A "please follow up" form led us to some dingy flats above some shops. Behind the door were 3 Pakistani Christians with beaming smiles. Only 2% of the 180 million inhabitants of Pakistan are Christian. So these men are rare.
We were brought inside and sat down in their lounge room, and they scurried off into their bedrooms, and brought back their big bibles in the Urdu language, their mother tongue.
They sat opposite us...ready to learn.
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| Pakistani curry and fresh homemade Chapati after our study. |
We learnt that one of them, Phillips, had actually been in contact with one of the only 880 witnesses back home and had Watchtowers/Awakes and The Greatest Man book!
He brought out to us a yellow envelope with half a dozen certificates in them, from different Christian organizations. Showing he'd reached a particular level of study with them. He pushed them aside saying "No good....Bible...Good....Jehovah's Witnesses" pointing to us, "GOOD"He proceeded to tell us stories about how he'd spent time with many other religions and realized that what they were teaching was not in the bible.
But obviously he could see the truth in the few magazines and books he had.
Another one of them, Yassir, told his father in Saudi Arabia that we were visiting them and his father was so so happy! He said "Jehovah's witnesses will tell you everything you need to know about the bible!" So he must have had some contact too.
We'd been able to download the Truth tract in Urdu so we've been going thru that, in Urdu and English.
They wanted English bibles because as one of them said "my hobby is reading Bible" so they were excited to receive their own new grey NWT.
While going thru the 3rd and 4th question in the truth tract, Phillips asked "what about this" and turned to and read 1 Samuel 28, the account where Saul goes to the spirit-medium at Endor and she brings up who is supposedly dead Samuel and speaks to him.
So while he was learning about the condition of the dead he had remembered reading this account and wanted to understand how that made sense!
Thankfully we have the watchtower online library on hand to help us give a satisfying answer AND google translate to help us with putting some of our more complex ideas into their mother tongue.
Yassir has a phone that he can access the internet so we showed them jw.org/ud in Urdu. So he tells us every morning he looks it up while waiting for the work bus and read something spiritual in Urdu.
Each time we see them it's emphasized "we are so happy to meet you, before you come we are very sad, now you come we are very happy," they are so very grateful that we visit with spiritual food for them!
Just last week 2 of them were able to attend their first meeting....as you can see...many smiles all round!
To be continued....
Hope you're all well xx Naomi and Frank
