What in the World Is God Doing?

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Sarah Zylstra
Okay, so here’s how we’re gonna organize our time. I’m gonna ask each of these panelists about the spiritual context of her country, what she sees God doing, and the biggest opportunities that she sees. And then I’m gonna ask her to get really practical and to share a ministry or two that worked really well, or maybe one that didn’t work, right, so that we can learn like, Hey, what are you doing over there? Is that working? Could that work in our context? Normally around with panels, we bounce around quite a bit. This one, I’m going to try and stay with each woman at a time so that we remember what country we’re in and don’t get confused about what part of the world that we’re in. So Sarah, I’m going to start with you in Australia, and I’m wondering if you can tell me a little bit about spiritually. What is it like there? Sure. So

Sarah Kuswadi
Australia is now post Christian. In the 1970s as high as 60% of people in some states went to church. Now it’s less than 10% who regularly attend reformed evangelical churches. Christianity got a bad reputation from some poor actions that were taken by people in the church and weren’t handled particularly well, and Christians are also perceived as intolerant and a bit backward. Unfortunately, in the 2021 census, 43% of Australians indicated that they identify as Christian. However, 39% indicated that they have no religion, and that’s the highest that it’s ever been. This was the first time that most Australians didn’t identify as Christian. So in as recent as 2016 it was 52% so this reflects a long term realignment between how people live and how they identify, and so Christianity no longer supplies the broad sense of identity once did for many Australians, showing a trend towards increased religious diversity and secularism, and there’s a large gap in Australia between Christian identification and Christian practice. Australians are currently experiencing a high cost of living. There’s a depressing number of deaths due to domestic violence situations. And most Australians don’t prioritize God. Most people in Australia have a world view where they’re okay for you to believe what whatever it is that you want to believe, so long as you let them believe what they want to believe. And the national religion is probably sport. The Australian church is pretty small. The average is probably about 9095 people on a Sunday. It’s fairly Anglican, and there’s many smaller regional churches that only have about 30 people and are sort of struggling with people moving to the city. Christianity in Australia is seen as weird and like weirder than it was before, and many Christians are not as bold as they might have been previously. Australia shut down very hard for COVID. We had some of the most locked down states in the whole world, and some churches are still trying to recover to bring people back into the church building. Universities are still doing a lot online, which affects campus ministry significantly, because people aren’t actually coming into university and well organized women’s ministry is not strong, so it’s actually lacking in many churches and unfortunately not seen as a priority.

Sarah Zylstra
Tell us your context sounds a lot like ours. We can relate to shrinking numbers of Christian we can relate to post Christian culture. We can relate even to sport as a national religion. Tell us what do you see is there? What do you see God doing there? Sure, but the

Sarah Kuswadi
good news is that the gospel is alive in Australia, it’s part of the Australian school curriculum. So nationwide, church volunteers can go into schools every week and teach the kids the gospel for 30 minutes. It’s an opt in thing for parents, and about a third of the class would attend that. And Carol services are attended by 1000s of people, where there’s songs about Jesus alongside jingle bells or whatever, you know. And Easter is something that is talked about on the news and in mainstream platforms, and ironically, on the weekend, I actually sat next to an acquaintance at a women’s ministry event who is American, and she said, You have to tell Americans about how you can go into schools and teach religious education. So there we go. I’m pleased to be able to say that. And there’s also been an increase in the number of students at Bible college, back to where enrollments were before COVID. In my church, we have seen growth post COVID. We’ve been recruiting for new staff, which is really exciting. And Christian schools are representing the Bible well and helping lead kids to Christ. There’s a number of new church plants in Australia and emerging ministries, and what we find is that new churches are able to reach new people. At TGC. Okay, we’re thankful for our online platform to reach many people across the whole nation and encourage people through our biblically based articles, networks and podcasts.

Sarah Zylstra
If you had endless money and endless manpower, what would you do in Australia?

