I recently learned the story of Jesus calming the sea in Arabic. It was the first Bible story in Arabic that I’ve learned. Last month, we were on a visa trip to Jordan and I was visiting the ancient city of Petra. There are a ton of Bedouins around the site. They live and work around the land and they also sell souvenirs to the tourists, including illegal ones like coins and rocks.
As we were climbing to one of the sites, my friend and I passed a tent and there was a woman and two children there. We said the Arabic greeting and she invited us to drink some tea. We figured how often do you get to drink tea with a Bedouin so we sat and drank some hot minted tea. My friend doesn’t speak much Arabic so I led the conversation about where we live and what we do, that kind of thing, pretty basic stuff. She said she was impressed with my Arabic (although that may not be a high bar when it comes to Americans speaking Arabic!) I bought a scarf for my wife and we went on to the site.
I realized afterward that I should have shared my story with her. I told God that if I got another chance I wouldn’t pass it up. I mentioned it to my friend and he suggested we go back to her because it wasn’t far from where we were. So we went back and I asked if I could tell her a story. She said yes, of course, and I told her my story as well as I could. It was rough, but I got through it. She thanked me for the story and asked if this was a story about Jesus, the Son of Mary and I said it was. She said her daughter had heard stories about Jesus from her school. She thanked me for the story and gave me two small gifts from her souvenir table. Please pray that this one story would be used by the Holy Spirit to move her to seek out more stories about Jesus so that she will know and believe in the Good News of this One who is sovereign over the waves!
