When I realized we would be spending Christmas in Oman, I was bummed.
I’d known we would be spending December in Oman since we launched. But I didn’t connect that with Christmas until we stepped out of the bus at 7am in 85 degree heat. We’d just come from Ethiopia, which was the first cold month on the Race, so the impact was rather shocking. Couple that with desert hours (Oman is a ghost town until 4pm) and all of the festive posts from people back home, and you have a recipe for instant homesickness.
We spent the first few weeks of Oman doing our second all-squad debrief. This is a time when coaches and our mentor fly out from the states to be with us for training, encouragement, connection, and major transitions. After five days of team change, squad- and team-leader appointments, and numerous sessions, my teammates and I boarded a 12-hour bus and headed to S, where we would spend the rest of our month. There was a brief moment of festive spirit at our debrief, when we had a squad Christmas party, complete with the movie Elf (a Christmas staple) and one of my family’s traditions: Wassail. But once we arrived in S, the Christmas decorations were few and far between. It didn’t even feel like December.
The Challenge:
Remember those desert hours? I’m not kidding when I say it’s a ghost town; there aren’t even cars on the streets. Once the sun starts to go down people materialize from nowhere. Kids would be out playing soccer as late as midnight; one time, a boy we knew from the street rang our doorbell at 2am. A few days after we arrived was Friday, the Muslim holy day. I’d noticed how many people were on the beach in Muscat the previous week, so I knew we needed to capitalize on this time. Thinking to make some friends, we bought a soccer ball and headed toward the water.
We never made it to the beach, but we did meet some pretty cool kids, and made a friend who ended up taking us to a Wadi (river/waterfall) the next Friday. But what I’d been hoping for—an invitation into a Muslim home so we could meet some women—didn’t happen. Knowing what I did about culture, however, I guessed that if we were to make cookies and take them to the home, it could bring about some good connections. So Dylan (our team’s treasurer) moved money around in the budget, and the next week I spent a combined total of four days shopping and baking three different types of Christmas Cookies, which I wrote about in my last blog. My team was skeptical at first, and to be honest, so was I. Could sequestering myself in a kitchen really be ministry? Was I justified in taking a day off after baking, when I hadn’t actually talked to anyone? Was the time, energy and money really worth it?
One week into our time in S, and the women of the team needed a breakthrough. Men easily form connections, but gender expectations make it tougher for women, and we were beginning to feel antsy. Was our ministry just supposed to be praying and supporting our male counterparts, or did God have a plan for us as well?
Breakthrough #1:
The first time it actually felt like Christmas was when I was baking cookies on my Sabbath while harmonizing to Pentatonix. That day, I got a text update from a friend who serves in North Africa, talking excitedly about the Christmas party she was planning for all her Muslim friends. As my cookies transformed from dough into peppermint-y goodness, the Lord also transformed my heart. I began to see the timing as an opportunity instead of a disappointment. Instead of wishing I was home, I realized what the story of Jesus coming a baby—God WITH us—would mean to a faith where God is untouchable.
“Hello, we’re your American neighbors. We brought you some cookies because we’re going to celebrate Christmas this month, and one of our traditions is to bring cookies to each other! Do you know Christmas? Can I tell you the story?”
In middle eastern culture, gifts are returned with gifts; favors, with favors; food, with food. Our nine cookie gift boxes allowed us to say a culturally-appropriate thank you to Pakistani friends who treated us to dinner. They opened doors for Jake, Aspen, Victoria and John to play worship music with Jebali friends they’d met in the square. The Jebali area completely unreached group without a written language, and these older, conservative, muslim men were laughing and trying to sing along to How He Loves! We gave cookies to some boys Aspen met while running, and from that point on they were constantly ringing our doorbell to come play. Most of all, though, these cookies allowed us to make connections with our neighbors: the Falalah family and the Dream Girls.
The Falalah Family:
In my last blog, I mentioned tossing cookie dough through my kitchen window to an eleven-year-old girl. Giving cookies to eleven-year-old Alma started a friendship with the Falalah family, who are originally from Egypt. We hit it off with Alma and her younger brother Moses right away, and through them met their older sister Shara, who is applying to come to the US for a teenage consortium on women in leadership. Their parents, Fidel, and Hannan, are both math teachers for the Jebali people.
L-R: Me, Fidel, Aspen, Shara, Alma, Victoria at the beach!
(not pictured: Hannan & Moses)
The Dream Girls:
Dylan made the first connection with the girls when he went upstairs to investigate some Christmas music. We never ended up meeting the family with the music, but we did meet the Dream Girls: Angel, Love, Jewel and Lulu who, once they realized we would play and feed them sweets, came down every day to hang with us. With the extra flour from our baking escapades, I made some homemade play doh which was a huge hit. In return, they taught us a card game called “Fruit”, which allowed us to learn Arabic words. These girls are also from Egypt.
L-R: Lulu, Angel, Me, Jewel, Aspen, Victoria, Love
Breakthrough #2:
Midway through the month, it was Dylan’s turn to lead Bible study. We’d been going through Isaiah, but that morning he chose 2 Corinthians 9 for our study: Each one should give what he has decided in his heart to give—not reluctantly or under compulsion, for God loves a cheerful giver. Dylan then shared that we had saved 20 Rial (about $45) in our housing and travel budgets, and he wanted us to pray about how the Lord wanted us to give away the extra.
