The Lord has put the two young Arab women into my life. They are very different girls, and I was thinking today that the Lord sure knows how to pick ‘em!
 
Fatima* is the one most on my heart at this point. She doesn’t really practice Islam, although she does cover her head and dress very modestly. She admitted to me today that she lied to her parents and went out to a restaurant with a guy this weekend. (In this country a woman does not go out alone with a guy unless he is a part of her family.) She has told me about this young man before. He has given her gifts and is her friend but if her parents found out about him she would be in serious trouble. She implied even serious physical trouble. At the same time she has told me that she has read the Injil (the Gospels) in Arabic and that her family gave her grief about reading the Injil more that the Qur’an. Even today we talked some about that, and I was able to make sure she knew she could come to me with any questions about it.
 
On the other side of the coin I have Salma*. She is very sweet and while we haven’t talked much about spiritual things besides my questions about whether she practices Islam, I know that her family is pretty religious. Her father is not working right now because of an injury but he spends a lot time at the local mosque. I think the women in the family try to do all five prayers in their home. I have a feeling my spiritual conversations with her will have an entirely different tone than with Fatima.

At times I feel very unqualified to be a witness to these two young women. I haven’t spent a lot of time studying the Qur’an (yet!) and I feel very inept at speaking about Jesus in a culturally contextual way. However that doesn’t seem to have scared God away from putting these two young women in my life. I desperately trust him to lead me and speak through me as I continue to build friendships with them.
 

This fall I am working through a Bible study on Paul, and in one video session the speaker was talking about spiritual gifts and how they are the manifestation of the Spirit, or in her words, “to make Jesus conspicuous in our lives.” That caught my attention because I guess that could sum up what I want to be in the lives of Salma and Fatima. I want to make Jesus conspicuous to them and to other people I am interacting with in class, at home, and even just walking down the street. Along the lines of spiritual gifts, I don’t have to conform to any set mold of “witness.” I can be who God made me to be and use the gifts he has given me, even if that means I’m not gifted as an evangelist or as a brilliant theologian and debater.

So, that is my prayer...that as I live here I can uniquely make Jesus conspicuous to those he puts in my path, trusting that he will guide me and use my words and actions for his glory and honor.

*Names have been changed.

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