The story begins…
My story begins as my husband and I were attending a church conference in our home country. During one of the sessions at this conference, my husband who was beside me, fell onto his knees and bowed his head. Tears flowed down from his eyes — he was sobbing. I asked him, “Why are you crying?” Then, he answered me stuttering through sobs that God impressed in his heart to go to a Muslim nation. Later on when he was composed, calmed, and done crying he explained to me how he clearly received the call of God right at that very moment. He explained that he was, at first, moved by the report about the Middle East and he prayed that God would send missionaries to the Middle East, but he heard the Holy Spirit speak to him saying, “If all Christians are just praying and not going, who will go? If all Christians are like you who only pray and are not willing to go, no one will go.” The word “GO” struck his heart and he couldn’t help but cry in response to what he heard. As a wife, I first kept this news in my heart.
However, I suddenly remembered a certain young Muslim man that my husband had the chance to disciple and lead to Christ along with other young people. This was back when he was still single and serving as a college campus missionary in the Southeast Asia. That young Muslim man surrendered his life to Christ, went through one2one discipleship with my now husband, and was eventually used by God to radically speak to thousands of young people in the city who were discipled and led to Christ as well. God called this young man to full time ministry and he has been serving as the senior pastor of a church in that same city for a couple of years now. Remembering this made me think, “Maybe my husband really does have a calling to reach out to the Muslim people.”
To continue the story, after that conference, God opened up an opportunity for my husband to go work in the Middle East in September of that same year. There was no church which was a part of our church organization in this particular Muslim nation at the time. Before he accepted the job offer we earnestly prayed and sought God about it. God gave my husband the scripture Matthew 9:37, which says, “The harvest is plentiful but the laborers are few.” I myself received the scripture Isaiah 6:8, which says, “And I heard the voice of the Lord saying, ‘Whom shall I send, and who will go for us?’ Then I said, “Whom shall I send? And who will go for us?” True enough, the Lord gave us peace in our hearts to go even if the salary offer was smaller than what he was earning before. At the time, he was working in the corporate world and I was a working mom. The salary offer to him was much less, but because we were both convinced of the call of God to go to a Muslim nation we decided to go as a tentmaker to the Middle East.
My husband went in September. Our two toddlers were left behind with me while I was still working as a grade school teacher until I filed for my official resignation in April of the following year, which was the end of a school year. To be honest, the transition itself from Southeast Asia to the Middle East wasn’t easy. I had to give up my career to be with my husband so that we could all be together with our 2 little boys sooner. On top of that, we had other challenges to face too. The road was rough. How I wished things were just smooth after responding to God’s call to go to a Muslim nation but they weren’t. We were financially challenged, I was alone with our two little boys while doing all the daily errands by myself, I got sick, etc. It was one thing after another. But by God’s grace and faithfulness we overcame the rough road we had to take to be all together in the Middle East as a family.
Photo by ISKRA Photography @iskra_photography via Unsplash