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How did you build relationships with Afghan women?

Curry: We both learned the language. I went through five and a half months of language school before I started working with the project. Then you try to create work for them so that they have an income. You have them make you your clothes or bookmarks or tablecloths—stuff you can send home to your supporters.

Mercer: In a place like Afghanistan, everybody wears their heart on their sleeves because life is hard. Everybody knows it's hard, and so you share your heart experiences. Every time the Afghan women would come over, they'd be weeping. Some would share what happened with their husbands or if they were being beaten.

How did you respond to them?

Mercer: Just cry with them, tell them that Jesus loves them, and that we'll pray for them. We care about them.

Was there mutual trust or was there one corner of your heart that wondered if something could go wrong and they might turn on you?

Mercer: You're going to have to take a risk if you're going to live in a place like Afghanistan. You dealt with that before you'd gotten there. You say, Well, it's worth taking a risk for those who are hungry.

How did your church train you to go to Afghanistan?

Curry: It's about 10 months of training—and two months of that is an overseas outreach where you're implementing the things that you tried to acquire in the classroom. A lot of it is basic Christian disciplines: prayer, fasting, studying the Word, discipleship, evangelism, particularly in the context of small groups that meet from house to house, as found in the Book of Acts, chapter 2. We learned how to build bridges with Muslims, the worldview of Muslims. We did study all the world religions.

One of the people you ministered to turned you in. Did you feel betrayed at the time?

Mercer: We didn't know what had happened. But we prayed that the family [to whom we showed the Jesus film] would have been the ones who turned us in, because then that meant they wouldn't be hurt. We didn't want them to suffer punishment when they weren't even followers of Jesus.

What was your mission or objective when you got into the country? What were you willing to do evangelistically?

Mercer: The goal really was twofold—to meet the practical needs of the people whom we went to serve through relief and development, and then, as we had opportunity in the context of relationships, to talk about Jesus. We knew if we were doing one without the other, we were dealing with a half-gospel.

We responded to whatever the people's needs were. If they were sick and needed God to touch them, or if they had a financial need, we prayed for them. If they were asking questions about Jesus, we'd respond by giving a radio or showing the Jesus film. There really wasn't a systematic plan.

Did you have to break Taliban law or did you get around it to share the gospel in some way?

Curry: I think we were just careful. Of course, with a country like Afghanistan, it's a given: You're going to break the law if you're going to ever share about Jesus. But that's one of those things where God's law is higher. He says, Go and share with all nations, all peoples, that he died for every tribe, tongue, nation, language, and people. That rule overrode any law. So we were going to be careful and not be stupid. Plus, we didn't want to put other people in danger unnecessarily unless they knew the risks as well. So it was about building relationships and praying that God would open doors and bring opportunities to share with people whose hearts were hungry.

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July 8 2002, Vol. 46, No. 8