Becky: Standing in the Face of Adversity

Ephesians 6:12-13 – “For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms. Therefore put on the full armor of God, so that when the day of evil comes, you may be able to stand your ground, and after you have done everything to stand.”
 
            In Africa, you can hear the Muslim prayers over the loud speaker throughout the day. It’s always such an eerie thing to hear. The most heart wrenching is to her the little boys singing the prayers. Why? I don’t know what they’re even saying. But to know that it’s not truth and that Truth is jealous for them compels me to do something.
A few weeks ago the Lord started moving mine and Hope’s hearts to simply prayer walk around the Mosque and speak life into the atmosphere. As we were walking around they started to pray over the loud speaker. I told Hope that it would be awesome if the Holy Spirit just flooded in there as they are about to pray over the loud speaker. Conviction would grip their hearts, their eyes would be opened to Jesus, repentance would flow off of their lips and their praises would rise to the One, True and Living God and all of this over the loud speaker for all of Busia to hear. Talk about revival. Talk about Busia rising up from the ashes. What if Busia saw a religion who is so devout all turn and become (as Acts puts it) followers of the Way? Would they all not seek out Jesus Christ? So this became my prayer, for God to radically show up and take His rightful place.
So we started prayer walking around that area when we had the chance. One day Kaitlyn and I were over by some Muslim homes and about five Somalian kids ran towards us. We go to talk to their mothers and they spoke no English, but were welcoming us to play with their kids. It’s hard to explain, but somehow someway the Lord was doing a good work just through us playing. The door opened. Relationships were beginning. Wait, we only have a week and a half left! But lack of time couldn’t stop us from going back. We knew that day that the Lord was up to something good.

Tuesday Hope, Kaitlyn and I went back. As we were sitting with the women and the children were hanging all over us, a man named Maxwell walks up with wonderful English. We found out he is born again and he invited to come into his sister’s home right around the corner. We were talking to him for quite a while before his sister, Becky, came home. We quickly found out that Maxwell is quite the negative man, but it’s because he has seen the corruption in Kenya. We asked if we could pray for them for anything. Becky is obviously pregnant so I asked her where her husband was. Her lips started quivering and she looked down. Immediately I thought, “CRAP!” I had no idea something was going on. I figured he was at work. But the Lord used it for good. All she told us then was her husband had left her. We prayed over her and that began a friendship that may not have started otherwise. She came back out front with us to sit with the Muslim women. She asked if we liked to sing and she began to sing gospel songs right there in front of the Muslim women and the Mosque ten steps away. It was beautiful ushering the presence of the Lord into an atmosphere of darkness.
Thursday, Hope and I went back to visit them. Cherish, Becky’s three year old little girl, runs out, grabs my hand and drags me back to her house. Becky had been sitting there all day waiting for us to come. She was so excited to have people who just wanted to hang out with her. We asked her how it was being the only Christian in the midst of a Muslim community. She said it’s difficult sometimes when she can’t sleep because the prayers are so loud or when they laugh at her for saying Yesu (Jesus). The women in the community try to convince her to send Cherish to their school so she can become Islamic. Although Cherish doesn’t fully understand why she can’t go and gets upset because she just wants to be with her friends, she freely walks around talking and singing about Jesus. If the women hear their children even mention the name Yesu, they beat them. I don’t think Cherish or anyone in the area know the life that she is able to speak into the atmosphere.

Becky said at times she will try to talk to them about Jesus, but they only mock her telling her to go to her church with her people where they only pray once a day. But I believe it is only their fear speaking. If a Muslim decides to turn to Jesus, they can be divorced, rejected by their families or even killed. Becky told us there is one Somolian man in Busia who converted to Christianity and there have been threats on his life for years, but no one has been able to succeed. No wonder they are so hard hearted. Fear has blinded them from the Truth.
Becky said that they also believe in good demons and bad demons and they can hear them running across their roofs at night. One morning one of the women came up to Becky and asked if she heard the good demons running last night. Becky told her she did, she rebuked it in Jesus’ name, it fled and she went back to sleep. She carries so much light.

Becky is still standing in the face of so much adversity. She is a mother to a three year old with another on the way and her husband has left her, yet she is still pressing on. She is the only believer in the midst of a Muslim community, yet she is shining the light. She is in a struggle, but we see that it is not against flesh and blood. I believe the Lord gave us a heart for that area for Busia to be shaken, but also for Becky to be strengthened. She carries light in the darkness. Although we are leaving, Becky is a voice crying out in the wilderness. Her voice may be quiet in the natural, but in the heavenly places it’s a booming shout pleasing to the Lord.

May Becky be encouraged and strengthened. May she be a voice to the women. May Cherish be a light to the children. May the Holy Spirit invade that area. May Busia be shaken that Jesus Christ would arise and be glorified.