Yemen

How a former Muslim took the gospel to other Yemenis and nearly lost everything in the process As a devoted Muslim, Ibrahim was always ready to defend the Quran. So when a man walked into his small store in Yemen one day in 1997 and asked him a startling question — “Have you ever read the Bible?” — he proudly told the man that he believed the Bible was full of error and distortion. At the end of their conversation, the man gave Ibrahim a New Testament and urged him to read it for himself. Ibrahim agreed, intending to make note of every problematic verse he found. But the more he read the Bible, the more problems he saw with the Quran. “I was trying to help him become a Muslim, but it caused me a headache,” Ibrahim recalled. After reading Jesus’ teachings to “love your enemies” and “bless those who curse you,” Ibrahim considered leaving Islam. He knew, however, that following Jesus Christ would bring shame to his family and endanger his life. At the man’s urging, he continued to study the Scriptures more deeply and ask God to reveal the true way to him. Finally, about a year

In a small, dimly lit office in a Middle Eastern country, Khaled sits quietly on a couch with his hands folded in his lap and scans the room. This is where he’ll share the darkest memories of his family’s lives as Christians in Yemen — a country he and his four children fled following the silent martyrdom of his wife, Samira. He’s surprisingly calm as he prepares to share the gritty details of his journey out of Islam and the countless incidents of persecution his family experienced as a result. He knows there’s a purpose to the pain he and his children still feel today. “When I think about our story, the only thing I can think is that God is preparing us for something bigger … to serve Him,” Khaled says smiling. “It is in layer after layer of persecution that He changes us to be like Him.” A Student of Islam Khaled’s story of persecution begins where his faith in Islam ended. On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, Khaled led the call to prayer at his mosque in Yemen. Doubts about his father’s strict Wahhabism had already left cracks in his Muslim faith. Later that day, when