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My name is Nasarin.

I’m 16 years old now, though the story I’m about to share with you happened when I was 13.

I’m speaking to you today from a place where I can finally tell this story without looking over my shoulder every few minutes.

Though my family still lives with the consequences of what happened, I want to share this with you.

Not because I’m special or brave, but because what God did through me needs to be told.

Not for my glory, but for his.

I need you to understand something before I begin.

This isn’t a fairy tale.

This isn’t a story where everything works out perfectly in the end with everyone smiling and safe.

This is real life in a country where following Jesus can cost you everything and sometimes it does.

>> Hello viewers from around the world.

Before Nasarin continues her story, we’d love to know where you are watching from and we would love to pray for you and your city.

Thank you and may God bless you as you listen to this powerful testimony.

>> I was born in Iran in a city I can’t name for the safety of those still there.

My family has been Christian for two generations now which makes us unusual.

Most Iranians are Muslim, not just culturally Muslim, but deeply seriously Muslim.

The call to prayer echoes through our streets five times a day.

Women cover their hair by law.

Religious police watch for any deviation from Islamic rules.

And in the middle of all this, there are families like mine loving Jesus in secret, worshiping in whispers.

My earliest memories are of my mother’s finger pressed to her lips.

That universal gesture for silence.

I learned it before I learned to write my own name.

Silence about what we believed.

Silence about where we went on certain nights.

Silence about the forbidden Bible hidden in a hollowedout book on our shelf.

Silence, always silence.

Other children could talk freely about their faith.

They could say they went to the mosque, that they prayed to Allah, that they fasted during Ramadan.

I learned early to simply nod and stay quiet when religion came up at school.

I became very good at changing the subject.

Do you know what it’s like to be 7 years old and already carrying secrets that could destroy your family? To know that one careless word on the playground could lead to your father losing his job or worse to police coming to your door in the night.

I learned to live with that weight pressing on my chest day after day.

Our church wasn’t a building with a cross on top.

It was living rooms and basement changing locations every few weeks.

We never said the word church out loud outside our home.

We called it the gathering or the meeting or sometimes just going to visit family.

We had code words for everything.

The Bible was the book.

Baptism was the washing.

Even Jesus had code names we used in public.

I remember one Friday night.

I must have been about 8 years old.

We drove across the city to a house I’d never been to before.

My father parked two streets away.

We walked separately, my mother and I first, then my father and older brother Raza following 5 minutes later as if we didn’t know each other.

In the house, curtains drawn tight.

20 or 25 believers sat crowded in a small room.

We sang worship songs and whispers, our voices barely above a breath.

The worship leader kept one hand raised toward heaven and the other gesturing for us to sing more quietly.

Even our joy had to be silent.

Pastor David, an older man with tired eyes and gentle hands, taught us that night about the book of Acts, about the early church meeting in secret, facing persecution, watching their leaders arrested and killed.

I remember thinking we weren’t reading ancient history.

We were living it.

The same Jesus they followed then was the Jesus we followed now.

The same risks they took.

We took the same faith that kept them going had to keep us going too.

After the service, we shared bread and tea.

The adults spoke in low voices about members who had been questioned by authorities, about families who had fled to Turkey, about new believers who needed disciplehip, but how dangerous it was to meet with them.

Even among ourselves in that locked room with curtains drawn, fear lived with us like an unwelcome guest.

My mother squeezed my hand as we listened.

She did that a lot as if holding on to me physically could somehow protect me from a world that saw our faith as a crime.

My parents’ story shaped everything about how I grew up.

They converted when I was just a baby.

So I don’t remember life before Jesus in our home.

But they told me the story many times, usually late at night when it was just family and we could speak freely.

My father had been a successful engineer.

My mother worked as a teacher.

They were good Muslims following the rules, praying the prayers, fasting during Ramadan.

But my father had questions that wouldn’t go away.

questions about suffering, about God’s character, about why the holy books seemed to contradict themselves.

He started reading everything he could find, including forbidden books.

A Christian man he worked with gave him a Bible hidden inside a technical manual.

My father read it in secret, confused at first, then captivated.

The Jesus he met in those pages was nothing like what he’d been taught.

This Jesus he wept.

This Jesus touched lepers.

This Jesus said that God wasn’t distant and angry but was a father who loved his children.

This Jesus claimed to be God himself.

Come to earth willing to die for humanity’s sins.

It took two years of secret reading, questioning, wrestling.

Then one night alone in his car, my father prayed a simple prayer.

He told Jesus that if he was real, if he truly was the way to God, then he wanted to follow him, whatever the cost.

He said it felt like chains breaking off his soul.

My mother’s conversion came through my father, but also through a dream.

She dreamed of a man in white who called her by name and told her not to be afraid.

When my father finally worked up the courage to tell her about his new faith, expecting divorce or worse, she told him about the dream.

They both knew it was Jesus calling her too.

But conversion came with a price.

My father’s boss discovered their new faith and fired him immediately.

My mother lost her teaching position.

Family members stopped speaking to them.

