We stood on the flat roof of a two-story school, warming ourselves in the spring sunshine.
Sarah, a long-term field worker, pointed toward the city center of Al Jadid, the small, conservative city a short distance away. Fields bursting with the bright green of new shoots lay between us and Al Jadid.
“There’s the madrassa, the Islamic university,” Sarah explained to me and the two others on my small short-term team. “And that minaret belongs to the world’s largest mosque for this branch of Islam.”
From our vantage on the roof, we could see the slender white minaret rising out of the heart of Al Jadid.
Al Jadid’s madrassa is the largest university in the world for students belonging to this particular stream of Islam.
When Sarah first came to the country, she was serving on a Frontiers team in the capital city. But then she felt God leading her to start a new team in an unengaged city. As a spiritually significant town where no long-term workers had ever lived, Al Jadid stirred her heart.
Sarah prayed for an open door to move to Al Jadid. Through her local network of relationships, she found a perfect job opportunity—a teaching position at the school where we now stood.
We piled into a taxi so Sarah could take us to the madrassa. On the way, Sarah shared that Al Jadid’s madrassa is the largest university in the world for students belonging to this particular stream of Islam.
“Students come from all across the globe,” she explained. “That’s why this little town has so much influence in the Muslim world.”
“Students come from all across the globe.”
As we toured the university, Sarah told us how its teachers promote a strict but peaceful form of fundamentalist Islam. Devotees see it as their duty to call nominal Muslims to adhere more strictly to orthodox practices.
Inside a gathering hall in the center of the campus, we stood beneath the vast expanse of a large dome.
“Imagine this hall filled with students representing unengaged people groups from all over the Muslim world,” Sarah said. “The students here will be welcomed back to their home communities as elite scholars. Imagine them sitting here and hearing the Gospel and responding to Jesus Christ. If they take the Gospel back to their home countries and teach others to follow Christ, then the potential impact is massive.”
“Imagine this hall filled with students representing unengaged people groups from all over the Muslim world.”
Leaving the madrassa, Sarah described her life as a single woman in the conservative town. She shared about the people she lives with, a poor but respected family who leases her a small room in their compound.
“The men treat me like a sister,” she said. “They look out for me and take care of me.” Sarah doesn’t go out in public unless escorted by one of these “brothers” or by a trusted taxi driver. Like other women in the town, she rarely leaves home except to go to work.
“I don’t even go to the market,” she said. “I hire someone to do my grocery shopping.”
“It’s not easy living here,” Sarah said, “This lifestyle isn’t for everyone.”
Back in her small room in her local family’s compound, Sarah made us tea on a gas burner. Her room had no running water and the shared bathroom is in the courtyard. She showed us one of her few luxuries: a small fridge.
“It’s not easy living here,” Sarah said, “This lifestyle isn’t for everyone.” In fact, if someone had told her beforehand that she’d be living such a restricted and rustic life, she wouldn’t have agreed to it.
But Sarah counts it a privilege to live in such a spiritually influential town. She’s helping fulfill an urgent need for workers to come and share Christ with Muslims from so many places around the world.
“When it comes down to it, I don’t mind the restrictions of life here,” Sarah said. Her eyes sparkling, she added, “Sometimes I even think it’s fun.”
- Praise God for opening the door for Sarah to live in such a significant city that once had no long-term Gospel witness.
- Ask the Lord to call more faithful men and women to serve in Al Jadid and share Christ.
- Pray that students at the madrassa will read the Word and discover that Jesus has made a way for us to stand righteous before God.
- Pray for men, women, and children in Al Jadid to have dreams of Jesus that point them to the truth of His message.
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This account comes from a Frontiers worker. Names and places have been changed for security.