Baptize me

Since closed countries don’t allow official “Christian missionaries” entry, most workers have a primary identity as business people who will contribute to the economy of the nation. They carry on self-sustaining and successful business in order to have a platform for reaching the lost. Similar to a lay leader in the United States in that they have a “secular” day job, these folks are nevertheless missionaries because they’ve crossed culture for the expressed purpose of reaching Muslims.

One woman went about her daily business only to be interrupted by a 19-year-old girl she’d never before met. The girl bluntly demanded to know what Christians believe. Seeking some context, the missionary learned that the girl’s father had recently been baptized in the United Kingdom and this piqued the girl’s interest.

The worker had been trained in an evangelism technique of teaching through the Old Testament with Muslims, and she had only gotten through Deuteronomy when the girl interrupted. “I want to be baptized.” The missionary balked and told the girl that she needed to hear the whole story first. But the girl then proceeded to fill in the blanks. She knew she was a sinner, she knew that Jesus was the answer for the sin of Adam way back in Genesis, and she knew that the claims of Islam were false in light of the Bible. A half-hour later, after the girl had supernaturally given a perfect confession of faith, the woman agreed that the girl should be baptized. The father would be returning from the United Kingdom soon, and he could oversee her conversion and what that would mean to her place in their community. Her story isn’t finished yet.