Martyred, But Not Silenced | The Price of Making Jesus Known in a Muslim Country (2 Parts)

Part 1

In this episode, we sit down with Emily Foreman to hear her story, from a small town in the U.S. to an African city that calls itself 100% Muslim. Emily and her late husband, Stephen, began their mission work in prisons and by giving microloans. Over time, they built strong friendships and quietly shared their faith, even though local laws made it risky and danger was growing.

After militants killed tourists nearby, most aid workers left the country. But Emily and Stephen chose to stay and continue their calling. When tragedy struck, Emily responded with forgiveness that broke down fear and opened new doors. Today, their work continues through family and friends who carry on the torch of love, courage, and faithfulness.

Part 2

After a missionary was martyred in Africa, his family chose forgiveness over revenge, and everything changed. Their story of grief, grace, and obedience sparked transformation in places no one expected.

In this part two episode, Lewis and Emily share how God brought their two families together through loss and calling, eventually leading them back to the very place of violence and tragedy with a message of hope. You’ll hear powerful accounts of facing the man who killed Emily’s husband and how she chose forgiveness instead of bitterness.

Transcript – Part 1 – Martyred, But Not Silenced | The Price of Making Jesus Known in a Muslim Country

Hey, in this week’s episode of No Sanity Required, I’m gonna sit down with a lady named Emily Foreman and her husband, Louis. Now, that’s not their real names, but that’s the names we’re using because they are doing fairly clandestine work when it comes to Gospal work and impact and the places they’re going. And they have an incredible story. I mean, one of the most amazing stories I’ve ever heard and witnessed in real time and been a part of, This is one of those no sanity stories that’s gonna have you, I think, on the edge of your seat. It’ll be two episodes to get all of this covered. JB and I sat down with them and it was just an amazing time. They spent a couple days here at Snowbird. We had a few meals together, just fellowship, little and I, and this couple that is very dear to our hearts. We love them so much. I don’t want to give too much of it away, but Emily’s first husband was martyred for the Gospal by jihadists. They were working and they continue to work in a deeply Muslim context. Crazy story. Anyway, the Gospal is going to continue to do the work that God intends for his good news to do and he’s using this amazing couple to get that work done.

Excited for y’all to hear from them and I don’t want to Talk any more about it. Let’s just get into it. Welcome to this week’s episode of No Sanity Required. Welcome to No Sanity Required from the ministry of Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters, a podcast about the Bible, culture, and stories from around the globe. I want to start by kind of laying the foundation of the framework for our conversation with Emily and Lewis. Pseudonyms, but those are the names we’ll be using. So in 2000 something, one year, try to try to speak as cryptically as we can and still express the meaning of the story. I remember a person, a lady on staff walked up to me. This was in the summer. It was during summer camp, and she had a copy of USA Today. And there was a, there was, I don’t remember the article, I remember the headline, but it was an article about an aid worker in a, in a country in Africa had been killed by Al Qaeda. And I will say this was during the conflict, you know, the 20 year global war on terror. So it was during, during that time frame, that 20 year time frame.

And so, you know, Al Qaeda was a, That always was a buzzword to Westerners, just like ISIS or Taliban. And so when I saw that, I remember saying to this lady who still is a really faithful and active member at Red Oak, our church, but she was working at Snowbird with us at the time. And I said, I believe he’s probably a Gospal missionary, like probably a missionary worker of some sort if Al-Qaeda killed him. And so we had this conversation where I asked her to start working to track down this family. And I don’t remember if we knew this from the article. I think maybe we did some research and found out later that there was a wife and some children. Knowing the country this was in, knew that they would not be able to stay, like it’s not going to be feasible. They’ll come home. So let’s find them when they get back home. Let’s try to track them down. Even if it’s six months or a year from now, I’m sure there’s going to be a lot of security around them. Let’s find them. Let’s track them down and see how we can just connect with them.

And particularly if they’re kids, that’s our heart, is the next generation, both in terms of discipleship and future mobilization. And in this conversation, I remember we talked about the fact that If this person died for the sake of the Gospal, then we wanted to come in quickly behind that. And literally in that initial conversation off of a USA Today article, you look back, God has foresight. We get to live long enough to have hindsight. We’re like, oh, that was totally the Lord orchestrating that. You don’t even realize what you’re saying. And I just said, We need to minister to this family and we need to raise up someone to go in behind them, you know, like mobilize somebody. For our listeners that don’t know what that word mobilize or mobilization means, it’s just in layman’s terms, like sending people to do the work on the mission field, sending them from among us. And with that training and equipping and supporting, so that was where the conversation started over the next Maybe over the next two or three weeks, we found out through some detective work and asking questions, and we found out that this family only lived a couple states away, not far from us, you know, and had ties in Raleigh, had ties in Tennessee, had ties in Texas, all over Southeast, but that we could get to them pretty easy where they were.

So the Lord just beautifully orchestrated A meeting and a relationship was formed and started, and there were children, there were four kids that all then were able to have a Snowbird experience when they were in their teenage years. And then a relationship was forged with this family and with the Snowbird family. And then eventually Emily and Louis were brought together by the Lord married, and then that relationship has continued. And it’s just been, for me, one of the joys of my life, following it, tracking it and seeing how Lord’s worked. We did mobilize a family and send them right back in there. And I just believe the Gospal is going to saturate that place because that family suffered loss also. Terrible loss, but. They lost a child and they’re still faithfully serving the Lord and not in that same place but not too far. Also still in Africa, just in a different country. And we continue to hold the rope for them. And they were recently here on a visit and spent a month with us and they’ll be back next year for several months. But just the way the stories are interwoven in our lives and ministries, even though we don’t see y’all a lot, We could not put together a podcast, book, stories of what God’s doing around the world without having yalls story here.

So thank y’all for coming. It means a lot that you’d be here. It means a whole lot. So I’m hoping we can do this in two episodes. Start by telling sort of the first chapter of what y’all were doing, where you were at, Emily, and then how we met. After tragedy struck and then how the Lord has used that. And then the second episode, then Louis comes into the story and then we’ll kind of to current day. And also, I’d like to end the second episode just with family update because God’s continuing to grow and expand yalls family, which is just cool. Yeah, so what do you, what’s your first, do you have a first memory of when we connected? Or is it more like all of that’s a blur and we just seem like we’ve been friends forever?

Yeah, I do have a memory. So when we first heard from you guys, I. We were freshly back. No place to live, no vehicle to drive. We were staying with my in-laws so my late husband’s parents and. My father-in-law got a call from someone from here, from Snowbird, and he, I guess through your investigators, found out where we were staying and how to get in contact with us and got the address and just was very kind, invited us here. I remember the guy’s name was Brian.

Yeah.

Yeah. And shortly after that… Who’s a missionary.

Now, by the way?

Oh, yeah.

They’re serving full time in Europe.

Wow.

Yeah.

That’s so cool. So yeah, shortly after that, I got a package in the mail there, and it was this bulging package at some point. I can’t remember how soon after, but yeah, we were in the process of trying to figure out, where are we going to live? What are we gonna drive? Like, you know, borrowing people’s vehicles and things like that. And just really feeling still sort of in the throes of everything, like, not. Not feeling like we have landed anywhere or connected. And, you know, my first husband and I both, we. We grew up in that area. We had people we knew, we had our church, and they were very supportive. But it was kind of strangely that it was difficult to find people to talk to that actually got it, you know, and my kids found that to be the case, too. They would just. They ended up just not even talking about their experience with other kids because they would just give them blank stairs, and so. We felt supported in a lot of ways, but there just was something missing. We felt a bit lost at sea. But then in comes this bulging envelope full of the most encouraging and just validating letters.

And it came from a bunch of kids. You know? And so it was just so wonderful to see my kids reading these letters. And I think even though I’m sure most of those kids who wrote those letters had never been overseas, had never experienced that, but because of the type of discipleship Snowbird provides, they had a clue, and that was so meaningful to my kids and to me, lots of letters from staff and Just, and maybe it was mostly staff and some kids, but I still have that envelope to this day. And not only that, inside was also, can’t remember if it was a wad of cash or a check.

I can’t remember.

Yeah, apparently Snowbird had taken up money to help us purchase a vehicle, and there was absolutely enough in that envelope to buy our vehicle.

That’s wild.

Yeah. So after that, you guys invited us up. So we came up with my in-laws and were able to tour and get to know you guys. And it was just, there was just an immediate connection. It was unique.

Yeah, that’s special. I remember when I talked to the staff, I can still remember, we do staff worship on Mondays in the summer. And I remember just saying to them, Hey, this family has lost their father and husband, and we have responsibility to make sure these kids know that their father didn’t die in vain.

And.

I don’t remember the nature of the whole talk, but that Monday, that was the charge. That was the whole message I gave. And then, Hey, we’re going to pass the hat, essentially. You know, here’s so and so is assigned with collecting money. Just you can give money. We want to show them. We want to give sacrificially. But I literally thought it’ll be awesome if we hit a thousand bucks. I mean, a bunch of poor college kids working their summer. Snowbird doesn’t pay good. You know, you basically get a stipend. We had kids give their entire summer stipend. Yeah. Where I think, you know, probably they had parents that got on board. They told their parents about. They’re like, hey, we’ll support. I, you know, like, I think as a dad, I hope I would say to my daughter, give it all. We got you. You know, I think that maybe happened. It was cool. They gave sacrificially. They really did. I remember one guy, one guy came up to me and he had his whole summer pay in a wad of cash. And he said, I want to give all my. That’s the only one I remember specifically.

But he gave his entire every dime from the summer.

That’s so cool.

His name was Cody. Yeah, so cool. So let’s walk, let’s back up. So we would love to just hear y’all’s story. And we’ll link, JBL will link the book. You wrote a book. It’s called We Died Before We Came Here. And it tells a story. And I really, really encourage folks to get that. And there is an audible version of it. So, Either get the book or get the audible book and listen to it or read it. It’s phenomenal. It’s incredible. I mean, it’s so encouraging. But let’s just kind of walk through what y’all were doing, how you got there, what that calling looked like, what your work had been like for those few years that you had been in, because quite a while, you still speak Arabic. A little bit.

That means yes.

Yes. Okay. All right. That was, when I read the book, I can still remember, because it was a what you’re doing. The book come out?

2016.

Yeah, I think I read it in 16 or 17. I think I read it before it went. You sent us a copy, even. And I remember being shocked at how fast y’all learned Arabic. It’s crazy. But that’s the Lord’s provision, no doubt, and a lot of hard work. But, yeah, just. So walk us through what y’all were doing, how you got there, your family Dynamic.

Yeah, so. I grew up in a backwoods Baptist church, taught to love the Lord and love people. And though my church didn’t have a real global vision at that point, we were very, very outreach oriented. So I was grateful to grow up in an environment like that. And there was this point where a traveling missionary came through, actually a doctor who had just been to Kenya or somewhere in East Africa. And shared about his ministry and about those he was reaching. And I think I was about 13 at that point. And it absolutely ruined me. I remember going home and crying myself to sleep that night. And I think I cried the next few nights. Just, I was so just struck by the need. And I’d been so sheltered, we knew we had needs next door, but there was something that the Lord planted in my heart at that point. And it totally ruined my American dream that I was already constructing in my head. And I was just dissatisfied. And so I. It was at that point where the Lord basically just said, I have something different for you. Didn’t know what that meant.

I went on and became a rebellious and stupid teenager in a lot of ways, and then he redeemed me and I met Stephen.

And.

Yeah, Stephen was just a different kind of guy. He loved the Lord and actually warned me when we first started talking, we weren’t even at the dating stage, he warned me that he was called to long-term intermissions and that I should know that it’s not going to be anywhere easy because all the easy places are taken. It’s going to be a hard place. And I thanked him, you know, and he gave me a book to read, ironically, Fox’s Book of Martyrs. And I thought that traveling missionary ruined me. Oh my goodness, reading that book, I felt like I had to get saved all over again. Like I thought I’d given you everything, Lord, but oh my goodness, no, I haven’t, you know. So that rocked my world. Stephen and I dated briefly, and then the Lord brought us together, and we didn’t know when or where, but we knew that we would be going abroad at some point again to a difficult place. And this was, you know, in the 90s, in the 1900s, the last century. Yeah. And so, I mean, we had the operation world manual we were reading through, so we knew there were a lot of hard places.

