SOMEWHERE IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND NORTH AFRICA UNION
Prayers in the Park W
hat are the chances that a non-Christian searching for truth will meet a Christian in the capital of one of the most closed countries to Christianity in the Middle East? Humanly speaking, it’s almost impossible, yet God works in miraculous ways! One evening, a friend of mine was trying to sell some Adventist books. She approached a young man whom I’ll call Ali to protect his identity. “I don’t have any money on me,” Ali said, “but if you give me your phone number, I’ll call you later.” We often hear this response from people who aren’t interested in making a purchase, but Ali did call my friend. He said he had many questions about religion
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and would like to meet with her to learn more. “In fact,” he said, “I’d love to have a Bible. Would it be possible for you to get me one?” This wouldn’t be such a significant request if you lived in the West. But you need to be very cautious in this region of the world. If someone tells the authorities that you’ve been preaching, talking about Jesus, or giving someone Christian material, you can be imprisoned, deported, tortured, or killed. Despite the risk, my friend and I met with Ali quickly and gave him a Bible. Ali started reading his Bible in secret so that his family wouldn’t know. He began to ask more and more questions and wanted to talk with us about what he was
discovering. It was as if a new horizon was opening up before him. My friend and I wanted to talk with Ali, but we didn’t know where we should meet. I couldn’t invite him to my house, and we couldn’t go to his. We thought about meeting at a restaurant, but it would be hard to be discrete with people sitting so close to us. Finally, we decided to meet Ali at the city park for a picnic. It was a large open space with people constantly coming and going. We arrived first, and Ali arrived a few minutes later. Like us, he was nervous. Ali told us he wanted to discover the truth for himself. “I don’t want to learn from anyone else because everyone I talk to tells me it’s something different.”
