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Have you heard the expression “Boots on the Ground?” Well our Live Dead Missionaries are the boots on the Silk Road. Here we’d like to take a moment and allow one of them to share a snapshot of their life with you. Some names and details have been changed, but this is a true story from this colorful, vibrant, and sometimes surprising region.

I prayed for her for weeks.

The day I met her, she took my daughter, Ruth, from my arms and carried her the rest of the way to my house. It was a long, dusty walk.

I did my best to carry a conversation with her in my new language. She was patient. She smiled. I hired her that day.  And then I called my husband, Josh and told him I had just met my new best friend. He laughed.

She started by coming to my house 2 days a week – allowing me “more time to study.” Whether she would help with cleaning, laundry, cooking or child care was yet to be determined. I had planned to use the time she was there to study behind closed doors, but when she started working in my home I felt compelled to be with her all the time. Cleaning beside her, cooking with her, folding laundry together and talking about our lives.

After being in my home only a handful of days she asked softly, “Do you know Him?”

I hesitated, wanting to be careful that I wasn’t misunderstanding because of our language barrier. I wasn’t. She knows Him too.  But she explained the horrific scene that unfolds if she studies about Him or talks about Him at home.

After lunch one afternoon I asked if she wanted to study the Word together in her language.  Not having a plan of where we would begin, she took my copy of the Book and turned to Mark’s story of Jesus.

Slowly she read out loud the story of the greatest sacrifice in the history of the world.

It wasn’t where I had thought to start, but it was as if she couldn’t wait to read again about what He had done for her.  The sacrifice that He made for her.   A Love so real.  That Love – something she doesn’t find outside of knowing Him.

She comes to my house 4 days a week now.  We study in my home together. We pray together. And she asks me to pray in her language so she can understand me.

She is a gift to me, and I am to her.

Often I hear her thanking Him for a sister that she has found in me. I’m grateful for our deep friendship.

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