Each year, when preparations for Easter begin, I find myself feeling a mix of great joy and great sorrow. The Easter season is of course a time of great celebration for Christians, where we rejoice in the completed work of Christ through his resurrection. For me, it is also a time when I remember the loss and sacrifice of some of those brothers in Christ who came before me.
In 2005, I decided to abandon Islam and believe in Jesus Christ completely. Shortly after, I was baptized and became one of the students of a Bible and theology course organized by our church. We were a small group of students who had abandoned Islam and believed in Jesus Christ. The lessons were fun, and we would ask our teachers many questions, which they answered with great patience. We were discovering new things in the Bible with each lesson, and we were gaining a very different understanding of God from what we had been taught so far; we were gaining an understanding of the real God!
It was the middle of the first term of the Bible and theology course, a cold winter, and it had been snowing intermittently in our ancient city and the surrounding area for two weeks. At the end of a particularly cold day, we came to participate in our class, and the wood stove was roaring. This warm environment felt very good for our cold feet and hands. Our teacher that evening was the pastor of the church in the city we were in, which was famous for its apricots. He was very cheerful. Before starting the lesson, he offered us dried apricots as a treat. He smiled and joked with us, saying, “Here, eat! You will need energy because the lesson will be difficult.” We said to him, “From now on, we will call you the apricot teacher,” and we laughed with each other.
Soon after we started the lesson, the electricity went out. In the faint, flickering light of the glass bowl of apricots, where the flame’s reflection danced on the ceiling through the vent of the wood stove and its low rumble filled the room, the reading of God’s Word from the Holy Bible transported us back to the days of the apostles — as if a disciple of Jesus Christ were there, teaching us himself. It was freezing cold outside, but inside it was warm with the word of the Lord, conversation, the wood stove, and, of course, apricots.
One year ago, I picked up the newspaper and read that our “apricot teacher” and two other friends had been brutally murdered in their own offices by a group of Muslim youth under the pretext that they were Christians and were spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ. I was devastated. I was in shock, with tears in my eyes, thinking to myself, “Are they dead? Are they gone now?”
Then, I heard these words whispered in my ears: “Do not think that we died and perished. We rose with Jesus Christ. We have put on eternity.”
Being certain that our brothers who were killed that day had put on eternity with Jesus Christ eased the pain in my heart a little. For the past 18 years, while I have experienced the joy of the resurrection every April, I have also experienced the sadness of this event. And every time I see dried apricots, every time it snows, every time I see a roaring stove, wherever the flames illuminate a ceiling, I remember that joyful evening.
Now that I think about it, most of the students from that class are actively serving the Lord in some way; some are pastors, some deacons, some evangelists, and some, like myself, are translators of the Bible.
The seeds planted in us that day, and during those years, have sprouted and are now bearing fruit. The wisdom that I have for Bible translation is the fruit of those seeds planted many years ago.
With the help of the Holy Spirit, we carry the torch of faith lit by our martyred apricot teacher, to illuminate the darkness. We now live on behalf of every teacher who contributed to our education!
We pray to protect the faith, continue the noble struggle, and finish the race like them!
This is the very heart of Anglican Frontier Missions: to plant seeds of the gospel where there is no church, to disciple new believers, and to see lives transformed by the risen Christ. Just as faithful servants like our “apricot teacher” once poured into us, AFM continues to walk alongside believers from Muslim backgrounds, equipping them to lead, translate, evangelize, and endure. Their stories are not over—they are being written still, as the light of the gospel reaches frontier people groups through the faithful witness of those once discipled, now discipling. In joy and in sorrow, in snow and in firelight, Christ is building His Church. And through Anglican Frontier Missions, we press on to finish the race well.