So we, five, five years into our marriage, three kids and five years later, we decided it’s time. So we sold everything and went and did our training with Youth With A Mission and not knowing again at that point, not knowing where we were going to lay in long term and never even had heard of the country we were going to that the Lord would eventually send us to. We did our training. We learned a little bit more about different world religions and I had no idea anything about Islam at that point. I just knew that it had something to do with, you know, those National Geographic photos where they have turbines on their heads and they just look alien, like foreign. Never had an interest in that, you know. But then, as the Lord made it clear where we would be going, which happened to be a very Islamic country, They brag of being 100% Islamic. Well, we know that’s not true today, but so a pretty intense place. So we did our training, had a fourth child, and then we were, we had settled, the Lord had settled us on the country we would go to.

So we started fundraising and getting ready to go to Quebec for language study. And in that process, Literally just a few short months before we would be landing in the desert, 9/11 happened. And so suddenly this term Islam took on a whole new meaning. And people who were for us and happy to support what we were doing were now questioning, like, why? Why would you want to go and reach those people? And we had people, a couple of our supporters pulled their support because they would say things like, there’s no way we can support anything that’s helping those people. So Stephen and I prayed hard about it and just felt actually more of an intense urgency and desire to go. And so we did not knowing what we’d get ourselves into, because we had been seeing all the news everybody else has been seeing, which was Islam equals terrorism. We’re the infidels. They’re out to get us. You know, they’re all on Jihad. And so we went in kind of with fear and trembling and a lot of prayer, not really knowing what we were getting ourselves into. But once we got there, we were delightfully surprised that these are among the most wonderful, warm, hospitable and loving people we’d ever meet.

And as we were going in trying to sort of break down this preconceived idea that all of us Americans are, you know, warmongers and anti-Muslim and all of that, you know, that were really no danger, no threat. They were coming at us trying to convince us that they weren’t all terrorists. So we made a lot of friends. From the get-go and did they have.

Any, like, preconceptions about, I guess, Western, Westernized American culture?

Yeah. And actually, I think this is a little known fact to most of us in the west who don’t really have a lot of experience with Islam or Muslims. But Islam is a, it’s like a Birthright. So to be born in a Muslim country, you’re born a Muslim. It’s not a choice you make. Whereas in the west, we know that, well, we’re born. We may be born into a Christian family, but ultimately it’s our choice to decide to follow Jesus or not. And. But they didn’t realize that, really. They thought we were all born into a Christian country. Therefore, we all must be Christian, including everyone that was coming out in media. Everyone in Hollywood, all of those rappers who wrapped some really gross stuff.

Are Christians.

Yeah.

They’re born in a Christian country. So we had our work cut out for us to just live a life that showed a different reality. And so the Lord gave us that opportunity. And I think one of our best tools to do that was living there as a family. You know, we had four kids. We are, we were already sort of. Challenging some preconceived ideas. They thought all Americans hate kids. You know, we want one, maybe one and a half or a dog or, you know, but here we are with four kids. Same husband, same wife. They would say that all the time. Same husband, same wife. They have four kids together. And just being able to live life like we otherwise would have lived our lives here, you know, just living our faith out loud and through. How we love each other, how we treat our children, how we treat other people. So that’s kind of the challenge we were given up front. We didn’t realize, okay, what we’re going to have to come up against isn’t terrorism. It’s a really messed up, preconceived idea of what Christianity is in the first place. So, yeah, we were there total seven years.

It did take us a while initially to get adapted. It was difficult because it is a very restricted country. So we knew we couldn’t, obviously couldn’t come in on a missionary visa. And we had to find creative ways or a creative way to be able to even be there. But then we had to find creative ways to share our faith without getting ourselves kicked out. We did learn early on that it wasn’t the government that was our issue. Like the government turns out to be pretty tolerant. They don’t mind so much us being there because it is a very impoverished country and they need all the help they can get in terms of relief and development and the humanitarian type work. So we did discover, though, as we were living there, that the real issue or the bigger threat came from just the extremist and the community, which were the minority. There weren’t We really didn’t interact with many of those at all, but because our work consisted mainly initially of just project work in the prison systems, we yeah, we were interacting some with people who were extreme, but for the most part we were greatly appreciated, greatly loved, and so we found it easy to be there as far as acceptance.

But it was challenging, obviously, going from, you know, our home, or actually from winter in Quebec, Canada, to summer in the Sahara Desert. The Lord decided to stretch us good and hard in the beginning, you know, but the climate was a challenge. The I would die.

I would die. You get off the plane, it feels like a wall of hot stifle on air just hit you in the face, doesn’t it?

Yep. You just enter a furnace, only a really large furnace.

And you got to be as a woman, you’re covered top to bottom, head to toe. Can’t show what your wrists and ankles are about it. You said that?

Yeah, yeah.

They thought you were poor because your ankles and wrists were too scrawny.

Yeah, so the thicker your ankles and wrists, the more beautiful you are as a woman. So yeah, I was lacking in that. I got a lot of pity from a lot of my female friends. But yeah, so it went well. I mean, it was difficult, but we started seeing more fruit. We started realizing that. You know, our means by which we share the Gospal here in the west don’t necessarily adapt there very well. You can’t go door to door with a flyer. You can’t post a bunch on social media about turning to Jesus. You have to be a lot more creative. But the enemy really worked on us for a while, making us think that we weren’t being productive. Like, what are we doing here? We’re not seeing much fruit.

And.

And the Lord had, by then, just convicted us that we were trying too hard to strategize and that we needed to Simply just follow the commands and love him and love people around us. So we did that. And it was about that time that we finally just relaxed and stopped looking and assessing our success. Based on our fruit that we were seeing. And it was at that point that the Lord started really showing us some fruit that was coming from it. But at that same time, the enemy was not happy about that either. And Al-Qaeda had just started infiltrating a lot of North Africa, setting up training camps around the country where we were. They were recruiting these low hanging fruit, these young men in villages and remote areas. They were completely disconnected from the rest of the world. It was easy to go and convince their parents that this was an honorable thing if they just come and join Jihad. That’s what they did. They were recruiting these young men, training them, and then sending them out to wreak havoc. Yeah, a few years after we were there, there was an attack on some French tourists by some of the Al-Qaeda members.

They had killed several tourists and gotten away. So there was this chase. I remember we heard they made it to the city and were fleeing and they were chasing after them and it was very close to our house. And just we started realizing at that point, okay, maybe the risk here is much higher than we realized. And so although there were never really enough missionaries, enough Christian workers there from the beginning, after that event, there were far fewer. So people were being pulled out or taking voluntary sabbatical or just, yeah, fleeing basically.

What was the there was a story about because the prison ministry was the first real boots on the ground ministry y’all were doing, right? And there was a guy, I feel like a guy from the book, it’s been a while, but that came to faith, who was in prison for having shot into the vehicle of some missionaries. Is that right? Am I on track? What was that story?

Yeah, that story. There was a man who was director of a pretty well-known humanitarian organization who was just visiting the beach with his 10 year old daughter. And there was a. A local man there just wandering around and approached them. And before they realized he had pulled a gun out and was shooting into the vehicle as this man was driving away, they survived. Thankfully, the man was shot in the arm. His daughter got a shot across her chest, so it did damage but didn’t infiltrate. It wasn’t, yeah. And so they both survived, obviously, very traumatic. And so, yeah, there’s a book on that event too, maybe. Yeah. But the man who had shot them, of course, was arrested and put into prison. And we had a really great guy that was ended up coming on with us and working very closely with Stephen, who was a refugee from another African country, but a strong believer in the Lord. And he was teaching French. You know, it’s in a school that also on the side was doing a taxi business. And before I get there, though, I will say that the, the man and his family, his daughter and the rest of his family did visit this man in prison and took them supplies, took him supplies and actually extended forgiveness.

Wow.

And so it just transformed this man. And so fast forward now, our, our He’s now our director, but then he was working closely with us. He was driving his taxi in and sees in the front of the central prison this man that looks like a crazy man. I mean, he’d been in prison for a while. His hair was all crazy. It was just, he had nothing. And so our colleague pulled over, you know, and offered him a ride, only to find out that he was that man.

Wow.

And that he was completely changed. And so, yes, it turns out he ended up getting to know Stephen, and Stephen was even able to provide a small loan for him to be able to get back on his feet. And I believe he came to the Lord. Yeah.

So that’s so cool because the small, you might be headed in this direction with the story, but doing those micro loans, small loans, that was a big, your platform grew more into that. That became, okay, but go ahead, just continue, because I’m sure you’ll get to that.

Yeah.

So by then, whenever we encountered this man, Stephen, he had actually gone into The directorship of this organization that we went in to work for, he was taking over directorship. The former director was leaving and at that point it was just prison project stuff, like really basic stuff. It wasn’t even in the men’s prison at that point. It was really pretty much just the women’s prison that there was anything going on. And so Stephen expanded all of that, but his deeper desire was to be able to provide microcredit loans. For people to be able to sort of be able to, you know, create their own little business and be able to provide for their families. Obviously, it’s a poor country. You can’t just go to the bank and get a business loan. And so we ended up, we learned the hard way in a lot of ways who to fund and who not to fund. And we learned pretty quickly in general, you don’t just give a microcredit loan to a man. There had to be women involved as well. And then it sort of developed into or evolved into a much more successful plan, which was funding cooperatives.

But the cooperative had to have at least three people and at least the majority of needed to be women. And it was those projects, those little enterprises that would pay back their loans.

So faithfully, which was that pretty controversial? Like, I know cultures like that can be pretty oppressive to women. Was that, like, a topic of controversy or was it pretty accepted?

No, it was very much accepted.

Okay, cool.

Yeah.

Very much accepted. And the women are, you know, oppressed in a lot of ways.

Sure.

But, yeah, but in that culture, the Both parents, all the family, of course, their desire is that they prosper. Kids are able to go to school. And mainly the women, they really were so good about taking their profits and using it to provide for the family and send their kids to school. That’s awesome.

What would the amount of a typical loan be in US dollars? We’re talking small money, right?

About $300.

And they could start a business. Maybe it’s one of those have traveled in a lot of African countries and Asian and South American, like a roadside kiosk type little boutique or kiosk where maybe they’re selling Coca-Cola products or something like that.

Sugar and rice.

Yeah, yeah. Okay.

Or a vegetable stand, something as simple as that. Or a boutique where, because we also had training centers where we were teaching vocational skills as well. And they would learn sewing there, for example. Most of the women were illiterate, but they could learn to sew. And we had a business class where they could learn how to manage their money, how to understand business and learn how to create a profit margin. They were amazing. Even though they were illiterate, we geared the class to accommodate and they did it. They’re intelligent people. They did a very, very good job at doing that. So, yeah, they, many of them.

Well.

We encourage them initially, you know, you pay back your loan on time and you will qualify for another loan, like a bigger loan to expand whatever your business is. And that was so motivating. We had several of them that would, they worked hard. They paid it back early so they could quick get that second loan and be able to expand their business.

That’s so cool.

Yeah. By the time we left there, I think we had about 150 cooperatives in the city.

150.

So in that first, I want you to briefly talk about the differences, I guess, in religion. And kind of the second piece to my question is, in these trainings and these, like, vocational things, was it, like, heavy, like, Gospal centered? Or was that just kind of like, you got to crack the door with these, like, vocational trainings builds up a relationship and then, you know, slowly start to integrate. Like the Gospal. But first, will you tell us about just, like, the differences in what they believe?

Yeah, it’s hard to know where to start on that one. Yeah, they’re very fatalistic, and so it’s really sad to see a very impoverished Muslim family lose a child to malnutrition or some senseless illness. And they’re not allowed to cry in front of anyone because that insults Allah’s will. Even though, you know, deep down they’re agonizing over the death of this child. So that was one of the harsher differences that we encountered. But it also provided an open door. So we were able to just sit with these people who lost a loved one or, you know, a tragedy strikes and just being able to be the hands and feet of Jesus. And I think they were noticing the difference in the way that we approached suffering and grief than them, and we found that We actually, you know, most people think Muslims are just very like, I don’t know, radical or not at all open. What we learned though is that they are just very spiritual people. So for them, it is not necessarily their religion only, it’s their identity. And so, Everyone wears their religion on their sleeves, every part of their life.

