small_towns
September 21st 2008, 03:19 PM
Since this is the place for talking about missionary activity, I wanted to describe my experiences from this past summer. I was in Jordan, in the capital city Amman, from May-late July. We were working with two groups, one that was offering Christians escaping Iraq safe shelter/food/relief.... and another group that was building two churches up. I don't mean the actual structures. They were house churches.... but the people, the materials, figuring out how to pastor these places and how to keep them going. There are a huge majority of Sunni Muslims and a pretty small Christian population in Jordan but there ARE some. Christianity's a lot more quiet there, but it's there. These two houses we were working on preparing and training the people in them....they were incredible. The one family owning one of the two houses gave the whole lower level of his house over for a church. It is LITERALLY an underground church! The other house has one man that owns it and the land, and he's actually one very cool guy..... he's a former Shia Muslim (another small population there) who came to Christ 6 years ago.
The guy owning the second house has developed an "underground railroad" of sorts. It's REALLY hard to get Christians out of Iraq to safety and keep them in Jordan legally, as well as get them provisions and some kind of work.... but family by family, that man was helping us do it. It was awesome. There was a group of 23 of us. Australians, Canadians, Americans, British, and the rest were local from Jordan who'd come to Christ and wanted to build up the church there.
When I had to leave, the two house churches were packed (50-60 people in each of them) and each of them had books, bibles, musical instruments and most importantly, pastors or preachers who could serve the community. Next summer I'm going back, the plan is to actually join those two planter churches as one BIG church in a new building, so over the next year or so, my church, and the Roman Catholic Church across town, as well as a Pentacostal church one town over, are raising money and supplies for these people.
God is amazing and faithful in all we do, when we're doing it through Him. Please keep the Christians, and the non-Christians in Amman in your prayers. The looks on some of the refugees faces, when they were taken inside and told they'd be looked after and given shelter with locals, was unbelievable. That's God's love at work there in Amman.
The guy owning the second house has developed an "underground railroad" of sorts. It's REALLY hard to get Christians out of Iraq to safety and keep them in Jordan legally, as well as get them provisions and some kind of work.... but family by family, that man was helping us do it. It was awesome. There was a group of 23 of us. Australians, Canadians, Americans, British, and the rest were local from Jordan who'd come to Christ and wanted to build up the church there.
When I had to leave, the two house churches were packed (50-60 people in each of them) and each of them had books, bibles, musical instruments and most importantly, pastors or preachers who could serve the community. Next summer I'm going back, the plan is to actually join those two planter churches as one BIG church in a new building, so over the next year or so, my church, and the Roman Catholic Church across town, as well as a Pentacostal church one town over, are raising money and supplies for these people.
God is amazing and faithful in all we do, when we're doing it through Him. Please keep the Christians, and the non-Christians in Amman in your prayers. The looks on some of the refugees faces, when they were taken inside and told they'd be looked after and given shelter with locals, was unbelievable. That's God's love at work there in Amman.