We have been truly blessed by the Lord in being able to meet and make connections with some incredible people that are doing the Lord’s work. And we have offered to come alongside them in any way possible, sometimes it looks like attending prayer meetings, being invited to an underground church, cleaning a welcome center, painting a fellowship hall for the international church, or simply visiting some local believers at home for some fellowship and encouragement.
One of my ministry moments in North Africa was when a few weeks ago when some of us were able to visit with a few local women (believers). Meeting believers in this country is not a simple or easy thing since many if not most of them are hiding their faith due to serious persecution. Luckily the Lord has been gracious enough to give us glimpses into the wonderful work he’s doing here and we have been able to meet more local believers than we could have imagined!
One thing we’ve noticed though is that the underground church seems to be predominantly Male. We’ve learned that this is mostly due to culture and women having limited time freedom/space to congregate. But back to my story, the woman’s home we visited is a place where her husband (also a believer) holds weekly gatherings with other men to talk about Jesus and share their faith. Her whole family, including her young son and teenage daughter, are believers which is amazing!
Our time together consisted of them serving us an amazing homemade cake and pancake like things with amazing coffee. We sat around the table and got to know them better, read scripture, and prayed together. As we’re talking to them with the help of our friend who speaks English and Arabic we learn how each woman came to Christ. I am surprised to find out that it took one lady 7 years to finally surrender her life to Christ. That’s about 10,000 hours of conversations about faith. WOW!
We were told before starting this adventure that a lot of times we won’t actually get to see people come to Christ but that we’ll meet people at different stages in their faith journey and maybe we get to help move them a little forward. Some plant the seed, some water the seed, and others get to harvest. No matter where you find yourself on that spectrum ultimately it is the Lord and his Holy Spirit that bring people to Christ and salvation. We are simply lucky enough to be His vessels at any point in someone’s journey!
So, during this visit our ministry didn’t look like trying to bring people to Christ it was more about loving and encouraging the believers that don’t have a traditional “church” community (fellowship) because of the country they live in.
As we were reading a Psalm together I decided to try to translate my bible to Arabic but upon changing the language on my YouVersion bible app I find out that this particular book has not been translated into the type of Arabic they speak but there were many others that were! So without being able to understand the books (because my app was now in Arabic) I scrolled through and “randomly” picked a book, a chapter and a few verses and handed my phone over to one of the girls to read aloud for the other women. I don’t think this verse was random at all because upon asking what they wanted prayer for, the hostess said something along the lines of “that this gathering would grow, that people wouldn’t be afraid.” I truly felt the Holy Spirit speaking to these ladies through this passage:
At the end of our visit we all joined hands around the table and began to pray for one another and for the secret believers and for all the believers that are yet to come to Christ in this country! It was truly beautiful to lift up our prayers in different languages to the same mighty and powerful God.
So although ministry looks different every day, this is what my favorite kind ministry looks like so far.
Prayer Requests:
- Please pray for North Africa and the underground church/believers here! Pray against the spirit of fear and ask the Lord to give them boldness share their new found life and salvation with other locals.
- Pray for long time missionaries here that the Lord would infuse them with deeper passion and purpose and that they should continue to be amazed at all that the Lord is doing!
- Pray for our team as we are approaching our last week in this city and we start to mourn leaving the friends we’ve made.
- Pray for financial provision for Haley and I as we continue to raise support and deadlines are quickly approaching!
As always it would be my honor to lift you up in prayer, so if there’s anything you would like prayer for just shoot it my way.
Love,
Aislinn