Which goes back to where they identify all Americans as Christian rappers, pop stars, movie stars, because that’s how it is in that culture. I assume that’s how it is here. We’re a Christian society, so it’s our identity, even if you’re a rapper.

Yeah, the five pillars, right? One of which is obviously prayer. And they have to pray at least the five times a day. But their perspective of Christianity or Christians, broadly, not even just American Christians, but just broadly, they saw Christianity as just a very non-serious religion. We never pray. We never fast, which is another pillar of faith in Islam. We never give alms. We might go to church. But for them, faith was everything. For us, it’s just sort of an accessory. An accessory? Yeah, a category in life that we sort of put on the hat for a minute and then we go on, which Discovering that firsthand was really liberating for us, knowing that, okay, here in the US, we go to church, we can be as spiritual as we want. We walk up to somebody, oh, just let me tell you what the Lord has done in my life today. Or, oh, it was just in my prayer time, and we’re excited, like, well, depending on your church, I guess. But that’s when we put on our spiritual hat. Whereas they live it, breathe it, like Lou said, it’s everything. And so what we discovered is it’s easier to live our Christianity, our spiritual life on the outside there than it is here.

If I go up to someone in Walgreens or Walmart and I start saying those kinds of things, they’re going to be like, get away from me. Personal space, you know, and here where it’s almost like this unspoken rule that you keep your faith private, it’s yours, you know, there, it’s not that like that, they find that probably one of the most distasteful things about Christianity is that we aren’t serious about it. We don’t pray. We don’t say, praise God, you know, in every breath, every sentence just about it there, you’re gonna hear, which is praise God or masha Allah, which is as God is willed or inshallah, God willing, you know, all these things all the time. In fact, it’s actually really disrespectful, even for westerners, come in and compliment something like, you know, your child is so beautiful without saying masha Allah, it’s so offensive. So we, you know, the Lord showed us that we can actually harness that. Yeah. We learned that we could be open, completely open with our faith everywhere we went. And it increased their level of respect for us and also made them very, very intrigued. Sure.

So at that point then, are they, as you begin to be open with your faith, because there’s a point in the book where someone says, we know why you’re really here. But was there a gray area where they’re going, they’re here to do micro loans and to help our people, but they’re open with their faith. But their faith is not why they’re here. So it sounds like there was a point where you had a cushion of, yeah, you can just speak freely as a Christ follower who’s telling others about your faith. They didn’t get their hackles up. They didn’t go, oh, now I know why you’re really here. You want to convert us. It was more, you’re a Christian, we’re Muslims, we have conversation. Our faith is our identity. It drives who we are. And we see that you’re bringing good to this country. And so there was a season where there was growth because of that, where they were sort of accepting it, but not suspiciously.

Well, I mean, and yeah, that comment actually came from a government official that Stephen had become close friends with. And he just basically said, Look, look.

We know what’s up.

We know why you’re here. Just please be careful because we want you here and we appreciate what you’re doing. It was more of a warning for our protection.

I see.

And just also explaining like, we’re not your problem. Your problem are those that look like everybody else.

Okay.

Yeah, I was just gonna say it kind of goes back to your other question about when you’re running the training centers, are you presenting the Gospal through everything that you do, that kind of thing. And so the reality is it is against the law to preach the Gospal. You can’t dissemble as Christians. There’s no church. It’s against the law to have a church to do any form of public worship. And so it would also be against the law to try and convert somebody. And so you, were highly being watched about that kind of activity. But so you’re running just your humanitarian work. Everything you’re doing is humanitarian in focus, but because you’re living out your spirituality as you’re building relationships with people and you’re having food and tea in people’s homes and you’re sharing what God is speaking to you and they start to ask questions because the way you’re describing a relationship with God is a very different relationship than the way they would describe theirs with Allah. And they’re doing everything they can to make Allah happy, but they don’t have a give and take relationship. But as you’re being very visible with your spirituality, they’re going, wow, that’s different.

And so why can you do that? And who is Jesus? And so they’re all supposed to respect this Jesus, but no one’s been told what he said or did. So curiosity builds very quickly. So where that Gospal conversation takes place is usually in the home. And over time through those relationships and constant conversation, people are coming to the Lord. But it never happens in a visible setting.

Sure.

So this is why the backdrop of that statement of this government official to Stephen is, we know what you’re doing, but make sure it doesn’t become visible, because at that point we’re gonna have a lot of problems. And so, yeah, you had to be careful in that regard.

There’s, you know, here in southern Appalachia, There’s not a lot of Muslims, you know. There’s not a lot of, I mean, there’s not a lot of people of other faith. We recently had a converted evangelical Christian on here who came out of the Latter-day Saints, the Mormon Church. And there’s some Mormons. We baptized a family at our church at Red Oak, whose son got killed in a car wreck after that, and I got to preach his funeral last year and just, confident that, hey, this man knows the Lord, you know, and you don’t. There’s not a lot. It’s very difficult. You know, our big Mission field is cultural, Bible Belt Christianity, you know, but there’s a family that runs the meat processing facility here. And the guy that used to run it was a local farmer. He. He runs cattle, and then he. They had a family business on the side where they process me. You take your cow to them, take your goat to it, whatever, you know, a lot of people take deer when they kill them. So I took a hog down there to have it butchered. And there’s a new, this is 10 years ago.

There’s a new guy there and he’s dark-skinned, he’s got an accent. And I said, Hey man, where are you from? He’s from India, but he grew up in Africa. And I said, who do you worship?

And.

He kind of lit up and grinned. And I said, Come on man, you can tell me. I mean, first time I ever met this guy, he said, I’m a Muslim. And I said, wait a minute, you’re gonna butcher my pig for me? So I instantly started ribbing him like, you’re the worst Muslim I know, Jacob. You’re butchering my pig for me, but you do make really good sausage. So we got this relationship. Well, we’ve become very good friends, like very good friends. So he’s one of five brothers, three of them work in the company, and his wife is going through cancer right now. And so I just went and visited them two days ago. But he has a brother named Saeed and Rachel Sweetzer, now Fletcher, had to do an assignment for school where she had to, did you go with us?

No, but I remember you guys talking about it.

She had to interview somebody from a different faith. Well, it’s very difficult to find that around here, you know. And so I took her down there and I called Saeed the brother. And said, I want to bring a young lady to interview you. Just have a conversation. So we got on there and he, I mean, we talked for a couple hours and he was really trying to disrupt her belief system, you know, and it was fun. We laughed and had great interaction. And I’ve shared the good news of Jesus with them, with everybody in that family extensively, you know, but Saeed died about two months ago. He was back in India. He had taken a wife from somewhere in India and he had gone back to get her to bring her. And while he was there, I think he had a heart attack. We don’t know. There’s no autopsy. And that dude, he’s my age, maybe younger than me, but it’s really sobering. But also knowing that we had had Gospal conversation, I’d shared the good news, you know, it’s like, I’m so glad we had that conversation. I’m so, so glad, because I’d shared with the other brother a lot who runs the place.

But anyway, I bring that story up just to say to people listening, even now, Americans are very suspicious of Muslims. But some of the sweetest relationships I have in this community is with this one extended family of Muslims. The best people.

Yes.

Went down there. I went down there two days ago. Just stopped in to check on Shinnie because she’s having chemo. And she sent me away with a ribeye steak and some summer sausage for Mo. They know Mo loves their summer sausage. This is the most hospitable. I try to go by there when I know they’re having tea. I love their tea.

Oh, yeah.

Sit and visit. But anyway, it’s good. I think it’s good for our listeners to hear.

Yes.

The real relational component to this, because we do have these suspicious sort of, we think of the, we think of Muhammad Atta, the guy that flew the one airplane into the world trade center. That’s Muslim. Boom. That’s where you go. You know, I was our car, we.

Boom.

That’s where you go. Bin Laden.

Boom.

That’s where you go. And there’s people, good people. Yeah.

I, in college, I had a lot of ESL classes, English, second language, and a lot of Islamic Muslim people came to my college to take those classes to then teach English to their family. And so I was, like, the only white person in all these classes. But I loved them, and they were so fun. And I remember I was paired with one of my partners, and he was a dad, had four kids, his wife, they just moved.

I can’t.

I think Saudi Arabia, I think, is way where they were from. And I remember him telling me he was like, Americans have a view of Muslims, but, like, we could have the same view of Americans. Like, use the example of the movie American Psycho. And he was like, we don’t think every American is, has a AK 47 and kills people and is crazy. And he’s like, so don’t think that about us. I was like, man, that was really well put. But I love them. They’re so hospitable. I went over and hung out with their kids and Yeah, it was awesome. I love those classes.

Yeah, I think quickly you’d begin to discover there’s really like three types of Muslims. There’s the majority of Muslims, I would say probably 80%, I don’t know, are just a Muslim who is just trying really hard to make God happy. And they all have different cultures because the Muslim world is all over the world. So they’re living within their cultures, most of them very hospitable and living out their culture. But their whole life is governed around, I just want to do the right thing. I just want to make God happy. I just want to, you know, so that they have some hope of God smiling on them. And God is very fickle and, you know, hard to know. The other Muslim is a smaller percentage, maybe only 10%. And that’s the guy who also really wants to make God happy, but is convinced the only way to do that is a very radical radical forms. So they’re militant because I think that’s also the only way to make God happy. And they look down on all the other Muslims who aren’t radical enough. And you could see this in every culture, even in America. We have radicalized people who think the only way, you know, the, the only form of Christianity is to be militant.

But so that’s a small percentage, only that’s the percentage we typically get portrayed about Islam. There is a growing other percentage of Muslims. The third one is the one that I just call a disillusioned Muslim. He’s a Muslim by identity. He was born a Muslim, but he’s really becoming secular. He doesn’t really know if God even really exists, and he’s starting to doubt it. And there’s a new form of atheism within Islam. They’re high identity Muslims, but they kind of think probably maybe he’s not even really there, and that’s a growing number. But the reality is most of them are highly hospital. So it was easy. It’s easy to build friendships. It’s not always easy to get the Gospal sewn into the conversation, but it’s easy to move in that direction. And we found that to be the case.

So then we’re in the story, in yalls story, we’re at a point where you’re really getting some traction now. With this incentivized loan program, people are coming, really trying to be productive so they can get that second loan to expand their business. And so you’re getting a lot of traction. So then from there.

Yeah. And so that was really picking up a lot about the same time that those French tourists were killed. Oh, yeah.

French tourists, yep.

And we found ourselves sort of at a crossroads. Do we go or do we stay? Recognizing that the risk is much higher, really real, you know, when you’re at, when you, when you sort of make yourself at home in a culture like that, you just, it’s not something you even consider so much because you’re just so warmly welcomed and, and they’re wonderful hosts. But when that happened, yeah, we were, we were at a point where it’s like, okay, we have children, should we? Should we go? Should we also be going? And we prayed, but we just didn’t feel a peace about going. But we did feel like the Lord gave us the choice. We felt like we could actually leave and still be on God’s good side.

Still be obedient.

But the alternative just was so much more compelling. To stay. And that was reinforced every time the Believers were coming to us and saying, are you going to leave us, too? Are you also leaving? What are we going to do? And that made us realize, wow, okay, we’re passport American passport holding Christians who have a way out. And these guys don’t, and they really are counting the cost. And we just did not feel a peace at all about going. And so. So we just decided to stay. Of course, we were trying to be cautious and not make ourselves too visible, which is so hard when you’re among the few white people left.

Sure.

But, yeah. And at that point, Stephen was We always had a great relationship with the US Embassy. And by then, I think because there were so few Americans left in the city, they had asked Stephen to consider being a warden. So in other words, if some crisis happens, our home would be like the safe house. Like all Americans would come to us and the Embassy would come and get us. Like they would send in our security officers. And so he, but because of that, he was getting fed all the updates all the time, all the intelligence. You know, well, there’s this risk or, you know, there’s this rumor going around or, you know, these planned threat, these planned, I don’t remember exactly what they were specifically, but the threats were becoming a lot more evident. And so I’m amazed that he just still didn’t push him into any kind of corner of fear. Instead, he, like, became so bold. He’d always been bold, but he was at the point where he realized, if I get out of this taxi and this person never knows Jesus, never. Has heard the truth. That’s on me. Kind of like your friend Saeed.

