Extra: Watching the Jesus Film Made My Heart Feel Clean

Early my first year a few friends and I started a very intentional English corner among Muslm women.  We told them from day one that the theme of all of our lessons was going to be “Example of Righteous women in the Word”  We looked at stories of Even, Sarah, Rachel, Rebecca and Mary.  As we got closer to the pinnacle of Jesus Christ we found more and more stories of when he had reached out to women.  There was some ladies in our group who could have cared less about the content of our lessons, they were more interested in practicing their language, but thankfully other didn’t care a bit about what I had to say out past tense or active voice, they were just desperate to hear more about the man Jesus. 

One particular women seemed to glow every time we mentioned his name.  She would put away anything in her hands and turn expectantly to hear more.  Her intense interest lead us to invite her over on her own one even to watch the Jesus movie with us in her own language.  From the minute we pressed play she was fully engaged in the story unfolding before her.  She stared facing the TV directly with her eyes glued on the screen.  Even after it finished she sat still, unmoving.  My roommate tentatively asked “So, what did you think?”  She turned slowly to face us, her cheeks were wet with fresh tears.  “My heart feels cleaner just watching that movie” she said.

She called me two days later asking if there was a time we could meet us, she really needed to talk to me.  We meet up and chatted about nothing in particular for a while.  “What was it that you wanted to talk about?” I finally got around to asking.  “I heard about a good English teaching job and wanted to mention it to you.  You teach our English corner for free, but I thought you might like to make a little money to help pay your student fees”  She said smiling.  Little did she know that as white westerns we get offered English teaching jobs at least once a day.  We have to fend them off just to get a little peace and quite in our lives. 

My heart sank at her announcement, and I think it must have been noticeable because she asked me what was wrong.  I decided to be straight with her.  “I am disappointed you just want to talk about English teaching… I thought you had called me today to talk more about J and how you can follow him. You always seem so eager to hear more at English corner, you seemed to like the movie the other night… I just thought maybe you were ready.”

She looked confused.  “Of course I follow him.  Every week after English corner I call my finance and retell him the story you shared.  The other night I called him and cried as I tried to relate the movie.  You have helped us both so much by teaching us these things, that I just really wanted to do something nice to help you back.  That’s why I mentioned the English teaching”