So much of God’s work around the world is taking place in homes. We have the massive house church movements in China and Iran, and similar movements on a smaller scale in many other countries. We have little missional businesses run from homes in many places in the Middle East. We home labs, where we are cooking up electronic Bibles. And we also have a growing number of home schools.
When you think of home school, you may have a picture in your mind of a multitasking mother, sitting at the kitchen table with four or five kids of different ages, some with books, some with laptops and some with colouring pages, while a nutritious dinner is cooking in the oven, and a baby is bouncing on her lap.
This is not what home school in Afghanistan is like. People have no kitchen tables. Mothers usually can’t read or write. There are no home school resources available in their language anyway, and if there were, they couldn’t afford them.
Also, home school is not a choice. It is a necessity since girls can no longer attend school. Home schools in Afghanistan are run by brave women who open their homes to eager crowds of girls who sit on carpets with a few simple books and pencils. Sometimes they have had an education and job in the past and are stuck at home since the Taliban takeover. They want to pass their learning on to the next generation. Sometimes they are uneducated but open their home, and one of our fieldworkers comes to teach. In that case, the host studies along with the girls.
As Back to Jerusalem, we support several brave Christian ladies who teach and host home schools, bringing hope for this life and the next, to girls who otherwise would have nothing to look forward to. In the testimony of one of these ladies below, you can sense how vital these schools are to the host and students alike. The pictures of her school at home we cannot show for security reasons. But try to picture a cave-like yellow mud house with one room, no windows and an excited and colourful collection of girls sitting on the floor with notebooks. Will you pray these girls will flourish academically and spiritually?
“I never thought I would one day hold a pen again. Years went by, and I only looked at empty notebooks with longing. War, poverty, restrictions—everything seemed to conspire to silence the voice of learning within me. As a little girl, my dream was to become a teacher. But that dream gathered dust in the bitter years of my life, hidden away, slowly fading… or so I thought.
But today, hope has returned to my life—the hope in the God who called me by name many years ago. A school has taken shape in my home. This very simple house, this small room that once was filled with nothing but silence and sorrow, is now alive with the sounds of life, the sound of reading, of laughter, of questions.
Today, I, once a woman who believed it was too late for her, sit on the floor, holding a book in my hand, learning again. When I was able to read my first word, tears flowed from my eyes. Not from sadness, but from a deep joy that words can never fully express. I felt alive again. I felt like someone—like a woman with a voice, a mind, and potential.
This small home school is not just a classroom to me—it is freedom. Freedom from silence, from being forgotten, from the feeling of worthlessness. Now that I’m learning, I feel that my future is still alive. Maybe I couldn’t study as a child, but today, with a heart full of gratitude and eyes full of joyful tears, I have started walking a path I always dreamed of.
And I truly believe it’s never too late, as long as there is hope, as long as there is a light shining in the darkness. With the light of Jesus and the love of you, my sisters and brothers, a new light has begun to shine in my life, so that our forgotten dreams may be turned into reality.
As a woman and mother of two children, I pray from the depths of my heart for health and blessings upon you, my dear sisters and brothers. Amen. May your lives and your guiding light always shine, and may your hearts be filled with hope.
Thank you from all of us.”