My father’s own brother reported them to authorities and they were questioned, threatened, told to recant or face imprisonment.

They refused.

They found work where they could always for less money.

always watching their backs.

They connected with the underground church and they raised us, my brother and me, in a faith that had cost them everything but had given them, they said even more.

My older brother Reza struggled with it more than I did.

He was 12 when they converted, old enough to remember when life was easier.

He remembered having friends, family gatherings.

his father’s good job and his mother’s respect in the community.

He saw what their faith cost them and sometimes I could tell he resented it.

By the time I was old enough to understand this was simply how life was.

I didn’t know anything different.

Being Christian meant being careful, being quiet, being separate.

I accepted it the way children accept the realities they’re born into.

But accepting it didn’t mean it was easy.

School was my hardest place.

Not home where we could be ourselves behind locked doors.

Not church where everyone understood, but school where I spent 6 hours a day pretending to be someone I wasn’t.

Every morning started with Islamic prayers over the loudspeaker.

We all stood, handsfolded, heads bowed.

I stood with them.

But in my heart, I was praying to Jesus.

I was asking him to forgive me for the deception, asking him to help me survive another day, asking him to protect my family.

My classmates talked about the mosque, about their prayers, about Islamic teachings.

I learned to smile and nod.

I learned which questions to answer and which to deflect.

I became an expert at being invisible.

There was a girl in my class named Mina.

We sat next to each other in fifth grade and she was kind to me in a way most others weren’t.

She shared her lunch when I forgot mine.

She helped me with math problems.

She was my closest thing to a friend, though I could never truly let her in.

One day, she invited me to her house after school.

I was excited.

I’d never been to a friend’s house before.

My mother was nervous, but allowed it, probably hoping I could have one small piece of normal childhood.

Mina’s home was beautiful, full of family photos and colorful rugs.

Her mother welcomed me with tea and sweets.

Everything was going well until Mina’s mother asked what mosque my family attended.

I froze.

My mind went blank.

I felt heat rising up my neck into my face.

I mumbled something about being new to the area.

Still finding one.

Mina’s mother looked at me strangely.

She asked where we had lived before, what mosque we attended there.

Each question felt like a trap closing tighter.

I made an excuse about feeling sick and left quickly.

Mina seemed confused and hurt.

The next day at school, she was cooler toward me.

Within a week, we weren’t friends anymore.

I never knew what her mother said to her.

But something changed.

Maybe her mother had asked around about my family.

Maybe someone told her we were Christians.

Maybe she simply sensed something was different about me and warned her daughter to stay away.

I cried about it at home that night.

My mother held me while I sobbed into her shoulder.

She stroked my hair and prayed over me in whispers, but she couldn’t take away the loneliness.

She couldn’t give me back my friend.

She couldn’t make me normal.

That was when I first asked the question that would haunt me for years.

Why? Why were we the ones who were wrong? Why did we have to hide? Why couldn’t we just believe what everyone else believed and have an easier life? My mother didn’t give me simple answers.

She told me about the cost of following Jesus, about how he himself said his followers would be persecuted.

She reminded me of the disciples of the early church, of Christians throughout history who suffered for their faith.

She told me that truth isn’t determined by majority vote, that right and wrong aren’t decided by what’s easy or hard.

But I was 10 years old and I wanted friends more than I wanted truth.

The loneliness was the hardest part.

Harder than the fear, harder than the poverty, harder than the constant pretending.

I watched other girls form close friendships, sharing secrets, sleeping over at each other’s houses, growing up together.

I remained on the outside, always watching, never fully part of any group.

At night, I prayed differently than my parents knew.

I prayed for Jesus to make it easier.

I prayed for him to let me be normal, just for a little while.

I prayed for friends who could know the real me.

Sometimes I prayed for him to make me Muslim so the lying could stop.

I’m not proud of those prayers now, but they were honest.

I was a child carrying a burden too heavy for my small shoulders.

The older I got, the more aware I became of of the real dangers we face.

It wasn’t just social isolation.

It was actual physical danger.

When I was 11, a Christian family, three neighborhoods over, was arrested.

The father had been more open about his faith than was wise.

Someone reported them.

Police came in the night, searched their home, found their Bibles and Christian literature.

The father was imprisoned.

The mother and children were released but lost everything.

The church took up a collection to help them.

But how do you help someone who has lost everything? We heard about it at one of our secret gatherings.

Pastor David’s voice shook as he told us the news.

Some of the women wept quietly.

The men sat with clenched jaws.

We all knew it could be any of us next.

My father held a family meeting that night after we got home.

He gathered us in the kitchen, speaking barely above a whisper.

Even in our own home, he reminded us of the rules.

Never speak about our faith outside the house.

Never bring Christian materials to school.

Never invite anyone over without checking with him first.

Never ever tell anyone we were Christians unless we were absolutely certain they could be trusted.

Raza was angry.

He asked why we had to live like this.

why we couldn’t just leave Iran like other families had.

My father’s face looked pained.

He explained that not everyone could leave, that it cost money we didn’t have, that God had placed us here for a reason.