What if he had gone to India and you hadn’t yet shared the Gospal with him? That’d be on you. And so that’s kind of where Stephen was at. He was overcome by a sense of urgency, but paradoxically, an unusual peace as well. And so it was around that time that we realized, you know, the risk is heightened. We’re here. We’re just gonna pray, you know, but we were in. We were in Harm’s Way. Didn’t know exactly how much or how likely. So we were, you know, doing our Bible studies with our kids at night. We would spend time praying and. And studying together. And as Stephen would say things like, guys, We have to, and he would just reiterate like the importance of living your faith and living it while you can and taking the risk for the sake of the Gospal and that, you know. But being cautious, obviously not being, you know, ridiculously uncautious, but to be cautious, but doing the Lord’s will at the same time. And we had teammates that were still there that were actually trying to distance themselves from us because they learned, okay, he’s giving, you know, back in the 1900s, we still had cassettes.

But these taxi drivers were driving these, you know, old, old Mercedes from Europe that had like 600,000 kilometers on them. It’s like they always had a cassette player, so we had our cassettes, and he would just make sure every taxi man had that cassette of the Jesus film or the portion of scripture that was translated in their language. And so, yeah, that really intimidated a lot of our. Not a lot. We know we didn’t have a lot of teammates left at that point, but, yeah, they were really concerned, and so just sort of. Kept their distance. Yeah, but it was at that point that we started seeing the most fruit. It’s like, it’s amazing when you actually start sewing, things start producing. And so it came to a point, though, that I started noticing that Stephen was a little bit preoccupied, and I think he probably received a threat or a message. Indicating threat. And, but he still had such a piece about him. And on that day, you know, he had gone to the training center early. He, we had a carpool with some of the other, couple of other workers children went to the French school with our youngest daughter and he, it was his carpool day, so he took off, dropped them off and arrived at the training center early.

So the mosque, the oldest mosque in the city, actually, across the street, had already had their morning prayers, so that was vacant. And then the shops in the area weren’t open yet, and there was just this butcher there preparing his meat for the day. And when Stephen arrived, there were a couple of guys sitting in a car waiting for him and. So from what we understand, they had been following him, even like monitoring our house and movement. And so they were there to kidnap him. But he was a big guy and these were young, just small young Arab men and they weren’t able to apprehend him. And so he was just really holding them off when one of them pulled a pistol out of his local clothing, which has a really big pocket on the front. And he pulled out the gun and shot him three times. And so I get a knock at the door just a little later, and I was there with my kids. The older three. And, and it’s a teammate of ours who is typically not very an emotional person. She’s from Scandinavia. I don’t think that’s an excuse, but, yeah, she was there.

Her husband was also named Stephen, and we knew he had been traveling, doing Consulting in another part of the country, and we were praying for his safety. So she came to the door and she was crying and. I’m like, what’s wrong? You know? So she just sort of takes me by the arm and takes me into our living area and tells me that something has happened and Steven’s been shot. And I immediately try to comfort her. And then she just said, no, not my Steven. Your Steven’s been shot and he’s dead. And just, I can’t describe the amount of grace there is in the shock factor. You know, when we hear that kind of news, there is shock. Like, there’s literally something physical that happens. But I believe it’s the grace of God. I just had Clarity of mind and, you know, okay, so we got to do this. We got to do that. I won’t go into all those details. Those are in the book. But the grace of God was so real and so tangible, not just on me, but on my kids, too. And it’s crazy. It’s something that we. Knew was possible.

We always prayed that it wouldn’t have to come to that, but it did. And just. Yeah, the Lord. The Lord really helped me come to a point of validation, I would say, in losing Stephen like that. Validation in that. There’s meaning and there’s a purpose of why the Lord allowed that to happen. I had no idea what that would be at that point. I forgave the guys theoretically. You know, our family did. When we got back to the US within, you know, 72 hours, we made a public statement knowing that, you know, we all know how new sources are. They start just filling in blanks themselves. We didn’t want things to just be misconstrued. So we made a public statement of our forgiveness for these guys, our faith in the country’s justice system to bring about justice, but also our solidarity and our love for the people. And we didn’t know at that point how powerful that would be.

But.

I still see fruit from that today when we go back. Many things the Lord has done and continues to do through that. I feel very, very humbled to be able to witness things that He has done. Maybe not so much in spite of that sacrifice, but through it, you know. And, yeah, it’s just amazing. We’ve been able to go back Initially, the kids and I went back once or twice a year just to see people and be able to continue. We really were wanting to continue the work that we had started and to see things continue. And the government officials themselves had approached me. I mean, like literally within four hours of being told that my husband had been shot down, they were in that living room of this place we’d have been evacuated to, fighting tears, but actually practically begging me not to allow his work to die as well, and asked that we would continue coming and serving their people and helping their people. And so, yeah, now it’s been years later and every time we go back, it’s just incredible to see like, fruit, hear things that we didn’t know or didn’t see and just, yeah, it’s really inspiring.

My kids have all, again, they’ve gone back several times, still love the country. My father-in-law my in-laws Stephen’s parents would come see us a couple of times a year, which was such a blessing. I mean, the kids so enjoyed having their grandparents. I so enjoyed having the peanut butter and, you know, chocolate chips and that kind of thing.

But.

They were always just there for our kids and us, just to visit. And we loved that. We were so grateful. But after Stephen’s death, my father-in-law picked up a baton and has been amazing at spearheading the continuation and even expanding the legacy that Stephen left behind.

Wow.

So he was actually, I think like a year and a half ago, given the highest honor of merit by the president of the country.

Wow.

Wow. I didn’t know that.

That is so cool. Yeah. That’s also so amazing, like you said, God’s grace, because it would be so easy to be so bitter and just shut down and even say, I’m not going back ever. And, like, just the strength that the Lord has given your in-laws and your family and your kids and you. And that’s amazing. Like, that’s hard for my brain to Fathom, you know?

Mine, too.

Yes.

Is it Jimmy? So the oldest daughter, Heidi, was on staff here. She was your counselor, wasn’t she?

So she worked with our church. She worked with my sister’s group.

Okay.

She wasn’t my counselor, but my mom came as a chaperone and rolled up and saw our counselor had a kid and was like, I think it was, like, one of the first years we came to Snowbird. My mom was already a little bit skeptical, and she was like, oh, my gosh, what’s going on? Where are we right now?

And.

But her and Heidi got very close that week, and my mom was blown away. She shared your family story. My mom immediately went home, got your book, read it, and she’s still close Facebook friends with Heidi. Bought a cake from her recently. She has a little cake business. But my mom, I told her, I was like, yeah, we’re interviewing Emily. And my mom got so excited. She was like, oh my goodness. But yeah, even that has been really cool. You’ve impacted my family and we haven’t even met. This is our first time meeting, so that’s super encouraging.

Yeah. JB was supposed to be on a recruiting trip this week for Snowbird. And I said, we talked last week and she didn’t, our dates were crossed up. She said, wait, I’m going to miss the Emily interview. So anyway, needless to say, she stayed. She didn’t go on the trip.

So glad you did.

Let’s take a break.

Yeah.

And I think it’s a good place to, to pick back up. We’ll stop there. We took a break with them and got some coffee and just stretched our legs. It’s heavy. The stuff that we’re working through is heavy, but I’m excited for the next episode because there are some things, everything to this point in the story, I was very familiar with, but what has happened in the last few years.

In.

The lives of the people in that place and specifically with Louis and Emily. Pretty shocking. The second episode of this is going to just blow your mind. It’s one of the most riveting stories. There’s a couple of scenes in their story that are so riveting. I’ve thought about it. It’s been a couple weeks now since we recorded. And I was just literally so captivated by the story. I’ve continued to think about it. But anyway, excited for y’all to hear that. Praise the Lord for his faithfulness in their lives. Talk about putting your hand to the plow and not looking back. They’ve done it. They have done it. And Louis, what a humble dude to walk into the shadow and the footsteps of a man like Stephen Foreman. That’s a guy. Louis is a guy that is so secure about who he is in Christ and of his calling. And I’ll tell you, as you’ll hear in the next episode, Lewis has now picked up the mantle of the work to be done there. He and Emily back doing that work. And I’m humble. I feel like there are going to be times in your life where you’re in the presence of people where you think, these are giants of the faith.

I mean, they’re giants. And Lewis and Emily Foreman are.

They’re.

Inspiring, they have counted the cost and they have paid the ultimate cost in the death of loved ones and.

The.

Mission of the good news reaching the unreached has cost them dearly and they’re still laboring. Paul says to the Colossians, Him we proclaim, warning everyone and teaching everyone, with all the, and he uses the word toil, I don’t remember, strain and toiling with all the energy that he works and supplies in us. So it’s this hard work and labor to proclaim the Gospal and to get the good news to people and they’re doing it and I’m just, I’m blessed to know them. I love them dearly and excited to spend some time with them over this next year before they’re back in North Africa.

So.

Just a reminder, Emily’s book is linked in the show notes. And so check that out. And I think you’ll find the book very captivating. I’ve been through it twice now. Yeah, it’s amazing. So thank you. I hope you’re encouraged. I hope it encourages you to put your hand to the plow. Don’t look back. Take the sword of the spirit, which is the word of God, and do the spiritual battle of fighting for your own holiness and then working to see that others know who Jesus is. And this story definitely motivates me to do that and to do it better. Y’all hang in there, have an awesome week, and we’ll see you in the next episode. Thanks for listening to No Sanity Required. Please take a moment to subscribe and leave a rating. It really helps. Visit us at SWOutfitters.com to see all of our programming and resources. And we’ll see you next time. Next week on No Sanity Required.

Transcript – Part 2 – Martyred, But Not Silenced | The Price of Making Jesus Known in a Muslim Country

Foreign required from the ministry of Snowbird Wilderness Outfitters, a podcast about the Bible, culture, and stories from around the globe. Okay, so let’s just pick, pick right up. So y’all Within 72 hours, you and the kids came home. And I’d like to just talk about in this episode, let’s just talk about what God is doing now. But let’s get to that point. Let’s get to the point that you two, I’d like for our folks to hear a little bit of your backstory, Louis’s backstory, because you came out of a different kind of Very traumatic experience, losing your first wife. There’s so much redemption in y’all’s story on so many levels and so many layers. It’s one of the most powerful, beautiful testimonies I’ve ever seen. So why don’t we start there? Let’s hit pause, you guys coming home, which is around when we met y’all, not long after that, when we met Emily’s family. The four kids, Heidi, Joshua, Ellie and Piper had to do the. We’ve changed everyone’s names, and I had to really think through that because I didn’t write it down. But you had, y’all had worked in the same organization, correct?

But in a different, completely different area, different category.

And.

And you had lost your wife sometime before that.

Yeah.

So why don’t you give a little bit of your background?

Yeah, well, I, so we are from the same sending organization.

Okay.

So I was aware of the work that Emily and Steven were doing. Actually, we were also not only from the same sending organization, but the same department that oversees certain frontier type works. So I was living in a northern city big city in North America. But I fell under that department because our work was frontier-focused. We were working with immigrants. We were living in a highly concentrated immigrant neighborhood of a northern city and working primarily with Muslims, Hindus, and a lot of other types of unreached people groups in this area. And so I fell under that same department. So I heard a lot of what Emily and Steven were doing because I would get reports and I was aware of them. I’d only met them maybe once or twice at a conference, I think when they were on furlough one time, we met up at one particular conference.

And your wife was living at that point?

And no.

Okay.

I think maybe so my wife died about six years before Stephen was killed. And so I had been working in this northern city I lived in it for 20 years. And about 12 years into that is when my wife died. And we had two small kids. I had a six-year-old boy, a nine-year-old girl when my wife died of cancer. After 12 years of us as a family working in cross-cultural ministry with immigrants. And so I had connected. I knew what they were doing. And kind of how the Lord brought me into this story actually was I got a phone call the day that Stephen was killed. And we had a mutual friend that was from this department that we were both working under. And he called me that day, some point later in the day. And he says, you know, he says, Man, you know, Louis, you’re not going to believe this, but Stephen was shot. Stephen was killed. And I remember, you know, asking a few questions about their kids. I knew they had four kids. And I hung up the phone and it was one of those moments where you just kind of feel like there’s rare moments where it just feels like the Holy Spirit just heavily comes over you emotionally.

