The Book

By: John Jefferson

The Book

Having brought 20 Arabic/English Bibles with me, it was my intention to share them with the local church.  Before even leaving, I found out that there was no local church, at least a highly identifiable one with a pastor, congregation and location to meet.  Even with a Muslim population somewhere north of 95%, these refugees (really IDPs) were without an Imam or functioning mosque, so it was understandable the Christian population wasn’t any better off in terms of support.  Also, out of respect for the situation we were in, I knew it would be tricky handing the Bibles out. (Sudan, like many “Muslim” nations, is technically closed to evangelism or just sharing Christianity, and many have died because of their faith as well as their tribal, political, racial and other affiliations)   The long story short, we weren’t there to stir the pot any more!  That said, we did pray for opportunities to share both the Bibles and the reason why we would risk our lives to help people who could in no way return the favor.  That is in itself a Gospel message of course.

One particular case struck me as something only God could have orchestrated.  On my first day in the compound in Kau, one of the military leaders was speaking through an interpreter, and asked for a Bible.  Because I had just given the highest ranking officer one and didn’t want to start an avalanche of giving out Bibles as honorariums to officials, I brushed off the request.  At the time I thought they would be hot commodities just because they looked kind of cool (black leather-like cover with fancy Arabic script on the front in gold letters).  In a place with no books, newspapers or magazines, it’s easy for something like a Bible to become a quick status symbol and rob people who want what’s inside of it from having the opportunity.  It was early in the trip and I was being conservative about doling them out for that reason.  Along the way, I found it difficult to hand them out because it was never in a context where people weren’t around watching, which always leads to more requests than can possibly be filled.  Not having a local clergy person to funnel them through and being busied with the work of food distribution and recording the events, left only sporadic, hastened moments where I could discover someone was a Christian or interested in the Bibles, locate them in the midst of everything else that was inevitably going on at the time, then determine if this was the right person and context in which to hand the Bible out.  Sounds like I’m overcomplicating it to some I’m sure, but unless one’s ever been in a closed country during what is, in part, a religious war, it’s hard to give a sense of both the physical and spiritual resistance that comes along with even the simplest acts of sharing one’s faith.

Despite the obstacles, after handing out most of the Bibles, one to a man in Warni, who requested it, another to the school teachers in Kau that had no books and requested all I could give them, and some to individuals at the compound we stayed in that identified themselves as Christians, I had only a few left by our last full day in the region.  It happened that as we were leaving Niaro for the last time, a man in a bright, almost fluorescent yellow running suit came up to the passenger side window of the vehicle in which I was riding and started talking to me and the men inside.  I had made the mistake of not having the books handy in prior cases where someone came up to me at the last minute before leaving.  This time I was prepared and had a couple of Bibles.  I asked if he was a Christian and the man replied, “yes”.  I gave one to him and a couple out to some of the guys that were with him, who also asked for one.  Then, someone in the car said, “This is the man who asked for a Bible earlier in when we were in the compound”.  I thought, wow, I kind of blew him off then, and now here I am handing him one in a completely different setting a couple of days later without even realizing it!  It was a very cool moment which I had to capture on my camera and will remember forever.  I felt bad about some of the earlier interactions I had where I withheld just handing a Bible out because I was worried about my supply.  I should have realized that though it is always good to be circumspect when giving things away in a place such as this, it’s also good to give freely though with discernment.  In this case, I felt like God was looking out for me and making sure the Bibles got in the right hands no matter who was “in charge” of giving them out.