African-Americans Reaching Africans

“Person of Peace” Discovers the Truth

In Luke chapter 10, as Jesus is sending out the first 72 missionaries, He instructs them to seek a person of peace when entering a new city. This person will care for them and welcome them to his home.

For several months, Broadview Church, an African-American congregation in Illinois, prayed for a person of peace as they prepared for a vision trip to western Africa. Many western Africans are Muslim and have never heard the message of Christ.

“Our whole church was praying we would have a person of peace, that the Lord would lead us to a person of peace,” said Marvin Parker, senior pastor of Broadview.

Upon arrival in western Africa, a team of four men from Broadview checked into their hotel, continued their prayers for a person of peace, and set out for their first day in the city. Little did they know God would answer their prayers before they even left the hotel.

Walking into the lobby, they met a local taxi driver named Sadu who was looking for tourists who needed a ride into the city.

“It was just miraculous how he came into our life,” Parker said. “You know, God brought him to us, we didn’t go out looking for him.”

Sadu was a Muslim and knew nothing about the Christian faith or the hope believers have in Jesus Christ. Like many western African Muslims, Sadu only knew what he had been taught about Islam and based his beliefs on that doctrine.

Islamic doctrine is based on the Quran, a book Muslims believe is the definitive holy book. However, they believe the only true Quran is written in Arabic, which many Muslims across Africa cannot read.

Since Sadu and most Muslims in western Africa are unable to read the Quran, their beliefs stem from teachings from an imam, an Islamic leader, not from reading the book and deciding themselves what they should believe.

Each day Sadu drove the men to different areas of the city where the team would use the Creation to Christ story to share with people how God created the universe and eventually sent His only Son, Jesus, as the perfect sacrifice for man’s sin.

After hearing the stories the first couple of times, Sadu, like the others, saw Christian beliefs the same as Muslim beliefs, with only a few minor differences between the two religions.

As the week went on, Marvin took every opportunity to explain to Sadu the differences between the two and how the Bible is God’s Word and everything in the Bible is true.

Over and over throughout the week Sadu heard God’s story and began to understand the differences between Christianity and Islam. The more he heard these stories, the more he wanted other Muslims to hear them.

Sadu would take the Broadview men to a new group of Muslims and tell them not to begin the stories until he could gather a larger group to hear.

By the end of the week, Sadu could no longer deny the truth in the message of Christ. He had lived a life with a veil over his eyes, never knowing the truth of God’s love for man.

On October 26, 2009, Sadu was born again into the family of God and baptized in the Atlantic Ocean with two other new believers, all three turning from the false teachings they had been deceived by their entire lives.

“My whole life I did not know what to believe; now I know,” Sadu said. “I need to believe in Jesus Christ; this is really good.”

To learn how your church can get involved in missions in Africa, visit www.imbafrica.org.