And of course, by this time, I’ve been a single dad for six years. My wife died and the Lord had to do a lot of applying grace for my family to continue in our calling because a big thing was how do we finish our calling? In ministry now through this loss. And I had to raise my two kids in that. And the Lord gave us grace and we figured out how to do it. And I thought, okay, we’re going to do this. And my kids, they did everything with me. We were traveling around the world. We were taking all immigrant teams from our city back around the world on mission. And my kids did everything with me. And so I, you know, I already felt a sensitivity to other people that go through loss, especially in their missional callings, because it really wreaks havoc to your calling as in mission when some kind of tragedy like that happens. And so I hang up the phone and I just start to pray for the family. I start praying for Emily, I start praying for each of the four kids, and the Holy Spirit just came on me like it’s only happened to me maybe two or three times in my entire life.

And I don’t even know how long I was praying. I got up from the floor and I think it had already been a couple hours. I was under so much emotion. I was laying prostrate on the floor, weeping and crying for this family and just saying, God, no, not another family. This family was working for you in a place that nobody wants to go to, a hard place, nobody’s going there. And why does this have to happen? And I would just pray and say, God, help them, help them finish. Help them finish their calling, help those kids get their inheritance. I mean, I was praying for each of the kids. I knew their ages generally, and I was praying for them that they wouldn’t lose their inheritance, that God would do something with this. And I mean, I was sweating and weeping. It was that kind of a prayer time. And I get up from that after a couple hours and just saying, Lord, whatever it takes, you finish this family’s story and what that sacrifice was in that country. May it bear fruit. And I, you know, the funny thing, we talk about it now, but I had no idea at that moment that God was going to allow me to become a part of the answer to that prayer.

You know, I mean, I was just praying for this family, and by that point, I’ve been a single dad for, you know, six years, and I had no intention of ever getting remarried. I mean, we just figured out how to do it now as a family. We’re going to finish our calling, and I’ve. Was not looking to be remarried or searching for that at all. But now looking back, I know that in that prayer time, God had already decided that I’m going to be a part of answering that prayer. And I think it may have been part of the reason why it was such an emotional prayer. And really, Emily and I met up at some conferences after that over the next couple of years following that time. Our paths crossed. She actually came through our city at one point and ’cause she was visiting some people and I said, Hey, come over to our– let our team just pray with you and minister to you. And so she came and this was just several months after Stephen was killed and I could tell her and the kids are still very shell-shocked. But we prayed for them and just tried to love on them.

And then we would cross paths at conferences and again, never thought much about it, but always praying for this family. God help them. Help them find their way of finishing. About maybe a year and a half or so later, we were at a particular conference and I was there sharing a story because by this time, part of our work was housing Muslims. We had a three-story apartment building in the inner city and we were housing Muslims. At any given time with our staff community, because we all lived in the building, we would have seven, eight, or nine Muslims living with us in our apartments.

Wow.

And so I was sharing stories at this particular conference, which was a frontier-focused conference about these different people that were housing and how God was using that and how Muslims were coming to the Lord by living with us, just sharing life with us and with our staff who were believers and living missionally. So I was sharing this one story about an immigrant kid that was actually from the country that Emily and Steven were working in. And we picked him up off the street in our city. I convinced him to come and live with us. And he was high identity Muslim, very scared. And I was sharing the process of his story of how he came to live with us and how God worked through that and how he came to the Lord. So dramatically came to the Lord that he gave up his visa, he was on a refugee visa, to go back home because he couldn’t stand that all of his family had never heard the Gospel. And over the phone when he’s trying to tell them, they thought he was crazy. So he’s like, I’m gonna go back. And so I’m sharing this story and Emily is listening to this and obviously afterwards she tries to corner me.

It’s like, oh my gosh, we’re here, we’re stuck here part of the year, we’re going back and forth, but we’re stuck trying to figure out how to reach Muslims here. I got questions. So that started this friendship and it was pretty much an email friendship because we’re a thousand miles away from each other. And over time, This friendship got really deep as we were talking about raising our kids and our callings through loss. And then over time, a new conversation was coming like, Hey, Louis, what about, what do you think? And it really was this. It was God saying, if I wanted to bring your two families together, would you let me? It was the scariest conversation I ever had in my life.

That was awesome.

Yeah, so I bucked that with the Lord for a while, struggled through it. God was doing the same thing with her, I didn’t know it. And over time, the end of that obviously was God pulled us into this new idea of bridging our two families and really doing both ministries. Working in North Africa, but also working with immigrants stateside, when we’re stateside, and we’ve been doing that for years now. We’ve actually been married now for 20 years. 13 years. And all of our kids, we now have eight kids because we’ve also adopted some twin girls. And they go back and forth to North Africa with us, and they also work with us with immigrant communities here stateside. So, yeah, it’s a joy now because now we see all the fruit of what God’s done through Stephen’s death and through the sacrifice of this family willing to go back and show love and forgiveness. And it’s phenomenal what the Lord’s doing with that. And I get to be a part of it, which I I never would have thought would have happened. Who would have thought? And I was just praying for this family that God was going to say, I’m going to give you the gift of actually being a part of that story.

I would have never, never in my wildest dreams had imagined that. But it’s a joy now to see what God’s doing with these doing phenomenal.

Things.

Through that sacrifice.

That’s amazing. Seriously though, just for people listening, you know, they might be driving down the road or they’re on the jog, and they got their airpods and just hit pause and reflect on. I mean, that’s crazy, you know? And I joked, I was like, hey, dummy, I’m putting this in front of it. But sometimes we need God to just, like, spell it out for us. Like, hey, man, look, just pause for a minute. Look what I’m doing. And this is one of those stories that’s just. It’s so redeeming, you know, because people, no doubt, people were asking when Stephen died. And you mentioned, you alluded to this, I think it was in the last episode about how’s good going to come out of this. I mean, 72 hours later, you’re on a plane coming home, but a whole lot of good has, like, a whole lot has come and, in terms of redemption. And I really wanna get into with some people there even associated with or connected to both in the government, but to the killers, like associations to the killers. But then, I mean, on another continent, on a different timeline, ’cause none of this was outside of the scope of God’s sovereign plan.

It’s just amazing to me. It’s just people need to just pause and go, okay, whatever, because whatever you’re in the middle of right now, the Lord’s doing something, you know, it’s just, it’s amazing and it’s just so incredible that God’s plans and his ways, it’s not just that they’re bigger than our ways, it’s that they’re so complex and layered and it’s just, I would just thank you for sharing that because I’ve never gotten to hear, so this is the first time I’ve ever heard from your perspective.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And it’s just, I mean, I’m like, my cup is so full right now, you know, because we were praying too, and we were praying for people we didn’t know. We had literally 100 people gathered and prayed in the staff meeting over this family. This is awesome. It’s so cool. But yes, so a lot has happened and is ongoing. And I want to get to where y’all are headed. But let’s go back to, because there’s, I know a little bit of the story, some from the epilog in the book, but then also from just knowing y’all and things that you’ve shared with little and I, because Emily and little are very close and one of those relationships, you don’t see each other often, but it’s a really natural closeness. And so what are some things that you can really literally see now in the years since Stephen’s death, you can go, man, the Lord has really worked there.

Yeah, I think it was John Piper that said something like, at any given moment, God is doing about 10,000 things in your life or 100,000 things, and you might see three. And so, unfortunately, we tend to want to build everything, including our obedience, on the three things we see. And I’m reminded of the Scripture, you know, a man’s heart plans his way, but the Lord orders his steps. And, yeah, looking back, both of us, we still, to this day, 13 years later, we look back and think, what? Wow. And being able to see, it’s like the diamond, right? With so many facets, it’s like there’s so many things the Lord was up to that we had no idea, and we don’t have the the intelligence or the creativity to be able to write the story God has for us. Not just us, but any of us, right? When we’re obedient. But, yeah. So we, when the Lord brought us together, which was also a series of miraculous events, or I would say series of fortunate events and how he spoke to not only us, but our children and confirmed it. And I would say at that point, though, my heart was still drawn to North Africa.

Like, I just. And just like here and Andrews were saying, there’s not enough. You didn’t say not enough. I say not enough Muslims, you know, but that’s how it was where we were when we lived in a bigger city. I would be looking for them, you know, and. To be honest, I’ve actually followed a couple of them home. Like, I just wanted to know, like, oh, you’re here. Like, I’m so excited. But I’m surrounded by people who are like, oh, no, they’re here. You know? And so it was just really neat how the Lord put our stories together because it did fit. Like, it just fits. And, we went into this adventure not really knowing exactly what the Lord would do or how things would unfold and are still unfolding as we speak. We just knew that it’s undeniably the hand of the Lord on our lives and on our kids and on our Ministries. So we’ve. I think we’ve both learned by now, you just kind of buckle up and go with it, you know, just go for the ride. Whatever the Lord’s doing. And so it was really interesting taking Louis back with me to North Africa when he visited for the first time, actually, when I had announced before that I was getting remarried.

You know, Stephen was so, so dearly loved that I was worried, you know, that it might be awkward or whatever.

How many trips had you and the, you and or you and the kids taken back in? Before you took Lewis and went?

I don’t know.

Several.

At least six or seven.

So you’ve been back a lot interacting with those folks as a single widowed woman?

Mm-.

Okay.

Yeah. And so when I announced that I was getting remarried, it was like an unbelievable celebration. I had not considered the fact that they were so worried about us. And in that culture, you don’t just live your life out as a widow. You need a provider, you need a protector, you need, like, family means everything. So they were so thrilled. And they immediately, for good reason, fell in love with Lewis and. And his two kids as well. They’ve been back with us. And so we knew at that point that our two stories were basically the bookends of the mission, you know, reaching the unreached here and going to the Frontiers to reach the unreached. And the Lord has used that in so many ways over the years. But every time we go back to North Africa, just the things we’re seeing, the things that we’re witnessing that the Lord continues to do, it makes me so grateful that I didn’t throw in the towel. Not that it was all pinned, you know, contingent on my willingness to go back and forgive, but It’s incredible to see how the Lord has used that. And forgiveness is such a foreign concept for Muslims.

Oh, yeah.

You know, they have 99 beautiful names of God, and one of those is merciful. But none of them are like God is love or God is forgiving, though they do believe forgiveness is possible. It’s more like a pardon. And it’s, but it’s coming from a God that’s really arbitrary. Like you can follow all the five pillars of Faith, do the best you can, die in Jihad even. Well, actually, that’s the one Surety that you’ll be able to go to Paradise. Otherwise, no matter how good of a Muslim you are, you get there and it’s still up to God whether he wants to let you in or not. You know, he weighs your good way, it works in your bad works, but it’s still. It’s still dependent on how you. What movie is in that day? And so for us to extend forgiveness, my family to extend forgiveness, was really a powerful catapult forward in the next things that the Lord was doing in people’s lives. And in fact, I was at one of my, during one of my first visits back, I was staying with some friends because obviously I didn’t have a house there anymore, but I was staying with friends and the director of human rights caught wind that I was there and he wanted to come see me and he’s sitting across from me in this home and he just goes right into it.

He says, I don’t understand why on earth your family would want to forgive these guys. Even we in Islam, we think they’re dogs for what they did. How can you forgive? And that took me off guard. I wasn’t expecting it, but it gave such an opportunity to explain. Well, actually, let me tell you, we follow Jesus and Jesus teaches us to love our enemies. And he was not at all satisfied with that conversation. He left that house feeling so confused.

I’m sure.

But at this point, were the three guys incarcerated?

Yeah, they were all arrested within three weeks of the event.

What went into that? How did they know who had done it? Did they brag about it in that world of Jihad?

Yeah, they were pretty bold. But I think not them as individuals, but broadly speaking, Al-Qaeda took proud responsibility for it. But thankfully, the country’s intelligence, like the government works very closely with our central intelligence and our military. So they had, you know, the big guns. I mean, literally the FBI agent for our region was at the place where we were evacuated before the day was over.

Wow.

And he came from a neighboring country.

Dang.