I love the heart of generosity on our team.
After praying about it, we decided to invite the Falalah family over for Christmas dinner. We used the extra money to make my favorite: Aunt Susan’s Casserole, Sweet Potato Pie, and Apple Crisp. After getting confirmation of our neighbors’ attendance, we put our plan into motion.
Seizing the Day:
We had a wonderful Christmas morning, complete with Stolen (German Cinnamon rolls—another tradition from my family), Wassail, Secret Santa, and The Santa Clause movie. After a quick lunch we spend the next five hours working together to make all of the different dishes with only three pots and a single metal spoon. It was honestly the most fun I’ve had on the Race thus far. (Shout out to Victoria, who didn’t complain in the slightest when I told her the most helpful thing she could do was clean. I would not have wanted that job, and our apartment looked amazing by the time she was done!) By the time the family came over at 8:30 pm we were ready to go!
Christmas Stolen!
Midway through Christmas day, the Dream Girls heard about the party and asked to also attend. I was disinclined to let them, as I didn’t want to inconvenience our original guests by having a bunch of crazy little girls running around the apartment. As Dylan reminded us, however, children were just as important to Jesus as their adult parents. It was also a great opportunity to finally meet the Dream Girls’ parents.
After dinner, we had all wanted a way to open up the conversation about Jesus but weren’t sure how to do so in an organic way. Then I remembered a new TV series called the Chosen, which is about the life of Jesus. The pilot episode is about Christmas, so we decided to show this episode to our friends because it would be accessible to all ages and hopefully spark some conversation.
The Episode we were planning to watch, which is perfect because it talks about how Jesus was a sacrifice. Sacrifice is a perfect subject to bring up Jesus with Muslims. Every year they sacrifice a lamb at the celebration of Eid al-Fitr, which commemorates Abraham’s faith in being willing to sacrifice Ishmael (they substitute Ishmael, father of the Arab nation, for Isaac)
Literally five minutes after we’d decided that, our wifi went out.
The only time in the entire month we didn’t have wifi was the last half of Christmas Day. Coincidence? I think not.
8 pm rolls around, and the Falalah family shows up with—can you believe it?—presents for each of us! The Dream Girls also come, but without their parents. After a delicious dinner and good conversation with our new friends, Dylan used the rest of his data to give me a hotspot for the film… but it stopped about five minutes in.
But the Enemy wasn’t going to get the better of this celebration! Jake immediately suggested reading the story from the Injeel (Muslim name for the New Testament). There followed the most amazing moment of the entire month. The Dream Girls nestled into our laps, Moses planted himself firmly next to Dylan, and the Falalah family listened intently as Jake and Hannan took turns reading Luke 2—Jake read a verse in English, Hannah read the same one in Arabic—until we’d finished the story of Jesus’ birth. Occasionally Fidel would stop to ask a question in Arabic, usually answered by Shara or Alma, who spoke the best English.
Statistics tell us it takes a Muslim 7 connections with the gospel before they come to a saving faith. This is mostly because they’ve been taught from birth that Christians believe things they can’t accept about God: like, for example, that God had relations with Mary to give birth to Jesus; that Jesus is a second god, instead of one aspect of the Trinity; or that the Bible has been changed and therefore no longer reliable. When speaking with a Muslim, before you ever get to the gospel itself, you must first understand that you could be dealing with years of misunderstanding about the actual beliefs of Christianity.
A Muslim family consenting to read the Injeel aloud together is nothing short of a Christmas miracle. This may have been the first time that family had ever read the Bible!
And boy did it bring up conversations! After we finished with the Injeel, our Muslim friends insisted on reading sections of the Qur’an that tell the story of Mary. They were shocked to hear that we believe in a Virgin birth. We didn’t dive into a discussion of the Trinity, but we ended the night with a deeper friendship, respect for each other, and barriers broken down. Later that week they took us to the beach for some fishing (Dylan caught two puffer fish and a guitar fish!), and we said goodbye by gifting them the Arabic/English Injeel we’d brought with us. They accepted it gladly, as a token of friendship, and even agreed to let us pray for them before we left.
In Conclusion…
… our time in Oman was way too short. On our last night the kids we’d invested in flooded our apartment, climbing all over us (literally) as we struggled to pack and get ready for an early morning departure. Since we left three days ago I’ve gotten a never ending stream of voice messages saying “I love you” and our names, which are the only things the Dream Girls know how to say in English. Angel tearfully begged us to come back, which broke my heart.
There is no doubt we had an impact on these kids. And though they may not have understood our differences in theology, I think they will forever remember the interactions they had with a group of Christian strangers who took the time to smile with them, braid their hair, make them play doh, and invest in them as human beings, instead of brushing them aside. I know they saw Jesus through us. And I pray that as they grow, they’ll remember that Christians are not what everyone around them tells them, and that their hearts will be more open to Jesus as a result.