Sarah Kuswadi
Yes, that’s a really good question. I would do something for loneliness. I think that many people who are not Christians are lonely, and they don’t have wide circles of friends, and they seem to live their life vicariously through their screens, and it’s not making them happier. So I would pay with my bucket load of money that I don’t have, I would pay for well organized Christian events to connect people into other Christians and churches and provide solid opportunities for them to hear the gospel and become part of a church community. I would also provide some retreats for Christian families to encourage them in their walk with the Lord and the way that they minister to their families and their friends through living authentically for the Lord, I would also try to replicate at least three Sarah zilrs, and not just because she has fabulous dress sense. I would recruit them for TGC a as we need her thoughtfulness and insights to build our website and increase our readership. TGC a, often struggles financially, as people give to their church first, which they totally should, but there’s a small pool of money in Australia that several really worthy Christian organizations are all competing for. So having this pay for would be an absolute advantage and would help the vision of TGC

Sarah Zylstra
Yeah, I think when you’re talking about loneliness, that may think that’s also something we see here, where our culture is so individualistic, and so I think there’s a opportunity for the church, maybe especially women’s ministries, who are seem to be better at this right of gathering people, connecting people, Even just offering friendship as a way in that, seems we could totally take something from that. I’m Gail. I’m going to ask you next. So Gail is from Ireland. And the interesting thing about Ireland so Sarah and Australia is sort of at the same place as us, in an increasingly post Christian place. Gail is entering a post secular phase. So what comes after a post Christian? It’s post secular. What is going on in Ireland?

Gail Curry
Well, Ireland is known as the land of saints and scholars, and in the early centuries of the Christian church, Ireland sent many people out to evangelize Europe. But now Ireland needs the gospel. Our political history is complicated. We have two jurisdictions. The North of Ireland is part of the United Kingdom, so we use great British pines, and the Republic of Ireland is part of Europe using euros, part of the EU. We do have an open border, though, so it’s just like crossing a state line. And the island of Ireland is similar in size to the state of Indiana in the Indiana and we have a similar population Northern Ireland, close to 2 million in the Republic, it’s just over 5 million. So with those two jurisdictions in Northern Ireland, we do have a rich evangelist evangelical heritage, but that is changing. We have come out of our troubles which had a big impact, especially in church life and and that whole secularization that has sweeped in the Republic of Ireland hasn’t been open to the Gospel until recently, in recent years. So there’s great gospel opportunities opening up now in the Republic especially. How come they weren’t open before? So the Catholic Church had quite a hold in the Republic. So when evangelistic endeavors would be going on, people were afraid to go to them. It was seen to be against what the church was teaching. So just had such a hold on people that they wouldn’t come out to things. But people have been disillusioned with what’s been going on in the Catholic Church, and so that has made people more open to search just in other avenues. So Christians in the country want to be the ones presenting the gospel, and here is our great hope, isn’t it, in the Lord Jesus.

Sarah Zylstra
So they were afraid of what the Catholic Church would say so they wouldn’t go to an evangelistic event. Okay, what do you see? What do you see God doing? How do you see Seeds of Hope there?

Gail Curry
Yeah, we’ve seen lots of encouragements in our association of churches, Association of Baptist churches in Ireland and 19. 90 in the Republic of Ireland, we had 11 churches. Today, there are 34 churches that part of our association. So we see God moving in amazing ways. We’ve seen a lot of immigration come into the country, both in the north and in the Republic, but especially in the Republic, a number of people that have emigrated from different countries are Christians already. So that should be an impact. We can definitely see that impact in the smaller churches giving them a bit more support. And also those people are working in the country, they are living in communities. So that should be having a gospel impact across the country as well. So that is really encouraging. And in our own church, it’s in Ballymena in the north of the country, my husband’s the pastor there, but we’ve seen God’s providence in an amazing way. So let me just tell you one story about that a young girl from our church, she went to Singapore after university to work, just for a year, doing occupational therapy. She met her husband, who’s Filipino, they started a family, then felt that need, you know, for family support when you’ve got young kids. So came to live in Ballymena, where her family are from. So Jody, who’s Filipino living in Ballymena, which wouldn’t have seen a lot of immigration from people in other countries, and then some of the firms in Ballymena have brought over 1000 Filipinos to work in Ballymena. So God’s amazing providence. Jodie started a basketball outreach. Partly, Filipinos are really into basketball. It’s the American influence, I think. And so we have this basketball outreach on a Saturday morning with a Christian Epilog, and then he invites any that want to come along for a Bible study on a Thursday evening. And we’ve just seen God work in that and integrating people from a different culture into our church, trying to invite them out to people’s homes for lunch, and just trying to get them integrated, really, into the community and into the church life. So those are some encouragements that we’ve seen across Ireland in recent days. So

