How’s this for a missions trip: Three months on camels in the scorching Sahara. No contact with family members. Beaten with metal rods. Kidnapped by renegade soldiers.
All to bring Jesus to isolated oasis camps inhabited by nomads — hostile strangers who might not give you water during your journey, much less listen to your message.
That’s what some new Arab believers did earlier this year. They intend to do it again next year — and the year after that. Why? Because they read the New Testament.
“It was the Holy Spirit,” said Luke, the Southern Baptist worker who introduced the Arabs to stories from God’s Word.
“From the beginning, we told them, ‘As soon as you know the stories, you need to be sharing them.’ That was on their heart, and the Book of Acts had just come out in their dialect of Arabic. They began going through it and wanted to be like [the apostle] Paul. They saw that Paul went out to other places.”
It all started about six years ago, when Luke and his wife went to a part of northern Africa to serve an Arab Muslim people group of about 1.5 million people. When they arrived, there were fewer than 10 known followers of Christ among the entire group. As he shared the love of Christ in villages and nomad camps, Luke began showing the “Jesus” film. Some men saw it and asked to watch another movie.
“At the time the only other thing I had on video was ‘The Ten Commandments’ with Charlton Heston, in French,” Luke recalled with a laugh. But they watched it and at the end, they asked to study the books of Moses. From there, they studied Genesis and up to Jesus. Just one man believed but he became the main evangelist.
That man, Shama, began telling Bible stories and gathering other believers into groups. Later they asked Luke’s wife to share with their wives and sisters.
Over the next several years, the original believers expanded to nine worship groups. As they listened to Luke’s teaching about church planting — and read in Scripture about God’s work in the early church — they conceived a grand plan to take the gospel far into the desert.
“(A)bout a year ago, they said, ‘We really feel like God wants us to go to another people group,’” Luke said. “They prayed … about where they should go, and they felt led to go to a people out in the Sahara.”
The nomadic Muslim people group they selected was non-Arab, from a different tribe, notoriously fierce — and not friendly to outsiders. Even the women of the group were said to carry knives and guns.
The Arab believers found the few known Christians among the nomadic people and asked for tips. The worship groups contributed to the trip, and the team gathered stacks of gospel cassettes and “Jesus” videos dubbed into the language of the nomadic people. Team members memorized key Bible stories and compiled calendars with specific prayer requests for each day of their anticipated 90-day trek.
Ready at last, the missions team, led by Shama, departed for its first stop. No one at home heard from the team for the next three months.
Political chaos was roiling the region, increasing the worries of family members. They also knew the team was traveling without enough food and water for the journey. Arab tradition commands hospitality to strangers, but the nomads the team was seeking weren’t Arabs.
“It was hard not knowing,” Luke said of the long silence. “One of the down sides of the trip was that most of those who went were the major leaders among the believers. While they were gone, their wives and families had some really tough times.” But God provided.
On the camel trek, meanwhile, the missions team encountered a rude welcome in some of the nomad camps. In one location, Shama had hardly begun teaching when he was accused by local Muslim teachers of being in league with those who defame the prophet Mohammed. Shama insisted he was proclaiming Jesus only, but they beat him with metal rods and stabbed him in the leg. Fellow team members rescued him and sewed his knife wound closed with horsehair.
At another point, three of the believers were “drafted” by renegade troops, who forced them at gunpoint to don military uniforms. The troops killed their camel for food, but the believers escaped and made it back to their team’s camp.
They also found “persons of peace” along the way who helped and fed them. And in at least 10 nomad camps, they found people with open hearts and ears. They gave away all their gospel cassettes and videos. Since the team’s return, some of their nomadic listeners in the deep Sahara have believed in Jesus and been baptized.
And the team is already planning its next journey. (BP)
EDITOR’S NOTE — Names changed for security reasons.
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