WAVELENGTH

WORDSHOPEOF

Good News.No Boundaries.

Summer 2012 | woh.org

In this Issue:• Closed Country, Open Hearts: A

story from Iran

• News Briefs

• How to Support Iranian Believers

Volume 1 | Number 3

A WORD FROM THE PRESIDENTSaeid’s story mentions the important role

that Bible conferences have had in his journey

to Christian faith. Since 1999 Words of Hope

has been following up our broadcast ministry

into Iran by regularly hosting gatherings

outside the country where seekers and new

believers come together to learn more about

the Bible and the Christian life, to pray and

worship freely, and to enjoy a rare opportunity for fellowship with other

Christians.

The problem we saw was this. Many people were responding to

the gospel in Iran. But most of them were extremely isolated, with

no church in their town or city. Some had never even met another

Christian and had no fellowship in their new faith. As a result, some of

those who were in contact with our ministry leader would write or call

for a time, then become discouraged and drift away. What could we do?

The answer we came up with was to help people become part of

an intensive “church for a week” in the form of a Bible conference.

The results we have witnessed over the past twelve years among the

hundreds of attendees have been greatly encouraging. And to me

personally, nothing I have done in ministry has been more rewarding.

As we say in Persian, “Qhoda ra shokre!” (Praise the Lord!)

WAVELENGTH Volume 1 | Number 3

WAVELENGTH is published quarterly by Words of Hope to raise awareness of the work being done around the world by our ministry partners.

All photos are by staff and volunteers of Words of Hope unless otherwise noted.Cover Photo by Hamed Saber

Copyright 2012 by Words of Hope.

Words of Hope700 Ball Ave NEGrand Rapids, MI 495031-800-459-6181www.woh.org

2 | WAVELENGTH • Summer 2012

SUPPORT IRANIAN BELIEVERS

$40 buys a Bible for delivery to an Iranian believer.

$68 buys air time for one Farsi radio program for one day.

$150 provides food and lodging for one person attending a conference.

$600 covers all costs (including

transportation) for an Iranian believer to

attend a discipleship conference.

$1,500 meets expenses for a teacher to

lead a week of training.

$3,000 covers the cost of translation, typing, and printing of one Christian book

into the Farsi language.

facebook.com/wordsofhope

WAVELENGTH • Summer 2012 | 3

NEWS BRIEFS

Many young Arabs are using the Internet instead of the radio for their news or music. Many popular radio and television stations have set up websites to more easily stream their content. Our Arabic partnership has now undertaken a 24-hour Arabic language internet radio station. This will incorporate local church volunteers throughout the Arab world as well as present and future staff. The involvement of this volunteer network means that local churches take ownership of the ministry.

Summer is a time for VBS (Vacation Bible School) not just in America, but in India as well. However, in India most volunteers have had no training in teaching or running a successful VBS program. So we conducted workshops in the city of Ranchi to help them. This was well received, equipping the leaders to work with children. Such training will raise the level of the churches’ outreach programs, not only this year but also for years to come.

Our Specialized English program Spotlight has seen a tremendous leap in the amount of traffic on the program’s website. In September 2010, the website had 34,000 visitors. By September 2011, that number had increased 30%, to 44,000. In the last year, we have averaged more than 40,000 visitors every month, with more than 450,000 visitors to www.spotlightradio.com over the whole year. Director of Spotlight

Christy Prins says, “It has been amazing to see this growth. Our marketing efforts account for some of this growth, but a lot is happening through word-of-mouth. We often see traffic from a country and think, ‘How did they find out about us there?’ I believe it’s a testament to the quality of our program and the desire people have to learn English.”

Arabic India

Spotlight

4 | WAVELENGTH • Summer 2012

CLOSED COUNTRY,OPEN HEARTS

A Curious Stranger

Saied [pronounced sigh-eed] Separ watched the man as he welcomed customers to his internet cafe. For three months Saied had been stopping by to update the cafe’s software. He could see that the owner was different somehow, but he didn’t understand why. A possible answer came one day when Saied saw the man pray before eating lunch. As a Muslim, Saied prayed at set times each day, so this kind of private prayer wasn’t part of his everyday life. Something clicked in Saied’s head then and the pieces fell into place. The cafe owner wasn’t a Muslim - he was a Christian!

Attracted by what he saw in that man’s life, Saied wanted to learn more about Christianity. He knew the place to do this would be at a church, but it wasn’t easy for him as a Muslim to go to a church. Four times he tried to attend a service, but each time he was turned away. He was frustrated and ready to give up. Only when a friend who was known to the congregation attested that Saied wasn’t a member of the secret police was he finally accepted at the church.