Sarah Zylstra
I love that. That’s the same pattern that we actually see in London. Is church attendance is going up, not because your British people, of a sudden are coming back to church, but because there’s so many immigrants and their Christians already, I’m finding their community there. Here’s my question, what countries or what parts of the world are you seeing? These aren’t American immigrants, right, or Canadian immigrants. What? Who’s coming in? Yeah.

Gail Curry
So a lot of African countries, and we see doctors and nurses coming in. A lot of nurses are coming in from India and across Europe as well. So lots of different countries, lots of different languages. We have seen quite a number of Ukrainians who have come in as refugee right across Ireland as well.

Sarah Zylstra
What about theological differences? Are they look are they just looking for a generic church? You know, how do they do they come into your church and learn good theology, or like, how do you line up with how do you line up all the theologies of all these different places.

Gail Curry
Well, I would say, certainly in our context, we very few are Christians that are in the Ballymena area. So it’s given us those gospel opportunities in other parts, probably mainly in the Republic of Ireland. Yeah, that can create a bit of conflict, can’t you? Because you feel that the way that you’ve been brought up, the way that you’ve done church, is the right way. So it does take time to integrate people in. And we want to be studying God’s Word. We want to be doing things because this is, this is the way God’s word tells us, this is the way God wants us to worship Him. So we’re learning together

Sarah Zylstra
that’s good opportunities if you had a billion dollars and couple 1000 people. Thank

Gail Curry
you very much. Sarah, that’s very generous. Yeah, well, I’m sure it’s the same the world around having people on the ground, but it’s on the ground people there, reaching out, evangelizing, especially in the Republic of Ireland, it’s a very rural community. We have a few major cities and then lots of small towns, so that makes it harder to get out to where people are. So the Republic of Ireland is a pioneer mission field. I would say that is the greatest need leaders, both in the north and in the Republic, leaders, men who are going to lead the church, who are going to point us to Christ, who are going to read God’s word, who are going to i. To preach from God’s Word and guide and shape the church discipleship. We can be so caught up with the evangelistic need that’s out there that once people do come to know the Lord, we can forget that they need discipled as well. So we do need people coming and helping us in that training of discipleship within the local church. And the last thing I would say, really, is buildings to meet in. I can think of one church in Dublin, and they meet in a school on a Sunday morning, and they meet in three other buildings during the week for their different activities, for their Bible study and their children’s work and their youth work. And there’s always that fear of at any stage that opportunity to use those facilities could be withdrawn. You know when, yeah, maybe people feel that having a church meeting in their premise is not what they want anymore, so a need for buildings that just helps to see where, well, this is where the church meets, and this is where you come and you’re welcome. Here it is only a building. It’s not the real church, but it does help with outreach and discipleship as well.

Sarah Zylstra
Yeah, that’s really good. Get really practical and tell us about some things that work or don’t work.

