Zambia Hunt

One afternoon in 2016 I received a call from South Sudan. A missionary was on the line asking if there was space at CABU for a young new Christian from a Muslim background who was eagerly sharing his faith with anyone who would listen. This discussion led to offering Mohamed Ismail a 10/40 scholarship at Central Africa Baptist University and having him as a student from 2017-2020.

During the time he was in Zambia, he sat down on camera for an interview. Here is what he shared,

I am from Darfur, Sudan, in the western part of Sudan. I was born into a Muslim family, and I was a Muslim scholar. The area where I was living was totally a Muslim-dominated area, and we could not have contact with the Christians. It was difficult, actually.

One day, I was reading the Quran, and the verse was chapter 10:93, which says you have to ask the people of the Book if you doubt the message you are reading is from God. I asked my Imam how we could go and ask the people in the book if they were infidels. He said that was then, but now we are not supposed to do that. But the Quran did not say that. I had these questions in my mind, and when I started my university studies, God sent one of the preachers to me in college, and he preached the gospel to me. He shared with me words from the Bible, and I asked him if this was a real Bible? I asked, “Is it corrupted” and he said no.

It was in the year 2010 that I got saved. And I started evangelizing. I formed a small group with my brothers, and we started to meet together for fellowship in a secret manner, so other people would not know what we were doing. We were concerned that if others realized what we were doing, the punishment for us would be death. According to the Islamic ways of doing things, if you leave the face of Islam, you are given three days. If you don’t repent of what you are doing, you will be killed. Because of that, we started meeting secretly, sharing evangelism and discipleship together. Then the time came that we convinced ourselves that we should not continue to do this secretly, so we made the decision to be open to everyone and tell them, “Yes, here we are as a Christian from Darfur.” This was very shocking news for everyone; they could not believe it because the people of Darfur are the people of the religion, the people of the Quran! But for us, we came to the realities and realized that we should be bold enough to tell them, and we would see what God will bring to our lives.

God has brought us into this earth; he is also capable of protecting us as he is protecting other Christians. Persecution will never end in our lives.

If God would make it possible for me to do one thing for Him, I pray that He will use me as a faithful minister for His word. I have to go and take the gospel to those unreached people who are dying because they don’t have the word of God. I would be very proud to take the gospel to them and share with them the word of God; probably some of them will be saved.”

Recently we caught up with Mohamed to get an update.

“So many people have the fear of reaching out to Muslims, thinking that Muslims are very aggressive people…But I have seen that there is power in the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.”

Mohamed was once considered a good Muslim, zealously practicing the Islamic faith. When saved by the true gospel, he became a committed Christ-follower, zealous to minister to his people. Moved by this burden, he studied Bible at CABU and then was sent by a local Zambian church to reach the Muslim communities.

Mohamed began church planting in Kartoum, Sudan, where he began a discipleship class and was investing in two young men. “One of the blessings [is] sharing the truth of the gospel to the people and seeing that God is using this very message to change people’s hearts and bring them to himself and add them to the body of Christ.”

However, the ministry did not continue as planned. Due to political turmoil and civil war, many Sudanese have been displaced, fleeing the conflict. For a time, he was 250km away in Al-Jazeera, ministering to the local community and the Sudanese refugees. He has since moved from place to place and is now residing in Port Sudan. On June 28, he was married, and he and his wife serve together ministering alongside local churches and to the IDP’s in the refugee camps in Port Sudan.

“From the very beginning, my heart was to go and minister to my people back home and that has been my burden, my desire.”

Would you pray for brother Mohamed today? Pray for physical protection, spiritual encouragement, and courage to share the gospel in Muslim communities.