“We laughed so hard” – a missionary moment

My team and I work among French and Arabic speakers. French is a trade language while Arabic is a heart language for most of our neighbours. Since we arrived in this town, my team and I have been working hard to present the gospel through culturally appropriate ways. So we decided to learn The Story of The Prophets – Taarikh al-anbiya – which starts with the life of Adam and Eve and ends with our Lord Jesus and how he sacrificed his life to pay for the sin that entered the world through Adam and Eve. At the end of this story, there’s an invitation to personally accept the gift of salvation through Jesus’ sacrifice. The Arabic words used there are “nakhkhbaloha” meaning “accept it”. One day, I told this story to one of my local friends, and at the end of the story I forgot how to say the first part of the word so I quickly replaced it with the French and said “accepte-loha”. We laughed so hard at my clever mix of French and Arabic and started mixing other words as well.

Ever since that day, B and I have studied the Bible together 3 to 4 times a week looking at the life of Jesus, Old Testament prophecies about him, Psalms and Proverbs. I do go over the story of the prophets with her sometimes and every time we get to the end we say it together…”accepte-loha” and then laugh loudly as we high-five each other!

B is very open to reading, watching and listening to Bible material with me. However, she doesn’t see herself as anything but M*sl*m. She still doesn’t believe some of the truth about Jesus, although she’s happy to help me with Arabic. Pray that the word of the Lord would pierce through her heart as she interacts with it. Pray that her eyes will be open and she will see that the words of the Lord are much more life-giving than the words of her religious book! Pray that B will one day “accepte-loha” the amazing gift of salvation for herself.

Habiba from Lesotho, serving in North Africa