Gail Curry
Yes, so COVID gave us different opportunities. Didn’t it going online? Many of us were very nervous about online, and yeah, we’ve seen great opportunities with that. Now, if you haven’t been to Ireland, I have to tell you that the sun does not shine every day. There are very few days that the sun does shine, especially in the winter time, in January and February. It’s dreary. It’s dark. It gets dark at four o’clock in the afternoon. Yeah, that’s a bit miserable. People can feel a bit isolated, spending more time in their own homes. So January and February, we’ve been running within Baptist women. In Ireland, we’ve been running online Bible studies, and women have been joining in. And it amazes me, because I don’t know, I think most of us felt when the pandemic was over. Well, thankfully, that’s the end of online, but women have been keen to join in. Sometimes we get over 500 women. That might not sound like a lot in an American context, but that is a lot for us women right across Ireland, and it’s the one way we’re able to get together. And I’ve been so encouraged. We We maybe watch, we do a Bible study, watching a video, and we go into breakout rooms for discussion and seeing women share with strangers, really, because you’re in these breakout rooms with people you don’t know, then women have been emailing me, please pass on my email address to this person that was in my breakout room. I’ve been in a similar situation. I’d love to make contact and praying together. So that has been really encouraging for us. We have just recently, we have conferences. We have women who teach at TGC here, who have come over to Ireland and do conferences for us. And that just gives us opportunities to hear teaching from women who are great models of how to handle God’s word. And we would do conferences, the one conference, maybe in three different venues right down the length of Ireland, just giving women that opportunity to come together. We love that fellowship together, don’t we, but also to have that opportunity for good, solid Bible teaching as well. And then I did say the winter time is dreary. Summertime, it doesn’t get dark to maybe half 1011, o’clock at night. So once the spring comes and the nights are getting longer, you see lots of women out walking. They want to get that you know, beach body before the summertime, and, you know, lots of women’s groups, then will organize. Let’s come together. Let’s walk together. You’ve got that sense of security, you know, walking out as a group of women. So women at church are encouraged. Invite your neighbors, invite your non Christian friends. Let’s go out for a walk. Let’s come back together. Let’s hear a story of what God is doing in someone’s life. And that then opens up that opportunity for those natural conversations with your non Christian friends that can be very hard to bring it round to a gospel conversation. And then the other thing that we’ve seen just it’s been really encouraging. It’s just different courses that we’ve been able to do. We have a college, Irish Baptist College, that trains men for ministry, and we do evening classes there. So we have a woman’s discipleship course on a Tuesday night, and people can come in person. Person, people can also join in online, and that has amazed me, that women in different parts of the country join in online. It’s a hybrid, and yet still feel part of the class, even though they’re not there physically. And we have great opportunities just to discuss God’s Word together and to disciple women and to encourage them, then to use the gifts that God has given them back in their local church. That’s

Sarah Zylstra
really good. I just want to one thing that Gail said when I was talking to her earlier, is the reason that they do those she’ll have like a conference, but she’ll do it three times instead of having one big one like we’re doing here, it’s because it’s a lot easier for women if they don’t have to go away overnight, right? Especially if you have little kids, it’s so much easier to pop in for a day conference. And so I just want to, if you have church that would maybe someday want to hold a weekend conference, if you draw women from your local area that would never be able to come, or would rarely be able to come, to something that would be bigger and cost more and time and money. Very good. Okay, Carol, you basically look at all of Latin America. Tell us about what the spiritual context of where you have been. And also, I mean, you’re at Coliseum, so you’re looking at, that’s our Spanish speaking website. And so she’s looking at not just Guatemala, not just the Dominican Republic, but a lot of different places.

Carol de Rossi
So our countries have been historically Catholic domain by the Roman Catholic Church. You would see a lot of families that would identify themselves as Christian people just because they were born in a Christian environment, but that doesn’t mean that they go to a church, that they practice what they know, that they live accordingly to the word. It’s very sad to see that there is a very big amount of people that even though believe they’re Christians, they don’t know the Bible. They don’t know what the gospel is about. They would only have this understanding that if you’re good people and you avoid those big sins, if you don’t kill anyone, if you don’t, you know, commit those kind of of things, then you’re good and you’re a good person. So good people go to heaven, and that’s what we we see around a lot. We also have a big influence that comes from that cross prosperity gospel. So you have this huge gap between people that don’t go to church and don’t read the Bible, and then you have this amount of people that go to church and listen to this prosperity gospel and this big lie about the more you give, the more you’re going to be blessed. If you’re not healthy, if you’re sick, then that means that there’s some big sin in your life, you have to confess, and that’s a huge movement around Latin America that is having a big impact, and that it’s hurting people too. Yeah,

