Ayat and hung out with her and her brother several times.  Her family even invited us over to their place for a full day of food and fun, and another time they invited us for dinner.

One day, I was able to sit with Ayat for an hour on the bus as we were riding home from a day of exploring Casablanca together with her, her brother, and our whole team.  I can’t remember, but somehow we started talking about modesty.  She told me that she really cares about modesty, and the reason that she wears her hijab is because she loves Allah and wants to honor him.  The thing that hit me the most was when she said that she never takes off her head scarf around men (except very close family), and other Muslim women.  She said that even though I’m a woman, even I couldn’t see her hair because of her sincere faith and her modesty.  I was really impressed by her sincere belief and commitment to Islam.  

At that point, I decided to tell her that I am a Christian and that I also really value modesty, although our cultures have very different ideas about what modesty is.  She had told me that amongst her friends, she’s often the one who encourges her friends to cover up more, and I told her that I am the same way because of my view on modesty! We laughed together because we realized that we are the same in that way.  I told her that because of my belief in God, and my desire to honor Him with my body, I often choose to wear clothes that are more modest than what my culture says is attractive.  Even though our cultures have different ideas about what being modest looks like, Ayat and I connected on this point.  It was a really great conversation.  She said she was very glad to hear that a Christian cares about things like that.

We were able to hang out with Ayat and her brother 4 or 5 more times for all day adventures or meals.  We got to know them and build relationship with them.  A few days before we left Casablanca, my team threw a little party, a Fall Fest, to celebrate the arrival of fall.  We even made pumpkin pie from scratch (with a real pumpkin that took hours to prepare haha).  It was a small miracle, it actually tasted great!  Anyway, I was looking forward all day to hopefully have a moment that I could sit and talk with Ayat at the Fall Fest, and tell her as much as i could about Jesus and the Gospel, but the moment never happened.  So, we saw her one last time the night before we left, and I had prayed and decided to write her a letter in which I explained the Good News about Jesus, and asked her to consider a different viewpoint on salvation and eternal life.  I gave her my e-mail address and told her that I would love to hear her thoughts.  Just this morning  I received an e-mail from her, in which she solidly disagreed with what I wrote (which I expected), and she shared with me what the Quran says, and said that she would love to continue this open dialogue about our faiths.  This is what I was hoping for, and I am very excited to continue e-mailing with Ayat and have an open discussion about our faiths.  It is interesting to me to how God can use my life, even in one month (what I consider to be a very short amount of time in missions work) to build a friendship that can lead to more discussion even after I leave.