So, They were on top of it, right? So of course, I think they had a lot of intelligence, a lot of help from not just our military, our government, but other governments too, France, other places. But yeah, they narrowed them down to these three men. And the one who had actually shot the gun had strapped himself with explosives and was about to commit a suicide bombing right there in front of our training center. And they had been following him and they caught him before he did that, shot him a couple times and left him lying on the ground for a while as a testimony of how they will not tolerate terrorism. Again, that’s not what you’re thinking as an American, right? They would do that.

That dude’s dead.

They shot him in the leg.

He’s suffering. Oh. He’s suffering. He’s lying on the ground bleeding out.

Okay.

Um, he did survive and I had heard, well, okay, so I’ll just move forward and say they all three were judged and sentenced within, you know, a few months. And the one that shot the gun got the death penalty, even though in that country they haven’t executed in many years. Basically meant he would spend his life in prison. The second guy, who was there at the time, got 12 years. And then the third guy, who was a lookout guy, got three years. And so they shipped the one, at least the one that shot the gun, I think, was located in a prison far in the interior where they put the most dangerous criminals. And I had heard over the years that he was, his injuries never really healed and we were even wondering if he may die or whatever, but he survived. Inhaled a hero, by the way, by other terrorists.

Oh, yeah.

But.

So.

Yeah, so we’re going in and out of the country. We realize that these guys may be in the very prison that we’re working in.

Wow.

Right. And so, but they wouldn’t allow access to the second guy. The second guy was there. The, the, the killer was in the, far in the interior. And so my son actually, in one of his times there, he would go into the prisons with our, our workers and, you know, do the project work with them. And he actually asked the prison warden if he could have a an audience with the guy. And because they don’t understand forgiveness and don’t, can’t conceive of him actually offering forgiveness, they just thought, there’s only one reason this guy, yeah, the six foot three dude, broad shouldered, wants to go in and see this guy face to face. And so they just kind of made excuses why it wouldn’t be possible and. So, so he left it at that, but wrote a letter and said, please have this translated clearly for him. And so that all of that was agreed upon. And he addressed the letter to all three of the guys, even though the one that had served three years was already released. So one of the things we do when we go back all these years is take a medical team.

In the first year that we took a medical team, I wasn’t sure what I was in for. I just knew that there are, I mean, it’s a very poor country.

Very.

Much in need of healthcare, but the prison systems were more like a concentration camp and they were just terribly, tragically medically underserved. And so we decided as a team there, okay, let’s just see what we can do and get some some people to join and just come and provide consultations and health care for these people in the prisons.

And this first medical team was probably two years after Emily and I got married. So we were going together.

And it was just a few months after Joshua was there and tried to see one of the men who was involved in his dad’s murder.

And by that point, Joshua was grown.

Yeah, he was grown. He was maybe 19, 18, I can’t remember exactly. There’s a whole other aspect to that story too, how the Lord brought him to that point.

I was about to say grown. That’s still extremely mature, 19 years old.

19 to be able to do that.

Yes.

Or even the courage to go back.

Well, and probably out of all four of the kids, I think he probably struggled the most with the idea of forgiving these men who killed his father. It was a deep struggle for him for a number of years. Yeah.

So he was 13, you know, and he’s the only boy. And I remember when I, you know, took each of the kids aside to tell them about what actually happened. He was already in a room by himself. And I go in and talk to him, you know, all my girls, except for, except for the youngest, Piper. Piper was bouncing off the walls, you know, like little seven-year-olds they don’t know how to process this. Right? Right. But I had a conversation with Ellie and I had a conversation with Heidi and we just, we prayed, you know, we cried and we prayed too. Well, they cried. I hadn’t even cried at that point. I was still just trying to wrap my head around it. But just comforting them and praying with them and just seeing the grace of the Lord. Like I saw no animosity at all. Just so much grace. Pain, obviously, but no animosity. But when I got to Joshua, he was sitting on the edge of the bed, just not crying either, but just looking like he was, like, shaking because his fists were so tight and just. I can’t imagine him trying to process this either.

He already knew by then he just knew something had happened, and I told him, you know, explain the situation and. He just wouldn’t move. He would just sit there, you know. And so I didn’t know what else to do except for pray over him. And as I was praying, it was a different kind of thing. I almost felt like I was sort of transferred to the heavenlies where I felt I was in serious spiritual warfare. And so I prayed specifically that God would protect him from the enemy and from bitterness and from so much that would naturally come about, you know, from such a tragedy. So I left him there. He just wanted to be alone. But a little while later, he comes out of the room. So proud. Just saying. My dad was a hero, you know, still not crying, just kind of like trying to keep his chin up and a tough face and. But coming back to the US was a challenge. Obviously for all of my kids, they were re-entering a culture they didn’t know a whole lot about. I mean, they loved coming back on furloughs and hanging out with their friends and doing fun stuff, but like this was a different experience, the reintegration, you know, of coming back and trying to find a place to fit, which is another Reason why it’s such a blessing that we had Snowbird, I mean, to just embrace them.

And.

I knew he was struggling, but he was a good kid. He wasn’t going off doing really stupid stuff. Well, that’s debatable. He was a wild child, but I really didn’t have a whole lot of problems with the misbehavior necessarily. But like the attitude and I could just tell there was some his heart just wasn’t real soft anymore But then fast forward a few years right before he was there and asked to see the guy the Lord had done something incredible in his heart and we had this revivalist that come through and was preaching and and he had a slight draw an imaginary circle around us and ask God to do a revival just to do something miraculous in us, in that space. And I didn’t know what happened. He told me later what had happened, but he became emotional after. And he just said all he could pray was, God, why? I don’t know what’s wrong. Like, my heart is hard. And you’re gonna have to do something. And he immediately had this vision of himself, but in Jesus’s place on the cross, looking down at the. The men who were killing him and saying, father, forgive them.

They don’t know what they’re doing. That’s when he broke. You know, I think that’s the moment the Lord gave him a heart of Flesh again. And he said at that moment, he no longer thought about these guys with hatred. He thought about them with a lot of pity. Like he felt sorry for them. So this is what led up to him wanting to see the guys, but they wouldn’t let him. And then a few months later, we’re there with our medical team, which don’t know why this is. Where are all the men in the world? But the only ones that responded to our medical mission were women.

All right, I gotta insert here. If you’re a dude, you’re listening to this. You’re a paramedic, EMT, first responder, PA, RN, or doctor, you need to use what God’s given you. There are opportunities. You don’t have to go spend the rest of your life on the mission field, but you need to use, you need to not take your family to Orlando every year and go to Disney. You need to, we did an episode on this where I talked about our family vacations were spent all my kids growing up years. Going and serving in another country. You need to think about it, because what Emily’s saying is something we hit hard here with our young men. There’s a deficit. Women are willing to go. Men are not. Young men, especially. But we’re working to reverse that. Anyway. All right. There’s my rant.

Well, I have to say here that the dynamic is not the same. You have so many amazing young men. It’s refreshing every time we come here. Everywhere we go, even in our own missions organization, there’s nobody like snowbirds. So you’re doing a wonderful job.

Good, that’s good to hear. We’re hard on them. We’re hard on these dudes.

So, yeah, so I have this team of all women, most of whom are older than me, like grandmother types. And except for the one medical doctor we had, she is Korean American. She was a medical doctor, but she also did traditional medicine. So she would do acupuncture. She offered to do it, and I’m thinking, There’s no way. That’s such a foreign concept in a country like this. So I was like, okay, bring it on. We’ll see what happens. Here we are, these five lovely women going into the men’s prison, where there’s over 1,000 men. And many of which are harmless, kind people who were at the wrong place at the wrong time or falsely accused. Obviously some criminals too, but these women were amazing. They just went in. I’m sure they were nervous going in, but they just fell in love with these prisoners. And I think it really brought us to the true the depth of what we were doing. It was more than just bringing physical care. It made us the sheep on the day of judgment. He was sick and we came to him. He was in prison and we visited him.

And it’s like we truly felt in sense like we were not just ministering to these poor and needy and just lost men. We were ministering to Jesus himself and it was so powerful. So we had two full exhausting days at that prison and then our colleague, one of our colleagues who was helping arrange and coordinate each of the prisons, also a believer. But he came up to me and was like, well, you know, we’re going to the central prison tomorrow. And as you know, that’s where they hold the terrorists. And by then they had actually moved the boys from the juvenile prison over there too because juvenile prison sort of fell apart. So why in the world they decided to move them shoulder to shoulder with a bunch of terrorists, crazy on me.

Wow.

That is wild. So it’s a prison originally for terrorists and political prisoners. And then also the boys were there. And so my colleague came out and he’s like, Hey, so tomorrow we’re going to the central prison, but I am going to talk to the commander and let him know that we’re only going to see the boys. I thought, I just had to check in my spirit about that. It didn’t seem right, but I left it with him. He seemed so sure of himself, so I’m like, well, that’s fine. Whatever. We get there the next morning and he comes to me very shyly and says, well, I’m sorry I talked to the commander. He said, you,’re a humanitarian organization and everyone here are humans, so you have to see them all. And so I was like, well, that makes perfect sense to me. That’s fine. Just let them know we’re going to see all the boys, all the boys, whether they’re sick or not, because our intention was really to love on these kids. And so we did. There were about 40, 45 boys at the time.

Why would most of the boys be in prison? Same type of thing, like wrong place.

Wrong time, petty crimes, got in a fight in the street. They sold, you know, they stole a cell phone. A dumb phone. You know, like these are things that they were being. But the problem with their justice system is they would, they would be incarcerated, but they wouldn’t have their day of judgment or be able to see the judge for sometimes two or three years.

Wow.

And these kids are now away from their mothers, away from their families. And so when these women were ministering to these boys, it was just so precious to see they were many of them were just weeping. And they were good mamas too. They’re like, your blood pressure is too high. And it’s because you were too angry. And, you know, and they would like preach to them. It was so cute. And anyway, so yeah, we saw all the boys and then they bring in the two or three political prisoners that were there.

And.

I really, I mean, this is an in-depth story. I can, sort of condense it if you want me to, and just give the overview. Okay.

We’re good with whatever.

Okay. It’s not like.

It’s not like I’m bored.

So I am translating for one of the ladies that is doing the consultations, and Dr. Kim is overdoing her acupuncture by then. She’s famous. Everybody wanted the needles and. It was so funny how many people were coming out of the woodwork saying, I have so much I can pay, you know, or whatever, because I just wanted to experience the needles. And so I was translating for a political prisoner, really nice looking guy, and he kept looking at me and smiling. And, you know, I mean, in that culture, prolonged eye contact or touching women is so taboo. Like, that’s just not what you do. But he kept staring at me and smiling. He’s like, you don’t remember me, do you? And I’m like, you look familiar. And I meant that sincerely because everybody does. But he’s like, I was in your home in 2003. And I was like, oh, okay, great. You know? And I’m just going to, like, we had people in our home all the time. And Stephen would bring people home that I didn’t know. I just stopped asking questions and just provided the hospitality, and he just failed to tell me that this guy was actually the the son of one of the presidents that had been ousted.

So he was a threat because of being the son of this president. And so I knew that the president, the former president was in the prison. I knew that Stephen had ministered to him, gotten to know him, all of that.

Is this the coup that you write about in the book?

No, this was one before that.

Okay. All right.

Yeah, so anyway, it was just really fun to reconnect and but shortly after our conversation started everything became quiet and they cleared out and brought in more guards with their AK-47s and it just and they brought in the first terrorist and it’s this man comes in looks really distinguished and actually kind of nice He’s just scanning the room, you know, has this big beard.

Well, if you back up a minute, we were told prior to this, that morning, our colleague comes up to us and says, oh, I need to let you know, they’ve moved the man who killed Stephen. They moved him here. We thought he was still in the interior.

Oh.

And at a high maximum facility. And they said, well, they’ve come here for an appeals case, so he’s here in the prison. You know, and, and, and of course, you know, this colleague is like, but, but it’s okay. We’ll make sure that, you know, you don’t encounter the guy. But of course, you know, Emily and her kids have been praying for an opportunity to have an audience with this guy, and, but we didn’t know what the Lord would do with that, so we were aware he was there, and I’m, I’m working with another nurse at a different table in the same room, and. Emily’s in another one. And we both were aware that at any moment this guy could come in and we weren’t quite sure what he looked like at this point. And so, but we just kind of left it up to the jury.

