We have been teaching our friend, “Rose,” and her seeking family members about suffering and how Scripture says her enemies will be those of her own household. I took her through the Matthew 10 passage and then the following women’s Bible study night she brought it up and said she wanted to teach that passage to her sister and daughters. She opened it up and taught them what I had taught her. Then, the start of the following week we read 1 Peter, and I told her to read it that night again. The next morning, she showed up in tears saying she read it and then went and told her family of her faith and upcoming baptism. She told of how they were yelling and berating her, trying to talk her out of it.
The next day, she called and asked us to come get her from a nearby park; her family was watching her house so we couldn’t pick her up there. She told us how they tore up all her Bibles in front of her, and they took her nativity and smashed it. We gave her a New Testament we had in the car and reminded her of the MP3 player she had which they had not found. We prayed with her and cried with her and she desired to go back to the wolves. Family members had taken her little kids elsewhere so she said she was going to get them back.
That was the last we heard from her for 48 hours. I called and would only get her brother who had taken her phone and said she had gone on vacation. I knew that wasn’t true. I called her sister who has been a seeker, and she was not being straight with me either. I knew something was wrong. Rose had been taken against her will to a village where the religious leader was called in to pray over her so that she would forget all we had taught her, wipe her mind clean, and forget about us. They recited the Quran over her. She told them she did not believe any of what they were telling her and they had better take her back to town. They told her if it weren’t for her kids, they would have killed her. They also said they were going to move her out of the city and that she was no longer allowed to see us or speak to us. They were going to find her a new job. She was brought back to town and she managed to get away and went to some believing friends’ home and had someone call me. I went over immediately, and we embraced and cried together for a long time as I thanked Jesus over and over. She then told me all that happened. I asked if she wanted to come live with us until this blew over, but she said if she did that they would come to our house with the police and kick us out for separating a family. If she fled the city, there would be no one left here to be a light in a dark place, so she wanted to ride this out.
We are SO ENCOURAGED at how she is standing firm in her faith to this point and remembering all she has learned leading up to this. Her oldest daughter who has been interested said that she used to think that the Christian life was an easy one, but now she is seeing Scripture to be true because what we read from Matthew 10 was happening. We pray that this will be a testimony to her children and her seeking sister and be what solidifies faith for them.