Sarah Zylstra
I, I think to some extent, everybody swim in the prosperity gospel, right? There’s, certainly, there’s strengths of it in America. It’s all over Africa, probably all over your countries too, right? There’s, if you God wills for your you to have a great car and a, you know, great house. And you know, we don’t help ourselves with that through social media either. That that’s what God has promised you and wants for you. And of course, what he wants is your sanctification and the fruits of the Spirit to be growing in you.

Carol de Rossi
And I would like to add that in our countries, sound doctrine churches are usually very small churches, very poor buildings, because there’s not a lot of money going in there. And prosperity gospel churches have these huge buildings, very nice looking churches parking lots. So that’s also something that shines for people, and they’re like, oh, wow, this is so beautiful, such a beautiful place. I just want to be part of that.

Sarah Zylstra
Yeah, yeah. It makes sense. Okay. In that context, talk to us about what you see God doing

Carol de Rossi
well, my husband and our kids just moved to the Dominican Republic last year, and what we see there is what I will say, it’s a revival of The Gospel. There are, I can think of three specific churches that aren’t small churches for Latin American context. Those are big churches, and they are really sound doctrine, sound teaching, churches that’s very different from Guatemala or for other countries in Latin America. America, because if they are big, that means that they are having a very good influence in the country. So it’s been a little bit of a different experience for us, because now you’re in a country that has this access to sound teaching, and that makes an impact in the society and how people are starting to live or believe, kind

Sarah Zylstra
of like salt, kind of like salt or light,

Carol de Rossi
exactly. So we have been seeing a revival that has been coming from the Dominican Republic, spending to the rest of the countries, because these pastors are influential. These pastors are well equipped. And these pastors have also had the disposition to go around other countries and just go speak, teach, preach, and they are, they also have a very good presence in the coalition council members, so that has given them the opportunity to get in touch with pastors that are leading very small churches, like in very far away places that don’t have that access to this kind of teaching. So that has become a very influential spot to be there.

Sarah Zylstra
Yeah, if I would make an analogy, I think that the church she’s at, the pastor is called Miguel Nunez, and it operates almost like a Tim Keller Redeemer flag in the ground of like, here’s where you can learn, here’s where you can come and learn, right? And then out from there has spread a tremendous amount of influence. Yeah, that’s awesome. Talk to us about, can you talk to us just for a second, too, about Coliseum? I feel like this is bragging a little bit, so I don’t love it, but colacion is the largest Spanish language religious website in the world, and it has just grown tremendously. It’s this, it’s the Spanish TGC, and so the influence these are pastors that are writing and their pastors that are forming their council, or these solid doctrine reformed pastors based a lot of them Dominican Republic, but spread around. I

Carol de Rossi
know what you mean. It feels like bragging, and we don’t like to do that. Our executive director is seen here right now, and he knows that we don’t like to lead or have decisions done around numbers, but we are the largest Christian website in Spanish right now, and that’s huge, because that means that we are serving a need, and that means that people are looking for answers and for a website to have this amount of views. That means a lot. That means people just go to Google and they go, like, I just had a miscarriage. What do I do? Like, what does the Bible says about this? My friend lost their their son. How do you grieve in a Christian way, for example? So people are looking for answers on the internet, and that means a lot for coalition to have all this content in Spanish. For Spanish speaking people, we do have a good amount of articles that are translated from English, but we do have a very good amount of articles right now that are written by Spanish speaking authors, people that live in the context in Latin America and know how to speak the language, I would Say, the hard language. Just handle their Bibles and are able to provide answers and are able to provide teaching that people are looking from our from my event perspective, that has allowed us to go to many different countries around Latin America, with conferences, training, network events, just looking to provide pastors, leaders, women, different opportunities to get to know their Bibles that were looking for. People need to know their Bibles. That’s where the gospel is, that what the truth is, that’s where salvation is. So we want to provide this to them. I feel like you’re

Sarah Zylstra
leading right into my next question would be like, if you had lots of money and time and energy and people, what would you do with it? Maybe more of that.

