Sister Meili (not her real name) has just been approved to go to Iraq. With the Iraq visa in her hand, she is following the footsteps of other Chinese BTJ missionaries who have gone before her.
“I have been praying for this moment for so long,” she said at a training center in southern China. Meili is going to serve at the BTJ SAFE HOUSE – a home for women who have been able to escape from slavery. These women have been abused by ISIS in a number of horrible ways and Meili believes that serving them and sharing with them the love of Jesus Christ will help bring hope and restoration.
“When I was 16 years old, God gave me a vision and told me that I would be serving in Iraq,” Meili said during a meeting about the work in Iraq. “I knew that it might be dangerous, but I just want to follow the voice of God. Since that day I have been studying the Arabic language.”
When Meili was asked who taught her Arabic, she shyly responds, “No one. I have been studying on the Internet.” Meili comes from a poor rural farming village in China. She did not complete high school and did not have the money to attend a language training center, but she believes that God called her to go.
She has been studying Arabic on her own for more than six years and has even been used by the underground house church to teach others the basics of Arabic.
Several people that are arguably more qualified than Meili by worldly standards have the burden to go, but few of them actually make the commitment to go. Meili is just one of the BTJ missionaries that will be traveling to Iraq to serve in the areas hit hardest by ISIS.
To join Meili and the project that she is working on, you can click here: