Read at Your Own Risk

Read at Your Own Risk

I have had the privilege of reading many, many books in my life. Of them, there is a short list that, in my opinion, should come with a warning label. The label would say something like this, “WARNING. READING THIS BOOK WILL CHANGE THE WAY YOU THINK AND LIVE! READ AT YOUR OWN RISK!” While on a personal retreat recently, I read such a book. It was called Ramblings from North Africa, and was written by an American missionary, his wife and a Peruvian co-worker.

Ramblings from North Africa is a brief autobiographical sketch of a missionary’s first year in the Maghreb, a region of North Africa that includes Mauritania, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia and Libya. It is formatted as a series of dated entries in a journal or on a blog, with separate sections for the missionary, his wife, and their South American co-laborer. Sounds simple enough, right? So what makes it risky reading?

First, this is a story about calling and perseverance. God has called them to one of the most difficult mission fields in the world. The writers rarely complain directly, the difficulties are rather felt and understood through the reading. Consider:

• a country where it is illegal to convert to another faith,
• a country where it is illegal to share another faith,
• a country where it is illegal to possess a Bible in the native language,
• a country where everyone, by law, shares a faith historically antagonistic to Christianity.

These are the institutional obstacles to their work. Now add the cultural obstacles, such as:

• a language that is one of the most difficult in the world to learn,
• local assemblies that live in fear and mistrust any foreigner,
• Muslim neighbors and friends who are constantly trying to convert you.
• the standard missionary fare: strange food, strange customs, strange attitudes, strange laws, strange everything,
• a housekeeper who stops in the middle of her day to recite prayers toward Mecca,
• and on and on…

The way these young people deal with these issues reveals a great deal about their call. They are willing to look foolish, sound foolish, yeah, even be foolish for the sake of the very people who are abusing them. Although fear lurks around them, their refusal to surrender to it is a testimony to the grace of God that brought them there and keeps them there. Knowing the risk, they witness, pass out Bibles, meet as a church. They don’t put up billboards, but they do share Christ (the fact that their names are omitted from both the book and this article is just simple precaution). They refuse to let fear rule their ministry.

Second, this book is powerful in its openness. These little glimpses into the lives of these missionaries reveal them to be people, no more and no less. They are servants of the Most High God, doing what He would have them do. They resist the fear, they call out unto God, they experience frustration and they fail. They sometimes succumb to the temptation of the flesh to scream out, “But what about me?!” And each time, with the Lord’s help, they get up and go on.

And God is blessing them. The real bulk of the book is made up of how God is working through them to reach Muslims in North Africa. Real stories of how Muslims are being reached with the Gospel of Jesus Christ right now. How they’re growing and learning. How they are standing and witnessing. Frequently the methods are unorthodox, but the results are pure Spirit of God. These brothers will send e-mails to 10,000 Muslims, inviting them to request a Bible, then spend 20 hours on trains and buses to deliver it in person. Reading through this journal, you cannot help but be deeply impacted by the progress they have made in one year, and by the fact this is truly a long-term investment.

Finally, this book is most powerful in the realization that it could have been written by me or you. I happen to have met this couple, and I know beyond any shadow of a doubt they love God. They love Him and they are surrendered to Him. They spent time preparing, and now they are in a “closed” country sharing Jesus. They are special, but they aren’t any more special than you and me.

Our dear brother, in the preface for the book, listed his purposes for writing it.

1) For future missionaries (whether you know it or not) who will be helped by knowing some of our struggles and victories, mistakes and successes. I wish I could have known what things we would likely face before arriving.

2) For Pastors who send their young people to Muslim fields. The Pastor has the charge to lead his people into the battlefields and support with understanding those sent ones.

3) The church member who is passionate about missions. We hope you find that we are just normal people like you who are privileged to work in missions full time.

4) For college students who are praying about what God wants them to do with their lives and where he wants them to do it. We hope your heart will break like ours for the 1.3 billion Muslims. They are the greatest challenge in missions today.

5) For supporters who we want to thank for your love, prayers and financial gifts to allow us to live out Christ’s love for Muslims. We hope you can know us personally and our joint mission better through this book.

I am confident the book will serve all these purposes, and more. I came away from the book with a renewed sense of the greatness of God, a renewed vision for a world I had previously considered by and large unreachable, and an intense desire to be used of God where I am now. Like I said, read at your own risk.

Just a servant,

Bro. Tom

Copies of the book may be obtained from:

Our Generation Training Center

(770) 456-5881

PO Box 442, Alpharetta, GA 30009

Truth is Eternal