Carol de Rossi
This morning, when I was getting ready and I was thinking about what we’re going to talk about, I remember that question, and I was like, I would love to have that amount of money to have a conference as big as this one, because that’s what I do. I I’m in church of conferences. I’ve never had a big conferences as this because I was thinking like, wow, more than 1000 women together. Yeah. That that’s like a portrait of what heaven’s gonna look like, like we’re coming from different backgrounds and representing different families, different stories. And I was like, wow, I would love to do that for Latin America. But reality hit me in a way that, okay, probably I’m not gonna fill the room like, probably not 8000 people are gonna come. So yeah, I’m gonna leave the next word for the next question to share, to share more about it. But I was like, Okay, I’m not gonna use the money on that. Okay, I would, I would say, wouldn’t. We would need a lot of Bible equipping, a lot of Bible training. I would love to bring this amazing teachers from around the world, from from whom we can learn a lot, and just make sure that pastors know their Bibles, that people really understands what the gospel is about. We have a gospel that has been distorted in so many bad ways, painful ways, the prosperity gospel has done a lot of damage. And when people realize that it was not what they thought there was, they don’t, they are not that willing to listen about the gospel after that, because now it’s a scam. Now it’s something that ruined their lives. Now it’s something that they were lied about. So yeah, I would spend that on a lot of Bible training, Bible equipping, yeah, opportunities for people to to learn

Sarah Zylstra
that’s awesome. So with the limited manpower, energy and people that you have tell us about some practical ministry tips or strategies or things you’ve tried,

Carol de Rossi
conferences are a big thing right now. I think it there are not only learning opportunities, but they also provide this environment where you can meet other people that are doing the same, that have been called by the Lord to do the same, that are having the same struggles, that are having the same questions, so that, I would say that strengthens the ministry around different countries, because when you leave an event like this, you are like, Okay, I’m not on my own, I’m not alone, like we’re In this together. There are other people that are just in the same spot where I am, and we can do this together, and you realize that the impact of the community, what that has, and how God created us to just live inside a community. And you can find these people, probably not that close to you, but they are in other places doing the same. And that’s that’s huge. So I will say that has been a win to provide this podcast in Spanish, articles in Spanish, these different resources in our own languages. That’s huge too, because a few years ago, I would say you would like to have sound teaching and really good things related to the Bible. You had to go to the gospel coalition.org, and if you don’t manage or you don’t handle the English that well, you would Okay, probably understand some of that or just translate it and try to learn on your own. But we’re now creating these opportunities for people that do not know this other language and can have access to that. And

Sarah Zylstra
I feel like you’re taking a page out of Gail’s book and having smaller regional or like each country. You’re not just having one big

Carol de Rossi
company. No, no, we’re making this one of the reasons that I mentioned before that it wouldn’t work. It’s just because it’s not that easy for people to travel. For example, if I want to bring some friends here, that’s hard because people need to have a visa, and visas are expensive. For example, I we in Guatemala, we used to pay $400 for our rental. And the visa is 150 I think it’s 185 right now. So that’s, you know, like, Okay, that’s a huge part of my rental living. So I have to think about that. And not only that, you pay, and you don’t know if they’re gonna say yes or no, so you have that. And tickets are international tickets, so those are more expensive, and that happens in our own countries too, because sometimes you need a visa to go to Mexico. You need a visa to go to paragua. You need a visa to go to Argentina. So large events like this. Don’t work. They don’t usually work. What works is if we have these small or medium events, and we go to very specific countries, and we know that people around that country that are closer are more willing to or will have more access to pay for a flight ticket or just go. So we do have a lot of events before COVID. On 2019, we had 14 events during the year, then COVID Hit that kind of, you know, pull things back. We’re having this year five to six conferences, and we’re probably going to have more the next year, because we’re just trying to get back on track and, yeah, just getting to where people are good. Thank you. That’s good.