Saied had to hide his actions from his family, and he wasn’t always able to attend worship. He turned to Words of Hope’s radio programs for instruction in this new faith. In doing this Saied was attending a church-without-walls. By tuning in and listening to God’s word Saied was worshiping with a congregation spread throughout Iran, their names and numbers known only to God.

An Open Heart

When Saied heard the message, “God loves you. God chose you. God has a plan for your life” it grabbed his heart and wouldn’t let go. He wasn’t quite ready to commit his life to Christ, though. Saied had grown up knowing nothing but Islam, and the new message of hope, like yeast in a loaf of bread, needed time to take effect.

Another reason Saied’s conversion was not easy was because in Iran changing one’s religion can literally be a matter of life and death. Saied’s own mother wailed when he started going to

How Jesus found a young Iranian man

and wouldn’t let go

WAVELENGTH • Summer 2012 | 5Left: Saied & The Iranian Flag

church, not because of her religious convictions but because she knew her son could be in mortal danger. In spite of these risks, after months of reading the Bible and praying, Saied could no longer ignore the call upon his heart. As he says, he “opened his heart to Jesus.”

Support and Smuggling

In 2003, Saied attended his first Words of Hope conference. “I went with some friends. There was a guy there translating [from English to Persian] and I thought I knew his voice from somewhere. It took me a minute, but then I realized: the radio!” At this conference Saied was able to worship, ask questions, and talk without fear. He met other Christians who lived throughout Iran. Saied also noted one more thing. “After I came to a few conferences, I realized that many Americans and other people around the world are thinking about my country. Brother David [Bast] has a heart for my country. I met people who love my people more than my own government does. I thought, ‘These people live outside the country and have a heart for Iran. You live inside, you need to have more of a heart for the people.’”

Saied began to smuggle Bibles, Christian movies, and Christian literature into Iran. He even had some close calls with the secret police, “One time, I took 25 Bibles in my backpack. The police stopped my bus and said, ‘We want to check everyone’s bags.’ I kept near the back of the line until there were only two people in front of me. Then the police said, ‘Enough. Everyone back on the bus.’ This is how God told me: ‘Don’t be scared.’”

Saied Disappears

But he would not always be so protected. One day, with his backpack zipper grinning wide open, stuffed with literature, two men demanded him to answer a few questions. He was carrying so much Christian material it was no good denying anything. The men soon stopped pretending to be anything but police officers. They arrested him and put him in jail. It was as if Saied disappeared from the earth. His family didn’t know where he was. His friends couldn’t find him. Seven days later he stumbled back into the world, his back criss-crossed with welts and bruises.

6 | WAVELENGTH • Summer 2012

Left: Mosque in IranCenter: Words of Hope producer recording a Farsi programRight: Saied with a missionary family at a Bible conference

When he arrived home there was no point any longer in trying to hide anything from his family. “Before all this happened, I hadn’t told my dad. Afterward I told him I had been a Christian since 2003. He froze, not saying anything. Then he was very angry, ‘Go!’ was all he said.” Unfortunately Saied did not have many places he could go. Once you’ve been tagged as a Christian in Iran, just visiting someone is enough to place them under suspicion. Saied had been marked by the government, both literally and figuratively.

Staying in Turkey

In 2009, Saied fled to Turkey. But even there his heart yearned to share the gospel with his people. Since many Iranians travel to Turkey by train, Saied went to train stations to hand out Bibles and tracts to new arrivals. His support network in Turkey was small but faithful, but after two years he knew it couldn’t go on forever. Since he could not return to Iran without risking his life he decided to apply to the United Nations High Commission on Refugees (UNHCR) for refugee status.

In 2011, David Bast brought along several members of Fifth Reformed Church, including astor Jon Sherrill, to a conference in Turkey. Pastor Sherrill said, “We knew a bit of Saied’s story before the conference and said to each other, ‘If he gets [refugee status] granted, we’re going to have to do something.” A few days later, while the conference was still going on, Saied got the letter saying he had been approved to go to the United States. The group from Fifth Reformed Church told Saied to request to be sent to Grand Rapids, Michigan, where they would be waiting for him.

God Is Working in Iran

Last fall, Saied settled in Grand Rapids and was embraced by the church. Pastor Sherrill said that this was mostly due to Saied himself, “Saied is so engaging and has been an evangelism example for us. Saied invited his entire English class to church, even the instructor!” Saied continues to study English, not so that he can pursue the “American dream” but so he can attend college and continue to share Jesus with people. One day, he hopes to return to Iran. He said, “I believe this: closed country, open hearts. Many Iranians today are opening their hearts to Jesus. I know that God is working in my country.”

WAVELENGTH • Summer 2012 | 7

Left: Farsi radio program recording studioCenter: Skip Pylman and Jan Fields with Pastor John Sherrill (center) from Fifth Reformed Church on their visit to TurkeyRight: Saied with WOH President David Bast and his wife Betty Jo.

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