Rosanna hastily dried her freshly washed hands and picked up her Bible. Lunch hour was over, so people were back from tending their fields, and their bellies were full. This was a favorable time to study with her friend.
Rosanna headed towards Maizah’s house just down the road where, in the heat of the day, Maizah was sitting on a wooden bed under her stilted house, legs tucked under her, her round face framed by a scarf functioning as a hijab. She smiled warmly at Rosanna, and they chit-chatted in their mother tongue, the Great River language. Maizah’s kids ran around in the yard, entertaining themselves.
Rosanna opened her Bible to Genesis and began to read the story of Cain and Abel and the first murder. Rosanna had studied this story with Eric that morning during their Discovery Bible Study practice. After reading for a while, Maizah exclaimed, “This is so beautiful to listen to! The stories are so interesting.”
Seeing the women gathered under the house, the neighbor across the street meandered over. “What are you guys eating? What’s going on?”
Maizah responded, “Actually, we’re not eating anything. But the words of the Bible that Rosanna’s reading are so delicious to the ears.”
Rosanna recently had the opportunity to join a discipleship training event for local believers hosted by AFM at the Pnong project. It was designed for baptized members interested in sharing their faith and becoming disciple makers but who lacked the experience and knowledge of how to do that. Rosanna soaked up every message from those meetings with a sincere and earnest desire to reach her people. She learned how to lead a Discovery Bible Study with non-believers, how to tell her testimony, and about the model of disciple-making movements for which we are striving. Rosanna understands that we want indigenous church-planting movements led not by foreigners but by the local people themselves. Rosanna is one of them.
Rosanna gave up her Muslim life to accept Jesus openly through baptism. Though she lost her son to cancer and her husband is incarcerated, she lives each day with a smile on her face and peace in her heart that comes from her personal Savior. We are thrilled to have Rosanna close by again, in her own village, doing the missionary work that we have strived for years to do but will never accomplish with the same effectiveness as she. Rosanna is sharp and perceptive and has the cultural experience to read the people she’s trying to reach. Though she’s only a newer Christian herself, she already has the desire to multiply her simple faith in others.
This morning, during Bible study in our own home, Rosanna reported that Maizah is stressed about making a living and wants to sell products in front of her house. However, she does not have a shady spot anymore since the road was recently widened, the ditches taking away her prior spot.
Rosanna presented an idea. “If people are too worried about making enough money to buy food, they will not really have the mental capacity to pay attention and feel interested in reading the Bible. They will get annoyed with me for taking their time. Can we help her move her bed to the road and put together a little bamboo roof to provide shade for her? It does not have to cost money.”
We grinned with joy that Rosanna was thinking like Jesus already—to reach people’s physical needs as well as spiritual. She also strategized that “I don’t want to go read with them every single day and make them tired of me. I want them to experience the joy and peace of reading the Bible and then have a day that I don’t come, and they will wonder, Why am I so bored and stressed? Then they will realize that the only difference was that they did not read the Bible with me that day.” I think Rosanna is onto something!
Today, Rosanna read the Bible to five people under Maizah’s stilted house. May they taste and see the delicious Word of God through the witness of Rosanna. Lord, please protect your disciple Rosanna and work mightily through her to reach into the spiritual darkness of her own people and bring them Your light of truth. Amen.