Sarah Zylstra
Shams, yeah, your country is the darkest. Sorry, yeah, and tell us about it. Are there even? Is there even a Christian left standing in Afghanistan,

Shamsia Borhani Rafee
it’s very interesting that we are all together in one room. One side of the world is so free, and people are open, and they’re going crazy to handle the freedom, and the other side there’s lots of limitation, very dark, that people just are seeking to away for escaping, and that’s where I come from. So if we talk about the spiritual context of Afghanistan, it takes us way back in the history where even Fauci speakers heard the gospel from Peter from other disciples, as we read in the book of Act. And even from that time, the persecution has been on and on. Church suffered under the government and later on, like we had Christians on seventh centuries, we had Christians on 11 centuries. But since the church was under a lot of persecution, nobody kept the record and publicly announced that really there are Christians. Later on, in 90s, one of the radical authorities wanted to make one of the brothers named Zion to force him to repent, or just to turn his back and say that I’m not a Christian, or I reject Jesus. But he didn’t, and it caused him to be killed by the authorities in a very horrific way. And then, when we think about all of this, when Islam took root more and more in the country, the church has been persecuted more some people, some of them had to flee the country. Some of them had to worse, were killed, or some of them might have just become Muslim. Since like um, but after 20, like, the last two decades, when the 911 happened and then people got to experience a little bit of freedom. It was good, not only for people to experience freedom on their daily life. It opened opportunity for missionaries to go to Afghanistan. People get got to hear the Word of God, and they got to there was churches. Of course, in every country, there is not 100% of healthy churches, but still, people could care. So this was the same thing. In Afghanistan. We had Christians. There was house churches, not publicly at all. Christians are not identified as an independent like religious group, or they are not even counted as minorities. But on 2016 the government announced that everybody should have the electric ID card. So we thought we wouldn’t want our children just because we were supposed to face that consequences, just because converting to Christianity, we didn’t want that happen to our children. So and also, there’s another reason that most of the Christians because they have been under a lot of pressure from the Islamic government. Everybody is very afraid or shy to talk about their faith or say, I am a Christian. You cannot say that I have seen like very close friends to say in the public that if someone asked, Are you a Christian? They’re like, I don’t have any answer, and they’re just because they are afraid of losing their lives or the treats are for their family members or their own reasons. They would say, No, I’m not. So that’s hard. BREAKING and very sad. So we went ahead and we applied for the electronic ID card. And my family, my husband and I and another friend of us, we went and we put Christian on our ID card. So when Taliban took over, sadly, in 2021 we had to go in hiding it. It was a hard time. And then we got, got put to some very good friends in our lives that helped us get off of, get out of Afghanistan, people like Jenny Manley, Nancy, got three Sarah, I cannot say how much I’m grateful for having them in my life, and even the memories, it’s kind of hard to just bring and think about this, yeah, yeah,

Sarah Zylstra
yeah. Talk about who’s talk about. So it feels like there’s nothing left there, right? So, like the Americans leave, the Taliban is going to kill you if you’re a Christian. So you leave, and hundreds of 1000s, probably of Christians have left. So what’s this to talk about? Spiritually? The people who are there is, like every person in Afghanistan a radical Muslim.

