Nigeria

A Sisterhood of Grief and Comfort Deborah and Christina have lost children, husbands and homes in Boko Haram attacks, but even great suffering has not shaken their trust in God’s providence. As Deborah chatted with a neighbor under a mango tree one day, five young men drove up, jumped out of their truck with machine guns and walked purposefully toward her home. Her nieces, 9-year-old Palmata and 7-year-old Kumai, whom she had adopted, ate their after-school snacks just outside the front door while Deborah’s husband sat inside the house preparing for a Bible study that evening. Deborah quickly followed them into her house, but one of the men stopped her in the hallway. “You have to lie down!” he barked at her. As she lay on her stomach, the armed man pressed his boot into her lower back. Then she heard four shots in the room where her husband was studying. Overcome with terror, Deborah started praying. She believed that she would be next. To her surprise, the killers left her cowering in the hallway. Once outside, however, they grabbed her young daughters and forced them, screaming, into their truck. “Why are you taking us?” Palmata cried. Deborah scrambled to

A Daughter Betrayed Ruth was leafing through the Bible in her room when her younger sister walked in. “Mom! Ruth has one of those books that belongs to the Christians!” her sister yelled as she ran from the room. Panicked, Ruth shoved the Bible under her mattress. Ruth’s mother and sister ransacked the room looking for the forbidden book, but they somehow overlooked it even though they flipped the mattress. “If I find a Bible, only Allah could save you,” her mother warned. Ruth lived in a Muslim village located in Adamawa state, northern Nigeria. She and her brothers and sisters lived with their mother, while their father supported the family by working in another state. Like 60 percent of Muslim girls in the north, Ruth never learned to read. At age 19, she still spent her days helping her mother with housework. Ruth didn’t think much of Christians; they were infidels, and the ones she knew behaved immorally. However, one Christian boy — a pastor’s son — always nodded politely and smiled when she walked past. Still, she wanted nothing to do with him. Then, one day the boy stopped Ruth and told her he had dreamed that she

A Fulani Muslim’s decision to follow Christ led him from experiencing persecution to helping new Christians grow in faith. “Turn away from Islam and follow me,” the man in white told him. When Abel awoke the next morning at his home in Nigeria, he had no idea what the dream meant. And no matter how hard he tried, he could not forget the man in his dream. “The next day, again, it happened to me,” Abel said. “I had that same dream for three days.” Abel shared the details of the dream with his father and mother, who called it demonic and urged the 28-year-old to recite Muslim prayers to cleanse his mind. He followed their advice, but the dream persisted. Seeking relief from his anxiety and confusion, Abel decided to tell a Christian friend about the dream. His friend then arranged for Abel to meet a pastor, who told Abel he believed the man in the dream was Jesus. After explaining that Jesus is more than the prophet that Muslims portray him to be, the pastor shared the gospel with Abel. The pastor’s explanation of the dream angered Abel, who had always been taught that the Bible had been

Hearing God’s Word Through Audio Bibles in Nigeria Sitting with nearly 60 other former Muslims in a room connected to a VOM safe house, Isaac waited eagerly to hear his name called. Before coming to the safe house in early 2017, his brothers had tied his hands to his ankles, whipped him with wires until his back bled and beat him until one eye swelled shut. That was his punishment for expressing a desire to grow in his new Christian faith. After Isaac’s sister found him and untied his hands and ankles, he eventually made his way to the VOM safe house, with an increased yearning to know Jesus. But spiritual growth came slowly for Isaac because he didn’t have access to a Bible in Fulfulde, the Fulani language he spoke. Everything changed the day Isaac heard his name called at the safe house and walked up to joyfully receive his own audio Bible in the Fulfulde language. He finally had everything he needed to grow closer to Christ. “I am very happy,” he said with a smile after receiving his audio Bible. “This is a very good thing.” In Nigeria, where 40 percent of the population can’t read, audio

As Rebekah stood on a hill just outside her Nigerian village one hot day in 2014, she could do nothing but watch as her house and church burned to the ground. She and her neighbors were devastated at the sight of their village in flames and helpless to defend themselves against the heavily armed Boko Haram militants who had caused the destruction. But for Rebekah, that wasn’t the worst of it; she later learned that her husband and one of her sons had been killed in the attack. Seven months after Rebekah’s life was so radically altered by the Islamist attack, Nigerian military forces pushed Boko Haram out of the region. Though the destruction was widespread, government authorities allowed Rebekah and the other villagers to return to the charred remains of their homes to reclaim what was left. As she sifted through the ashes, Rebekah’s heart filled with hope at the discovery of her burned but still usable Bible. She bent over, carefully picked it up and brushed away the ashes. “Thank you, Lord,” she sighed. Although parts of Genesis and Revelation were burned, the rest of her Bible survived intact. As she continued to mourn the loss of her