Stories of the Sent: Gospel Seeds Take Root in South Asia

A stream rushed down from the towering mountains encompassing our small village. Fields of vegetables crawled around us until they met the cement block wall encircling our new home. Not an hour earlier, my teammate and I had arrived in this rural village in South Asia. The dreamy, idyllic farm where we now found ourselves standing was a sharp contrast to our situation. Our team leaders had left us only a few minutes ago with a Chinese satellite phone and a firm trust that the Spirit would lead us. We now stood in the most beautiful place we had ever been, yet with little hope of communicating with the unengaged people we had come to reach.

My teammate and I looked at each other, speechless. I turned slowly on the spot, my mind racing and my eyes trying to comprehend the majesty of the surrounding mountaintops. My gaze dropped to the farm lying next to our guesthouse as my friend shielded her eyes from the sun.

“I think he’s waving us over.” There was a young man sitting in a thriving garden where an old woman was hunched over, weeding around her plants. The man beckoned again. My friend and I cast a nervous glance at each other and set off toward him.

We made our way through the cow’s wire fence and down into the neighboring field.

“Hello. How are you?” the young man asked us in perfect English, eyeing us warily.

Surprised, we answered that we were fine. The man introduced himself as Ali. He was the son of the man who owned our guesthouse. Ali was in his late twenties. He had practiced law in English in a big city but had recently moved back to his family’s village. This well-educated young lawyer preferred picking herbs in his aunt’s garden over city life. From our first meeting with Ali in that field, I could tell there was something different about him—there was a storm behind his eyes.

Ali’s family welcomed us into their home, and with Ali’s effortless translating, our nerves were calmed. The Islamic gender segregation was looser in this close-knit village, so Ali was able to act as our guide. He was charismatic and friendly, but also a loner. After taking our group on an adventure, he would disappear for hours at a time. He was quick  to tell a joke, but then would slip back into silence.

Our first day in the village, Ali saw my friend reading her Bible.

“What are you reading?”

“My Bible. I’m a follower of Jesus. This is our Holy Book.”

“We have one of those.” Ali strode over to the bookshelf in the sitting room and pulled off a black-covered English Bible. We were shocked. “Someone gave this to my father twenty years ago. I tried to read it when I was a kid, but I couldn’t understand it. I really wanted to know what it said. Can you explain it to me?”

That began the next ten days of Ali’s ravenous intake of Jesus’ life and teaching. At Ali’s insistence, we read together three times a day. When we were not reading together, I would find Ali, his brow screwed up in thought, reading his Bible. Ali grasped the full meaning of Jesus’ words quicker than the Pharisees and the disciples. He drilled us with questions and would sit back in thought, examining us through narrowed eyes, the wheels in his head almost visibly turning. The hunger inside him to know more about Jesus grew with each passing day.

After extending our stay as long as we could, we finally reached our last night in the village. Ali had spent days wrestling with questions on suffering and what it would mean to follow Jesus. We sat in his living room for hours on end, reading Jesus’ clear teaching that He is God’s Son and that only He can offer true, lasting life. Ali’s head was in his hands after we read the crucifixion and the resurrection.

“Why did you people have to come?” Ali asked in anguish. “I could have kept living my life in peace. Why do I feel like this?” His eyes were crying out for help as he looked at us.

“It’s the Spirit. He’s pursuing you, Ali. This is not because of us. Jesus wants you to find forgiveness and life in Him. He loves you.”

Ali shook his head wearily.

As we slept peacefully that night, Ali wandered his village. He was desperately searching for someone to talk to—a Muslim uncle or cousin who would tell him to stop worrying and forget about what he had read. No one was awake. He returned to the house, exhausted from his third sleepless night in a row. Resorting to the source of his torment, Ali picked up his Bible and flipped to Luke, where he landed on the Parable of the Sower. As he read the parable, the Spirit convicted his heart. The seed of God’s Word had been sown in Ali’s field. Despite his fears, in that moment Ali knew he wanted to be the good soil.  He repented of his sins and accepted Jesus Christ as his Savior.

He told us the next day. “I confessed. I feel so different.” He smiled in amazement, his eyes full of peace.

Even in a remote village in the middle of a country of suffocating darkness, a light so bright and so warm that it cannot be quenched shone from Ali’s soul. Eternal joy and hope filled all three of us believers that day. As my friend and I smiled at each other in the car, driving away from that village of uncertainty, we had full assurance that we would be sharing that joy with Ali forever.

My friend and I were able to connect Ali with local believers in a nearby city. One of our closest partners turned out to be the very one who had given Ali’s father that Bible years ago! He and our team leaders are discipling Ali, and we were able to witness Ali’s baptism while we were there. The Lord showed me this summer how the Spirit leads us exactly where we need to go and how Jesus is working in ways we often do not realize. All we have to do is trust Him and take each next step of obedience.

There are millions of Muslims like Ali who have never heard the Gospel. Please be praying that those who have never heard will hear, and that those who are called will go.

“How, then, can they call on Him they have not believed in? And how can they believe without hearing about Him? And how can they hear without a preacher?” (Romans 10:14)

Would you join us in praying 2 Corinthians 3:16 that the veil of Islam would be removed from the hearts of Muslims worldwide and that they would see the truth and freedom of Christ, like Ali did?

“…but whenever a person turns to the Lord, the veil is removed.”