Shamsia Borhani Rafee
So the government requires you to be radical Muslims. There is people lost so many things, like especially women. They lost their jobs, they lost the school. They cannot go outside. They cannot travel alone, unless they have a certified man to say that this woman belongs to me, like your carry on back. So this is very hard. But as I said before, it doesn’t matter which part of the world you are living, God is still working. So we see Christians in there. There’s I just wanted to share the stories of two people that they came to Christ when I was a lady. She was a Coronavirus writer. So she was supposed to teach Quran to the children or to the women in the mosque or other religious places. But she became Christian after the Taliban took over. How did she do that? We got to meet her husband that time. They were engaged. So the fiance became a Christian. They were baptized at our house church in Afghanistan, and she got to hear the gospel through her fiance. So she right now, they are encouragement to us. They are inspiration to us every day. And also, there is another guy that he was tried to ask about a Bible from my husband for maybe over six years. But after we moved from Afghanistan, one good thing about social social media is that you can text people, even if there you cannot reach them face to face. So he reached out to my husband, and then my husband had Bible studies online with him weekly. And he’s amazing. He reads the Bible daily. He asks question daily. He texts us if he wants to know more. It’s just inspiring us every day, right? Just like him, there are people that they still believe in Jesus. There are people that share the gospel there, but they cannot go publicly, so they are underground and hiding.

Sarah Zylstra
Talk to us about right now you live in Louisville and you and your ministry is still to Afghan Muslims, but they’re escaped Muslims that live in your community. So talk a little bit about what are some things that you’re doing with them that work great. What are some things that we can learn from what you’re doing?

Shamsia Borhani Rafee
So back in Afghanistan, we had an example that if wherever you go, you train the local leaders, it doesn’t matter how many, how long a person from outside comes to your country or to your town, they will eventually leave. Either they live with their own choice or the people, like in Afghanistan, they kick you out of Afghanistan. The best part is that you can train local leaders and and the other part is that you should find like common things, sports is the best thing. Sports works well every time. Beside that, for Afghan women, they’re laughing tea, one of the best ways that worked for us in Louisville among the Afghan refugees in 2021 it was sad that when people realized that we were Christians, according to Sharia of Islam, you cannot like you would have to change your path. If you walk in the sideway and Muslims saw you, they would turn their face and go to the other side. So we faced that a lot. But my husband come to the plan to the point that let’s get them together somehow. So they started playing soccer. The first day, they invited Afghans to come play soccer. Nobody showed up. But I think a few weeks ago, there was maybe 70 people that attended and played soccer all together, yeah. So this soccer opened up opportunities for us to invite ladies for tea. So

Sarah Zylstra
your husband plays soccer, you come over for tea, yeah? So

Shamsia Borhani Rafee
that way we got to know the families, so we got to share the gospel. We invited them to church. We go like together for events, and it’s a really good opportunity. We’re

Sarah Zylstra
past time. I know it. We’re just going to I’m going to ask her one more question. Is really interesting. Talk about their reaction to landing in a country that is Christian. It’s weird for them, right? Christians are infidels. They left the Taliban in Afghanistan, and they’re landing in a country that is full of infidels and Christianity. What’s that? What’s the reaction? I

Shamsia Borhani Rafee
ask this question every time I see Afghans, because for me, I experienced that I was not welcome in my own country as a Christian, and if a Christian was there, they would we experienced that people wouldn’t shake hand with us. People wouldn’t my parents did not eat food in my house just because I was Christian. So my dad wouldn’t sleep in my house. He was like, too holy to be in a household that people worship Jesus. So yeah, so when we come here for everyone, when I ask this question from them, there’s like, if these people came to my house, people would stone them, like, kill them or but we came here, we had a house ready. We had furniture ready. We had food in our fridge. We had people to take us to the doctor’s appointment people from churches who gave us like rights to every appointment we had, and that’s like blowing their mind.

Sarah Zylstra
So if your church maybe connects with a refugee ministry, even if you cannot speak the language of the people that you are bringing those that you know, that meals to, or the blankets to, or the used furniture to. That is that is a stronger witness than we realize, even just the hospitality of hey, we won’t stone you instead. How about can we furnish your apartment for you? Better? Welcome. Better. Welcome. Okay, we are over time. Thank you so much for coming girls. Thank you so much for sharing.