The move of believers from meeting secretly in homes to meeting openly began with a call from the police.
The voice on the phone said: “This is the police.”
Pastor Joe paused, dumbfounded.
The voice continued: “We know you are getting ready to baptise Ahmed this weekend.”
Joe’s mind raced. How could the police know this – the person’s name, the event, the time? Unable to deny it, he replied, “Yes.”
Joe will never forget what the voice said next: “Then why don’t you do it in the empty church? We know you are meeting in homes weekly.”
FROM NORTH AFRICA TO SEMINARY AND BACK
Joe’s journey to North Africa began many years ago when he arrived there as a university student from sub-Saharan Africa. When he wasn’t studying accounting, he was active in a local church. Immersed in this context, he soon felt the Lord’s call to missions and told his pastor, “I feel I may leave to study theology and return long-term.”
The pastor said he had known, but had wanted Joe to come to that conclusion through the Holy Spirit. He added, “Because I know this is from God, I will give you all the support I can. You find a school; I will try to find a scholarship.”
One Sunday, Joe told his pastor the name and the cost of an African seminary he had found. The next day, the pastor emailed someone he knew. On Wednesday, the reply came: “We are glad to offer Joe a full scholarship for four years!”
The Lord had prepared his future wife, Esther, with a missionary call. Near the end of Joe’s fourth year, the church in North Africa offered him a staff position. Together, the couple made this place their home.
In time, the church invited the couple to consider ministry in another North African city, where an empty church building had stood with no pastor for more than 40 years. Joe and Esther went to look and to pray.
When they saw the church, Esther recognised it from a dream she’d had several years earlier. Confirming through prayer, the couple and their family relocated to this city and began ministry to local believers meeting secretly in houses and to sub-Saharan Africans studying there on scholarship.
That is, until the unexpected call from the local police.
Taking courage, the believers began to meet publicly in the church, despite the insults that it drew. In the beginning, Joe sensed the presence of police in plain clothes in the street whenever the church held activities.
Today, however, the police provide open protection, arriving in police vehicles and full uniform.
The police have instructed him: “You authorise everyone entering the church. You take care of security inside; we will take care of security outside.”
FINDING JESUS
Born into a nominally Christian family, Joe was never confronted by the gospel. His dad died when he was 15, and his mother struggled to provide.
When Joe started boarding school, rebelling against authority and bad behaviour began to define his teen years.
Whenever he saw his room-mate kneeling at the bottom bunk, he would kick and insult him as he climbed to the upper bunk. But his Christian room-mate would say, “God bless you.” Much later Joe learned he was fasting and praying for Joe, and had asked his Christian friends to pray, too.
One day the room-mate invited Joe to a Bible study. Joe went and mocked everything. Yet he kept attending the services
On January 7, 1990, at the age of 20, Joe’s life changed forever. Through a guest speaker at the students’ service, Joe witnessed someone who claimed and acted as if God were his friend. Joe could see on the man’s face such joy, peace, and deep conviction that God was his personal friend.
After the service, Joe accepted Christ’s gift of salvation and became a friend of God, too! Thirty years later, he still feels the joy of that salvation.
But it wasn’t long before his faith was severely tested.
CIVIL WAR
A war broke out in Joe’s country, and six of his siblings were killed in one day. If Joe hadn’t been away, he would have been murdered, too.
During the attack, his two youngest siblings escaped, a girl and a boy aged 10. The children fled and joined a crowd walking to another country. Once there, they joined another group of refugees walking to a third country. Miraculously, they arrived in the same camp as their elder brother, Joe, who had fled by another route after hearing that his whole family was dead.
Tragically, the children had become slaves to a refugee family who treated them cruelly in exchange for some protection. So early one morning, when his siblings were at the river away from the family, Joe took them and together they fled the camp. They walked until late that evening with no food and arrived at the border of their home country.
Joe was interrogated by military border guards for hours. Why was he entering instead of leaving his country? But Joe could not prove his identity or innocence.
Eventually they sent him into a room and asked if he knew the man there. Joe said, “Yes, he is a well-known businessman from my town.” But the businessman did not know Joe, and all hope seemed lost. But when Joe said his father’s name, the man knew and confirmed his identity!
Further, the businessman gave Joe and his siblings a lift to their hometown. They arrived at the home of their traumatised mother, who had assumed all her children were perished.
During his time as a refugee, people questioned Joe, “Are you still believing in God? God did not protect your family!” Joe says, “The Holy Spirit helped me with this simple idea: ‘Yes, people passed away. But you have not.”
A DREAM IS BORN
Joe and his family have served for more than 20 years in North Africa, and the Lord continues to reveal his life’s calling.
Joe explains, “If God has opened doors for us – sub-Saharan Africans serving in the Arab world – maybe others can come too. After all, it is clear that African workers are not as limited here as Westerners.”
Joe’s vision is to see scores of francophone students on scholarship in North Africa to reach their colleagues.
God has taken Joe from studying accounting on scholarship in North Africa to pastoring and discipling new students to reach their North African colleagues. What he received from his pastor he has multiplied among many others. Through Joe’s “hand-in-hand” operation, he networks with seminaries and churches to receive young Christian men from sub-Saharan Africa to intern or study in universities.
Joe and Esther have never belonged to agency. Recently, the local church advised them to find a sending entity, so Joe and Esther have joined the SIM family.
The vision for SIM’s Faithful Witness matches the vision of “hand-in-hand” but scales it up. As leader of the North Africa Faithful Witness team, Joe’s vision is to see scores of francophone students on scholarship in North Africa to reach their colleagues. To do that, Joe envisions five more pastor-disciplers coming to help the growing team to train and disciple many more students.
Joe says, “Difficult does not mean impossible, especially with God. If God opens the door, who can close it?”
PLEASE PRAY:
- For five more francophone units from sub-Saharan Africa to join the North Africa Faithful Witness team.
- For protection for workers and local believers in the region.
- For many on campuses in North Africa from the majority religion to discover Jesus and have courage to follow him.
