Walking in my neighbourhood one day I heard a group of women behind me speaking the language of my Focus people group. I turned to greet them, and they all gathered around me to chat, excited to hear their language spoken by a stranger. With their faces covered, the only one I could see a bit of was the grandmother. “Come to our house for a cold drink,” she said. They led me down the street until we were standing at the gate of the house right next to my building. They took me upstairs to their small apartment and removed their face coverings. Several teen-age girls came out of their room to join us, bringing me and the grandmother a glass of sweet juice. They told me that the young mother of the teenagers lived in the house and the rest were relatives visiting from a remote place – where foreigners are restricted to go.
I had not met my neighbour before as women are usually confined to their houses to preserve the honour of the family, but on this day, she wanted to show her guests the park and had ventured out.
We had a fun and lively chat while all the time I was praying that there would be an opportunity to speak about Jesus to these women who had never heard of Him. A few minutes later, the grandmother turned to me and said, “It’s time for our five times a day prayers. Come and join me.”
This opened the door for me to gently tell them that I follow Jesus. I can pray at any time in His name and
don’t have to do the five times a day prayers to get into heaven. Then I explained who Jesus is and what He
has done for us. Grandmother was shocked and unsure what to do with this ‘heathen’ Canadian drinking juice in her daughter’s house!! She went off to do her prayers, but I was filled with gratitude to the Lord for the open door to share the gospel with this lovely family. Then the husband came home, and the women urged me to leave quickly so he would not see that I had been there.
Just two or three weeks later, the remote area where they came from experienced extreme flooding and sadly hundreds of people died. Pray with me that the Lord will make a way through many barriers for the Gospel to reach these women in remote areas. God has not forgotten them.
From a worker in Central Asia