It was day 3 for my team to be in Baku, Azerbaijan. We had open ministry/ask the Lord (ATL), so we decided to do worship in the park, to pray for the city, and maybe meet people. So I grabbed my guitar and we headed over to the park near our hostel. We started sitting down at a picnic table, when an elderly man on the next table over waved for us to come over. Part of ATL is being interruptible, so we went and sat at his table with him.
He started talking away to us in Russian. Ok Lord, now what? Should we still worship? Should we try to talk to this man, who doesn’t seem to know any English? Then he motioned to the book on the table in front of him. “Bibliya!” He exclaimed. My teammates and I exchanged looks in disbelief. “Bibliya? Christian?” We asked him. “Da, da! (Yes, yes!)” He responded.
The next 15 minutes were spent in a mixture of charades and Google Translate trying to learn more about him. He is 70, and has been a Believer for 25 years. He exuded so much joy and kindness.
While we worshipped, he sat and prayed in his own language.
Then we started talking to him more and we made out that he knew other Americans, who own a book store. We asked if he could take us there, right then. He said yes, and he led us to the street and flagged down a bus. We arrived at the book store, and discovered it is a Christian book store. We got to know the friendly girl at the counter, and she translated for me to talk to him. He invited us to go to his church with him on Sunday.
The next 3 weeks, we met with him every Sunday and rode the metro to his Russian/Azeri church. A sweet teenage girl translated the whole service into headphones for us. One time she was translating for me and him, and she said, “When he talks to me, he speaks in Azeri, but when he talks to you, he speaks in Russian! I told him you don’t understand either language, but he keeps doing it!”
Every Sunday after church, he invited us to join him and his friends for tea. Sometimes his friends knew some English, sometimes we weren’t so lucky, and the next few hours were another hilarious session of charades. One thing was for sure: he was going to keep talking, whether we understood him or not!
On one of our last days, us 3 girls went to say goodbye to him. We thanked him for all the wonderful moments and all the bus and metro fares he had insisted on covering, since his “Father is very rich”. He brought a feast of fruits, vegetables, and bread. He motioned that we needed to wash the fruits and veggies, so I went with him. He went to the closest sprinkler in the park, turned it on, and we washed the produce!
When we were enjoying the feast he was, as usual, talking away to us. He was pointing to our ring fingers and asking us something. We adamantly said, “Niet, niet! (No, no!) We are not married.” We were confused because we’d known him for 3 weeks at this point, and were pretty sure he already knew we weren’t married. But he kept saying Da, da, in response to our niet’s. Then he made the motion of him praying, pointed at us, pointed at our ring fingers, bumped his fists together, then he threw his fist in the air and said, “Boom!” We all laughed, and one of us translated on our phone, “Are you praying that we will find husbands?” “Da, da!”
We got to meet so many local believers through this man. It was such an encouragement to us to see people living out their faith in a country that is still closed off to Christianity. This one man quietly sitting in the park reading his Bible made a huge impact on our time in this country.
