Can you imagine sacrificing even your name for your faith?
For their protection, we often change the names of the people whose stories we tell you. Sarah* can’t even use her real name with her neighbors and friends. She and her husband have escaped from two governments that hunted and persecuted them for their faith. But Sarah knows of too many others who died under suspicious circumstances after their true identities were revealed, even in their new country.
A Life in Hiding
Sarah grew up in a Christian home in Iran and accepted Christ when she was 11. Like all Christians there, she knew her family could be arrested, imprisoned, or even executed if their faith was discovered in this deeply conservative Islamic nation.
When Sarah married, she and her husband moved to Turkey seeking greater freedom. Instead, they found continued persecution, and her husband was imprisoned by the local government. Alone, Sarah suffered the physical and emotional trauma of a miscarriage.
They live under assumed names. They both know it’s not a secure defense. Anyone could be an agent of one of the countries they’ve fled. “I had to choose a different name to be at peace here,” Sarah says with tears, “but I fear that someone knows me. I have a child who is five years old. I’m responsible for my family.” You can imagine the loneliness and daily precautions.
So when Sarah learned about our partner ministry in her new country—Christians helping women just like her find healing through God’s Word and trauma care—she was hopeful.
Biblica has worked with our ministry partner to provide Bibles in contemporary Farsi, Arabic, and other languages, along with Bible-centered trauma resources based in those translations. This way, women like Sarah can easily understand healing truths—like the power of sharing her burdens with her Christian family and Jesus’s promises to sustain and be with her in the midst of hardships.
“The training was very helpful and amazing,” Sarah says joyfully. “It was a message from God to me. I lost everything, and everything around me was black. But now I don’t say, ‘Oh, God, I have big problems.’ I say to my problems that I have a big God. They gave me hope.”
Now Sarah is eager to help others. She’s guiding her husband and her sister in Iran through the Bible-centered skills, and she works in a Christian center for children with disabilities. She’s able to share that God knows each one of us by name and loves us individually through all of our struggles.
Thank you for sending the spiritual resources women like Sarah need to find healing in Jesus Christ!
*Name changed for safety reasons.