Let me clarify though. I had heard that they were in the city and that they had just had their appeal and they were appealing to have their sentences reduced. Only his was upheld and now he doesn’t even qualify for a presidential pardon anymore. So his chances are over.

And this, To be clear, this is the shooter.

The shooter. And then the second guy that had gotten 12 years, instead of his being reduced, they increased it to 15. And then they actually put a warrant out for the guy who had only served three years to have him re-incarcerated and trying, and they were appealing to get all of them to have life sentences.

Okay.

Yeah. So anyway, I had asked our colleague that morning, you know, like, I know that. One of the guys is here, you know, is the guy, the main guy here? And he said, no, I don’t think so. No, I don’t. And I don’t think you’ll see the other guy. We’ll make sure of that. And I’m like, it’s okay, you know, if I do see the other guy, that’s not a problem. But I didn’t request to actually have an audience with them or anything. So anyway, I am ignorant of the fact that this guy is there, but he’s the first one they bring in. And so I see this, the president, former president’s son, looks at the guy that walks in and then he looks at me as if he knows something. And he’s just watching my face. And so they bring him over to one of the ladies doing consultations behind us. And I overhear the conversation. And he’s trying to explain, okay, yeah, I just have a lot of pain. I was wounded. So many years ago and just never really healed. And I’m having, he’s like, I was shot in the leg and the hip, and my heart sunk.

I’m like, this is the guy. And the one he’s talking to didn’t have a clue. And she’s just like, well, I’m sorry. There’s nothing we can really do for you except, you know, give you Tylenol or ibuprofen. But you can try the needles, you know, the acupuncture if you want. And so. He leaves and a few minutes or almost immediately, our colleague comes in and says to me and to Lewis, you know, the commander wants to have a word with you. And so this guy had already gone out. Like he didn’t stop by the acupuncture at all.

Did you ever like look over and see him? You just heard this? Okay.

Well, I wasn’t looking while I was. I saw him come in when he came in.

But at that point, you didn’t know.

I didn’t know who he was. I just knew he was a terrorist.

Was he aware?

He didn’t know who I was either.

Wow.

But I was at another table and when he comes in, I looked up and I looked at Emily, we both made eye contact and it was this feeling of, I think this is the guy. Like we both had that sense. And the interesting thing up until this point, there were a group of terrorists that all came in at the same time. They brought all these extra guards in and they were all super hard. Like they wouldn’t talk to the nurses because they were females.

They wouldn’t let the nurses touch them. They had to do everything without eye contact and without.

They were angry. Sitting at the tables just angry. They don’t want help. And there was like, we’re, and we were already thinking, man, Lord, you got to do something here. We can’t, we can’t reach these guys. Right. And so there was, this was the climate in the room. It was, you know, everybody was hard and angry and resistant. And then this guy comes in and we make eye contact and think, I think this is the dude, but he doesn’t want the acupuncture. He looks around the room. He decides to leave. And then it was just a few minutes later, while all the room is still filled with several different terrorists at different triage tables, but none of them want to make eye contact and they’re all angry.

They seem really irritated that we only had women.

Yeah, they were so angry.

It felt really good. I don’t know.

But then the colleague comes in and says to Emily and I, Hey, the warden wants to see you guys. So this is the climate of the room when we step out.

Yeah, so they take us out. At first I’m like, oh, did we do something wrong? Are we in trouble? Yeah. And so they take us out into the hallway, around to the small office where the commander’s office was. And our colleague brings us in, introduces us, and says, the commander says, well, first of all, I want you to know that we really appreciate what you’re doing, and we know that you guys are not here to harm anyone, but you probably know that the man who killed your chief is here and he would like to have the needles done, but we need to just confirm that you’re not gonna do anything to harm him, that you’re not taking any kind of Revenge or anything. And, wow. I looked at him. I said, well, sir, you’re the one that helped remind us that everyone here are humans. And we absolutely agree. Of course we are not gonna do anything.

Wow.

To harm anybody. That’s not what we’re.

For it.

But this Warden doesn’t know who it is. He just knows that we’re, we’re a part of the, of the organization. No, he doesn’t know that she’s the Widow.

He’s new. I mean, I’d never, I didn’t spend a lot of time in that prison anyway, right? But anyway, so our colleagues like, wait, you don’t know who she is? This is the Widow of our Chief that was killed by that man. And so the commander Warden, he’s just like, Oh. And so he just very kindly goes into a really long condolence. I’m so sorry. I never knew your husband, but I have heard so many wonderful things. I really wish I could have met him. He was an incredible person. And then he remembers because he had met Joshua and he had remembered that he had written, you know, wanted to see the guy. And so he’s like, You know what? He’s right outside if you’d like to have a word with him.

And, oh my goodness.

I can’t describe like what kind of, what I feel. I hardly feel anything except for that I’m just gonna fall out right there. I mean, all these years I, again, theoretically forgave this guy. And I fantasized about what it would be like to see him and what I would say. I mean, I thought, yeah, I could say, you know, it’d be really, Anyway, at that point though, I was flooded with like, I didn’t know what I was going to do. And so I was just praying so hard inside. I’m like, yeah, I would like to have a word with him. I was not prepared necessarily. So they bring him in and he, you know, greets me, shakes Lewis’s hand.

Let me just set the visual setting for this. This room, it’s the warden’s office, which is only about maybe six by eight feet. It’s a small room. By this time, after he says to Emily, would you like to see him, the word is spreading. She’s about to talk to the guy who killed. And so, because there’s a couple guards in the room with us, they’re going out in the hall. Now more guards are coming in and they’re trying to cram people. Now we’ve got like three or four guards in the room.

No, they’re not in the room. They were going, sticking their heads.

They’re sticking their heads. They’re looking in the doorway. They’re looking at the door.

Because they want to see this or because they want to provide protection.

Well, there was like one guy in there with the warden that’s there for protection.

We had protection at first, but then it became clear they’re curious.

They’re curious.

They’re leaving and going down the hall and bringing somebody else. Like they’re all of a sudden, this word is spreading fast, right? The widow of the man that was killed is about to talk to the guy who killed him. And this room is filling up and there’s people in the hall. And so there’s this heightened awareness of what’s going on. And so at this point is when this guy comes in. He also doesn’t know yet.

Oh, he doesn’t know.

Nobody’s told him. He just thinks he’s coming in to address the leaders of the concern.

Yeah.

The leaders of the medical team. He wants to be assured that we’re going to use the same needles, right? So he doesn’t really make eye contact with her. He puts his hand over his heart, which is what you do to females. And he comes to me and shakes my hand.

Very friendly. He shakes our colleague’s hand. He shakes the commander, the warden’s hand.

So we’re all really close.

Yeah.

I mean, we’re, two, three feet from each other.

Oh, my goodness.

Yeah. And so it’s funny, leading up to that very moment, I felt really weak. Like, I felt sick, kind of weak, because I just didn’t know, like, what I was getting. But at that moment, I just felt stable. And so he looks, the guy looks at the word and says, well, and the word said, Do you know who this lady is? And he gives me a brief glance and looks back and says, no, she’s one of the doctors, right? And the warden said, Tell him who you are. And I- All this is in Arabic. And so I said, well, I am the widow of the man that you murdered a few years ago. And immediately his demeanor changed. He was like, this proud, poised sort of posture slumped, and he stopped looking at us at all. I was just staring at the floor for a bit, and he didn’t say anything. And then the warden didn’t like that. He’s like, well, why do you, do you have anything to say to her? Oh. And so he, he tries to lift his chin a little bit. He’s like, yeah, I just want to say, I really regret the death of your husband.

And by the way, they came in to fight this appeal. They had changed their story, right? They were trying to now say, we were framed. I wasn’t even there. I was in the hospital sick, trying to get the sentences reduced. Right. And anyway, obviously, we know we have the forensics. We have, you know, so he’s saying all of that and, you know, passing on his condolences, and he said, Yeah, and unfortunately, you know, I just appealed and it was denied and now I’m just stuck here and I won’t be able to be out and my children won’t have their father. And I stopped him there and I said, okay, well, my children very much love their father and they don’t have their father now either. And I think you know why.

Yeah.

And he just said, well, you know, I really wasn’t there. And I’m like, well, God knows whether you’re innocent or not. And if you are not, if you are innocent, I pray God gives you Freedom. Like, really, that God will provide you Freedom from here. But if you’re not innocent, I pray that God will have mercy on your soul and give you. Your soul freedom through forgiveness. And he was just kind of speechless. And I said, dude, there’s no way you could have known this man that you killed. He loved your people. He loved God and he loved his family. And he taught his children to love God and love your country. And he taught about Jesus because we follow Jesus. And Jesus tells us that we should love our enemies and bless those who curse us. And I didn’t really realize I knew that verse, those verses so well in Arabic, but it just kind of flowed Spirit, obviously, but. And by the end of the conversation, I was like, you know, we Harbor no, no hatred. Towards you. And I really am sorry for your family. This is not your children’s fault. And if there’s anything that we can do, we would love to.

To help them in any way possible. And again, there’s a humdrum in the. The hallway. You know, these people are. These other guards are, like, listening, and it’s going.

It’s going down the hall. New guards are coming in, and they’re leaving, getting a different guard, and they’re. It’s like. There’s a buzz going on. And the warden, his mouth is just dropped open.

Yeah.

He’s like, and he just keeps saying, that’s just amazing. You know, it’s amazing. Like they’re all shocked.

I did ask him if he ever got the letter that my son had written. And he said, well, no, I heard about it, but I never got it. And I looked at the word and.

Like.

So.

After it was all over, he went and got on the table for acupuncture and stared at me the whole time.

He stared at you.

Yeah, because I went back to translating.

Because they don’t use eye contact, but he stared at you.

No, he was there. Well, and when we walked back into the room, the news had already gotten back to the room.

Yeah, I was really hoping it wouldn’t, because I had just vouched for Dr. Kim and I was like, I really hope she doesn’t know who she’s doing acupuncture on. But it was- so all those same.

Men that were scattered around the room at the triage tables who were angry with their fists clenched, We walk back into the room. They all make eye contact with Emily. And there’s this different, like…

It’s just the atmosphere was different.

The atmosphere changed. And this guy comes and everybody’s quiet. This guy comes, gets on the table. Emily goes back to translating at her station.

Back with the son of the former president.

The former president is there.

And he’s just looking at me, and I’m trying not to look at anybody, because at that point, I was so on the verge. Of. I didn’t know why. Like, I could not process the plethora of emotion. Yeah. That I was feeling. Like, I felt like I could just crawl in a hole and die. I felt like I could just cry so hard. I felt like I could go hug everybody really hard. I felt like I could just take somebody down. Like, it was so weird.

Yeah.

And I just knew I was. I couldn’t do it. Like, I couldn’t process this right now. So I was just, like, I shelved it until. And I had a pretty good resolve until Dr. Kim finished the acupuncture and she was walking over towards me and a good Korean pre-COVID she had her mask on. And I could see the tears were just rolling down. I’m like, no, no, no, no, no, no. Please do not come over here. No, no. And I tried not to make eye contact with her. I did not need that. I guess I did. Like, I just wanted to be in the here and now, process that later. And then she just came over and squeezed me really hard and hugged me, and I almost totally broke my resolve. But I cried. I was starting to cry, which I was trying really hard not to do, so I wouldn’t look at anybody after that. I’m just trying to. To translate. And, you know, she goes back to what she was doing, and then all of a sudden, this. This man, the former president’s son, puts his hand on my arm and I look up and he’s weeping.

He’s crying. And he said, We will never forget your husband. He was an amazing man. We will never forget. It was just crazy. The whole atmosphere changed.

Whole room changed.

At my table where the guy was so angry and had fists and wouldn’t look at the nurse, just out of the blue, after this man reaches over and touches her and says that to her, All of a sudden this guy just breaks down and starts wailing, which they don’t show emotion. Remember within Islam, you’re insulting God if you show emotion. And he just throws his head down on the table and just starts loudly crying and wailing. And I’m like, what am I supposed to do? I’m standing there going, I don’t know what to do. So I just go around and I put my hand on him and just start praying. And I’m just praying that God would help this man and give him freedom. And then another guy at another table starts wailing. Just starts crying. These are like terrorists. And all of a sudden, the whole room is filled with emotion. And it’s like the Holy Spirit just came and said, I’m going to change this climate.

