We spent this month in
Morogoro, Tanzania working with a local church doing door-to-door evangelism,
preaching, and putting on an evangelism seminar for the church members.
The community in which
we were living this month has a high population of Muslims and in one of our
early door-to-door days, we met a young Muslim named Asha. Asha was in her early twenties and we
shared Jesus with her, her younger sister (of about 19) and her mother. None of them seemed overly interested,
but Asha did continue to thumb through my teammate Emily’s Bible even after we
finished sharing, so we asked her if she wanted to borrow it, read some and
then we could come back and answer any questions she had. She agreed, but to be honest, I was a
bit skeptical about whether or not she would actually read it. Since Emily had given away her Bible
for a couple of weeks, I lent her my extra. Let me tell you about my extra Bible briefly.
When I left on the Race
I brought an extra Bible because I thought my first one might get lost/stolen
at some point and I didn’t want to be caught on the mission field
sword-less. My extra Bible is very
small and I’ve had it since I was about 14 years old. So, Emily has been using my extra for the last three weeks
or so. Trust me, this will all come
together.
Over the next three and
half weeks, we went to visit Asha several times and began to build good
friendships with her and her sister, but neither seemed interested in believing
in Jesus as the Messiah. Still, we
continued visiting them often.
Then, toward the end of
the month, our team began to split up.
Michelle has been selected for a special logistics assignment for five
weeks. She will be traveling to
four different countries in Asia to do logistics for a future human
trafficking-focused World Race.
Please keep her in your prayers.
Hope left early for a team leader retreat, and Emily, Anna, and Melanie
went to Nairobi early so that Emily, who feels called to come back to Africa to
teach, could visit some Kenyan schools.
The last day that Emily, Anna, and Melanie were in Morogoro, Emily
decided to go visit Asha and her sister one last time and give them some gifts.
She began sharing with
them about Jesus again, but this time when she asked them if they were
interested, they said yes. Emily
didn’t know where to go in the Bible to give them the appropriate scriptures
for a salvation message, so she turned to the back of my small Bible and found
that I had written out the Roman road with the verses. She led them through the passages and
at the end they accepted Christ!
It was so amazing to see the way that Emily and Hope’s (and the whole
team’s) persistence and perseverance not to give up when Asha and her sister
seemed disinterested resulted in the salvation of two Muslim women.
The amazing thing is
that when Emily told me about the Roman road in the back of my Bible, I had no
idea what she was talking about, but then I remembered. I had taken a Sunday school class about
evangelism in the summer of 2001.
I don’t remember why I thought it would be good to write the Roman road
in the back of my Bible, but it is absolutely incredible to see how God used
it. As soon as I remembered
writing it and heard how Asha had been led to Christ, I got a picture in my
mind of God, way back in 2001, (when I was 14 years old!) smiling and thinking
about Asha and Fitha. I probably
didn’t even know where Tanzania was on a map, I probably didn’t know anything
about Islam, or door-to-door evangelism in Africa, but God knew. He knew those two girls, and he knew
that by writing the Roman road in the back of my Bible some Sunday afternoon
almost ten years ago, He was pursuing them. The cool thing is, I didn’t even really do anything, but He
used me, and I HAD NO IDEA at the time.
I wonder how many times God uses us every day and we never know about
it, or maybe we won’t find out until we’re on another continent a decade
later.
Be encouraged by this
story that God IS using you, even if you can’t see it. To Him be the glory, the honor, the
power, and the majesty forever.
Amen.
Love you guys, thanks
for reading!
Adam
A couple of Tanzanian sunsets for you to enjoy
