The Danish European Mission field coordinator meets Mirza, who lives with his wife and their child in a big city in Central Asia.
For security reasons, we cannot mention his real name. Mirza serves as a pastor in a church, and is supported by Danish European Mission donors to receive theological education.
Mirza tells the field coordinator: "My story of how I came to faith in Jesus is closely connected to my family, or more precisely, to my mother and my grandmother".
"As a child, my mother lived in the big city. Her father was a drug addict and left the family. Her mother, my grandmother, was a Christian. She read the Bible to my mom and taught her how to pray."
"My mother, however, was a bit of a wild child and not so easy to control. She liked to play with boys and she often got into fights. When she became a teenager, she became very rebellious towards my grandmother. At that time, my grandmother was in a desperate situation in her life. She had almost no money and everything seemed impossible for her. In that situation, she was also away from God for a while and completely gave up taking care of her mother. Then she decided to marry my mother off to a distant Muslim relative. Something that my grandmother later came to deeply regret!"
"So my mother was married off at the age of 16 to a man she didn't even know."
"Help me Jesus, look after me in my distress!" she prayed.
"She had only seen a picture of the groom, but when the groom, my father, showed up, it turned out that he was drunk, and later it turned out that she had married an alcoholic and very violent man."
"After the wedding, my mother moved from her city to my father's village, where everyone was Muslim, and at only 17 she gave birth to me. My mother tried to get used to village life, but it was difficult and we had almost no money because my father drank it all up. But the worst part was that he was also violent towards us. It was then that my mother began to seek God. 'Help me Jesus, look after me in my need! ' she prayed.
Once she traveled back to her grandmother for a visit, and her grandmother cried and begged her for forgiveness, saying: 'How could I do this to you my own girl! ' and then said 'Lord forgive me!"
"Then my grandmother gave her her Bible and said: 'Always hold the word of God in your heart! Never let it go!"
"When my mom came home, she often read the Bible to me. Then my mom would pray for me: "May he always love your word, God!" I've been doing that ever since, and now I'm studying for a theological degree."
"But one day my father's relatives found out that my mother was a Christian, and they became aggressive towards her, shouting "you dishonor your husband and our families! What shame you bring upon us!"
"One of the relatives who lived in another village called my mom and threatened her:
'You have one week to accept Islam or I will kill you'. But mom refused and said: "I'll never let go of Jesus!"
"But the following week, his plan did not succeed and our relatives settled down".
"My father was rarely home. He ate with his parents or friends, and my mother and I starved for many years. I remember how in the morning we could only afford a piece of stale hard bread with tea, and for lunch - the same bread with a tomato from our garden.
I walked five miles to school each way and the same poverty awaited me at home every day, that was my childhood!"
"In my childhood, I was sometimes very angry and disappointed with God! I would ask God: 'Why was I born into such a family with an evil father? And why do we have to suffer like this? And why does my mother have to endure so much pain?' I couldn't understand why God could allow it!"
"One day grandma came to our house and gave us some money for mom to buy sausages. My dad came home that night and saw us eating the sausages and he was furious and hit my mom and broke her nose!"
"Then my mother left the village with me without a penny in her pocket, and we hitchhiked into town and stayed with my grandmother. In the meantime, she had become very passionate about Jesus, and every morning we read the Bible and prayed to God.
Through my grandmother, many people heard the gospel and up to 50 people gathered in her house church."
"When I got older, my uncle, who had become a Christian, and I started traveling to a bigger city to go to church on Sundays.
One day my father found out that I had started going to church and forbade me to go, saying that I was dishonoring his Muslim faith, and he was furious!"
"One morning before I went to church, he threatened to set the church on fire and even kill me, my mother and my grandmother! But then I gathered my courage and said to my father: 'I will never renounce Jesus and the church! You can burn down the church and do with me what you want, but I have made my choice and that is to follow Jesus'."
"It's been several years now, and today I serve God in the church and am studying theology. Through theology classes, I have gained a deeper and better understanding of God's word, and God has worked in my life and helped me to forgive my father."
"I can now also clearly see that Jesus walked with me through all the difficulties, and I don't think I would be the strong Christian I am today if God had not allowed my faith to be tested". "So even for the trials that God allowed, I am grateful to God because Jesus has been close to me".