And.

This whole scenario was spreading through the whole prison like wildfire. And from that day forward, we hear this talked about every time we take a visit there about her encounter that day. What God did in the prison and how, you know, how much God.

And we don’t know that this guy has ever surrendered his life to Jesus. In fact, I think he hasn’t. I think he’s more proud than ever. He’s still very celebrated by extremists. He’s very well kept. Like, even though he’s in the prison, he’s living high on the hog.

Taking care of him.

Oh, yeah.

But we were noticing that there was still, in spite of that, there was something happening.

Yes.

And I didn’t know, like, to what extent or. Anything. I mean, every year after that, we would bring a medical team and we would encounter these guys, but it was just different. And so, yeah, I wish I had time to explain what happened this year during the medical team.

Well, even just to piggyback on that, though, because that story began to be told in different parts of the city, we would come in and we would hear people bring it up. You know, and there was one situation where the Lord used that just a matter of months after we left and came back to the States. We have a colleague that’s living there and doing long-term work there. And he had befriended this guy that was doing like tourism, taking people into tours, adventure tours into the desert. And he befriended this guy. And this guy said, oh man, you need to come with me out into the desert. I want to show you some of these places. I want to take you to the oasis and this kind of stuff. I said, okay, great. Yeah. So they go out and now they’re all alone out in the desert for several days. So the guy starts to get really honest with them and he says to our colleague and this is maybe just a few months after we were there. He said, listen, man, come on, be honest with me. What are you doing here? You know, this is the armpit of the world.

You’re an American. You could live anywhere. Why are you living here? I just flat out tell, you know, ask him. And our colleague says, well, Let me tell you. He said, the truth is, you know, several years ago, I heard a story about a family that lived here. And they had, they brought their four kids here, and they lived here, and they loved on this country. And some people killed the father in the street. And I heard this story back in America, and I thought, and I felt God say, why don’t you go? Why don’t you go in that place? And he said, so that inspired me. And I thought, well, I’ll come here and I’ll love these people. Then if that guy was willing to lay it in his life, I’ll come love these people. And the guy is like shocked and he goes, Wait, wait, wait, wait. I know that story. You’re talking about the American, right? The American that was killed in such and such a date. And he says the date and he says, he goes, yeah, he says, I know that story. He says, I was a childhood friend of the guy who killed him.

And he goes, Wait, what do you mean? He says, yeah, we grew up in the same village. Our families knew each other. He was my best friend. We were friends together. He said, all the way up into early teens, And he was a funny guy and he gave the name of the dude and he says, and then we were teenagers and all of a sudden these people came in from, you know, across from the Mali border and they said, Hey, you know, they came in and wanted to recruit us all to come join their movement and they were trying to radicalize all of us and I was like, I don’t want anything to do with that, but my friend went with them. And then he came back a while later and he had this big beard and he was angry and he had changed. And it was like, I was just like, I don’t want to be a part of this. I can’t do anything with this guy. And he was trying to recruit him also. He said, so our ways kind of parted. And then, you know, it was left disillusioned. And he was left disillusioned with Islam because of this whole experience with his friend.

And then he heard a few years later, he was in a taxi somewhere, whatever, heard it on the radio that this someone was just killed. And he said, Right away, I knew. I knew that’s my friend. I know he did this because they were talking about doing this kind of stuff. He said, so I know this guy. So our colleague goes, well, that’s not the end of the story. Let me tell you, this family still comes back. His widow comes back, they brought their kids back. They still are doing the work, the humanitarian work that they were doing. As a matter of fact, just a few months ago, this widow met your childhood friend in the prison.

Crazy.

And he tells the story about how Emily extended forgiveness. And talked about Jesus and about loving enemies. And the guy stops him and says, that’s it.

That’s it.

That’s what I’m talking about. There’s nothing in Islam like that. He said, if that’s what Jesus teaches, I want that. You tell me how I get that, right? And he ends up sharing with him the Gospel, and this guy becomes a believer. Then we find out about this because we’re coming back into the country just two months later.

Right?

And so our colleague calls us and says, Listen, man, I’ve been spending time with this guy around Bible studies. This is his response. He really wants to meet you. And I go, Great, we’re coming to the city. You know, why don’t you have him come and meet with us? So, and at the same time, Joshua was still hoping to encounter this guy also, but because this warden saw the way Emily dealt with the situation, all of a sudden he has a change of heart. And he goes, oh, well, if that’s what you’re gonna do, then yeah, we can grant your son the right to, because maybe he’s gonna do the same thing. So yeah, if your son wants to come, he can meet with this guy too. Well, you know, Joshua is like stateside and all of a sudden and just last minute goes, okay, there’s an opportunity, I’m gonna jump on a plane right now. So he gets a ticket to fly over, right? As we’re trying to figure out whether he can meet with this guy or not. They’re going to arrange an opportunity for him to meet with the killer of his dad.

Well, while this is going on, this other guy who just became a believer is coming into the capital to meet with us while Joshua is flying in. He doesn’t even know because we can’t get a hold of him. He’s on the plane. So this guy, we’re telling the story to this new believer. This believer is just shocked. He’s like, I want to be baptized. I want to follow the Lord that way. Can you guys can you arrange for me to be baptized which obviously all this has to happen in secret, you know and and so he’s like would it be possible for you guys to be a part of that and for you know your son the son of the man who was killed can he be a part of baptizing me? So while Joshua was flying over in the plane youe know this is all sort of being arranged and then Joshua gets off the plane to find out that he’s gonna get to meet with this this guy face to face. And we’re going to get to baptize this new believer because of this story.

Who was led to the Lord by a man who was there because he heard Stephen’s story.

All of this, all of this pieced together. So what you can see is how the Lord’s using the story, the story of just the willingness that in spite of evil, we’re going to finish following the Lord. This family is willing to keep loving a people who killed the husband, the father, and keep loving and show forgiveness. And that part of what being a Jesus follower is, is the thing God is using over and over now, that more people are coming to the Lord because of that. So Joshua comes into the country and then he gets to actually have a one-on-one encounter with this guy who killed his father. And we get to baptize this dude early in the morning when nobody’s around out in the ocean. Who by the way now has gotten married, led his wife to the Lord, and the two of them are trying to find ways to plant churches underground in the country. And it’s just all the things God’s building in that scenario. So I don’t even know if you have time to tell the story of how Joshua met the Lord.

Oh, well, yeah. So tell that.

And then, yeah, because I want to be mindful of all this time, but the last thing I want to do is Talk about just very briefly what next year’s plans are. And then we’ll come do a longer conversation about that. But I would love to hear about.

Joshua’s encounter.

Yeah, I keep wanting to call him his real name. Joshua’s encounter.

Yeah. Yeah. So they arranged this meeting and he expected, you know, that he would be able to just go and sit. And then this guy would have a bunch of armed guards around him or whatever for his protection. Again, my son is a big dude, and this guy is not. And so they arranged for him to sit in this, this small office. And Joshua said that he, you know, he came in. They brought him into this room, sat him down, and then they, they bring in the guy, and then the guy’s, like, looks at Joshua and is like, oh, and then he turns around to see all the guards go out of the room and close the door.

Just the two of them.

They left them in there. I think they really wanted to test this. Like, okay, we’re going to give them the opportunity to do what would have been legally right. You can take revenge. It’s legally right in that country.

Yeah.

So it’s almost like, okay, we’re going to test this forgiveness thing. We’re just going to step out and see what happens. And they left him in there. Wow.

So he did have one of our other colleagues that we have become very close with. He is actually the one in the end of the book, in the epilog that came over and visited the grave and all of that. He’s so close to the kingdom at this point. But the, you know, back when my son had this encounter, he wasn’t yet there, but it was so impactful for him to be able to go in. He was just willing to, you know, my son speaks really good French. His Arabic wasn’t super, super good. And so he asked him to just come and clarify because the killer had not, like, he was fairly uneducated otherwise and didn’t know French very well, so. So our colleague was there with him during this whole experience and just even hearing him talk about it was very, very impactful for him. But yeah, so this guy comes in and is sitting right across from my son, scared to death. Like Joshua said he was visibly scared for good reason and was shocked though to hear Joshua express just no hatred. But prayer. Like, he just told him, I pray for you.

I pity you. You know, there’s no way you knew my dad. So. So that was a. Wow.

And he said the same thing to him. He said, my. My dad taught us to be followers of Jesus, and Jesus taught us to love our enemies. And I have no hatred towards you because I follow Jesus. I mean, he was just straight up. And then we. His. The guy translating for him, one of our. We have colleagues who works for NGO who’s a high identity Muslim. He’s listening to all this and just struck with it. He still talks to us about it. Like, I can’t believe that Joshua did that, you know? And just to see how God uses that, I think we underestimate that this is one of the most unique things about our faith, that we have hope and suffering.

Yes.

That when evil and suffering happens, we exude a different kind of hope than the rest of the world has. And we also, we have a capacity to truly love our enemies because of the grace of the Lord Jesus. These two things, I don’t think we give it enough credence to know that this is our most powerful witness in a world that doesn’t know Christ. And this is what we see God continuing to use in this country over and over.

And I think, you know, I don’t know if I take this verse out of context. I don’t think I do, but I, you know, the Scripture where in Psalm 23, where he prepares a table before us in the presence of our enemies, you know, Joshua could have gone in there and just let loose on this guy, but instead he was presenting something. This guy had no idea. Was a result of his crime and his hatred and his, like, my son sitting there with the table before him of abundance. And that abundance is he’s good. He has peace, he has eternity. He has this Feast this guy in front of him knows nothing about. And I feel like that alone is one of the most powerful aspects of being able to forgive somebody that’s done something so horrible to you. And, you know, this guy absolutely meant for harm. And now he’s sitting across from this spiritually rich young man who’s forgiving him. And he’s very well taken care of by his. His savior, his God.

Yeah.

That is gold.

Yes.

I’ve never known that part of the story. I mean, we literally just posted two episodes about forgiveness, reconciliation.

Wow.

The last two episodes. Yeah. So they’re about.

And we just interviewed a week ago, a former staff who different story, but had a still underlying theme of forgiveness and not harboring bitterness. And that is truly so convicting and just so encouraging. Like, like that last picture that you just painted of, like, Joshua sitting with a feast that his enemy has no idea. And, like, he’s able to share that. That is such a beautiful picture. And, like, praise the Lord for that, that we are able to, like. And I’ve never even thought about that. Of, like, what a unique aspect are, like, we have, like, that the Lord gives us of forgiveness and, like, hope and suffering. And, yes, that’s so clearly talked about in Scripture and, like, even brought up in sermons and everything like that. But truly, like, just focusing and, like, dwelling in that of, like, have joy in that, like, rejoice in that. Like, that’s such a beautiful thing that we have and need to tap into more, you know, need to, like, rely on that more. That’s so good.

Thank y’all for coming.

Yes.

I know. You know, asking you to. Take two days and come here and hopefully it was good to see some folks, but it’s not lost on us. The, the gift this is to us and the people that are following along the Snowbird Journey. But we would like to come back, come your way, and, and we could do this a couple more times. This is awesome just to hear what God’s doing and definitely. And I’d like to get into even some conversations about opportunities in terms of missions and mobilization and how to minister at home. We have such a diverse international community within our borders. So many opportunities. We see it through Pinwheel Tutoring with the Hispanic community from about four different countries. And yeah, that’d be a fun conversation, but y’all are amazing. Testimony, trophies of grace. The Lord, you know, that picture, I love the picture of Jesus in Revelation 19 where he’s wearing the seven crowns. And I’ve heard it’s, you know, the crowns of his conquest and his robe is dipped in blood. And there’s debate over what that blood is, the blood of his enemies, the blood of the cross, whatever.

But there’s no doubt, you know, the person that you’re talking about, I believe I started that Interview talking about she’s a trophy of God’s grace in this ministry. But y’all are trophies of God’s grace. Sometimes he just shows out. He just does stuff that makes you go, Wow. Only God could be capable of a story like this. And we’re right in the middle of the story. I mean, who knows what’s God gonna do? It’s exciting.

Stay tuned.

Yeah, we will. Yeah, we’ll be on the edge of our seat. So thank y’all.

Yeah, thank you for having us.

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