I asked my father if he ever regretted converting.

The question came out before I could stop it.

The room went silent.

My mother’s hand flew to her mouth.

Raza stared at me.

My father looked at me for a long moment.

Then he smiled.

Truly smiled.

Something he didn’t do often.

He told me that following Jesus was the best decision he ever made.

That even if it cost him his life, he would never regret it.

He said that Jesus was worth more than safety, more than comfort, more than an easy life.

I wanted to believe him.

I wanted to have that kind of faith, but I was 11 years old and scared.

And his words felt like they came from a world I couldn’t quite reach yet.

Everything began to change for me.

Around the time I turned 12, it started small with moments I barely noticed at first.

My mother got sick with a terrible fever.

For 3 days, she was bedridden, barely able to move.

We couldn’t afford a doctor.

My father was between jobs again.

We prayed for her as we always prayed for everything.

But this time, I felt something different when I prayed.

A warmth, a certainty, a sense that God was listening in a way I’d never experienced before.

I sat by my mother’s bed and held her hot hand.

I prayed simply the way a child prays.

I asked Jesus to heal her.

I told him we needed her.

I thanked him for loving us even when life was hard.

The next morning, my mother’s fever broke.

She was weak but improving.

By that evening, she was up and moving around.

My father said it was an answer to prayer.

the natural course of illness running its cycle.

I wondered if it was something more, but I kept the wondering to myself.

A few weeks later, my young cousin came to visit with my aunt.

He was 5 years old and burning up with fever, crying pitifully.

My aunt was frantic with worry.

I found myself drawn to him, compelled to pray.

I put my hand on his small forehead and prayed silently so no one would hear me.

I prayed for the fever to leave, for him to be well.

Within an hour, his fever dropped.

By that evening, he was playing and laughing as if he’d never been sick.

My aunt was relieved, but didn’t think much of it.

Children’s fevers come and go.

But I noticed I wondered it happened again with my father’s back pain.

Again with a neighbor’s migraine, though she didn’t know I was praying for her from our window as she walked by, hand pressed to her head.

Again with Reza’s injured ankle, I started to realize something was different about my prayers.

Not all of them were answered the way I prayed, but enough were that I couldn’t dismiss it as coincidence anymore.

It terrified me.

I was 12 years old.

I didn’t want to be different in yet another way.

Being a Christian was hard enough.

What was this new thing? Why was God doing this? I wanted to be invisible, to survive, to maybe one day have a normal life.

This felt like the opposite of all that.

I tried to ignore it.

I tried to pray less specifically, to be more vague in my requests.

But the gift, if that’s what it was, didn’t go away.

It grew stronger.

I started having dreams, vivid, clear dreams, where I saw people I knew who needed help.

In the dreams, I would pray for them and they would be healed.

Then I would see those same people days later, mentioning in passing that some ailment had suddenly cleared up.

I began to spend more time reading our hidden Bible.

I read about Jesus healing the sick, about his disciples doing the same.

I read about spiritual gifts about God giving different abilities to different people for the building up of his church.

I read about young people God used Samuel and David and Mary and others.

But I also read about persecution, about suffering, about the cost of following God’s call.

And I was afraid.

One night, unable to sleep, I crept into my parents’ room.

I woke my father and asked him if we could talk.

We went to the kitchen and I told him everything.

The healings, the dreams, the growing sense that God was doing something through me that I didn’t understand and didn’t want.

My father listened quietly.

When I finished, he was silent for a long time.

Then he took my hands in his and prayed over me.

He prayed for wisdom, for courage, for protection.

He prayed that I would have the strength to carry whatever burden God was placing on me.

Then he told me about spiritual gifts, about how God gives different abilities to different believers.

He said, “These gifts aren’t for our own benefit, but for others to point them to Jesus, to show his love and and power.

” He said that if God was truly giving me this gift, it came with responsibility.

He also warned me.

He said that such a gift, especially in a country like ours, could be dangerous.

If I healed people and they knew it was through prayer to Jesus, it could lead to persecution.

It could put our whole family at risk.

He said we needed to be very, very careful.

But he didn’t tell me to stop praying.

He didn’t tell me to suppress the gift.

He said we would trust God to show us how to use it wisely.

Over the next few months, word spread quietly in our small church community.

Not because I was boasting, but because people noticed.

A woman’s chronic pain disappeared after I prayed with her.

An older man’s infection cleared up.

A child’s breathing problems improved.

The church elders met with me and my parents.

They prayed over me, laying hands on my head.

They recognized the gift and blessed it.

But they also counseledled caution.

They reminded us of the dangers.

They said this gift was from God and should be used for his glory, but wisdom was needed.

I was 13 now and life had become even more complicated.

I was >> carrying not just the secret of being Christian but also this strange gift that I didn’t fully understand and wasn’t sure I wanted.

I prayed constantly for God to take it away to give it to someone else, someone older and braver and stronger.

But he didn’t.

Instead, the gift grew stronger, and I felt him preparing me for something.

I didn’t know what, but I could sense it coming like a storm on the horizon.

Things got worse in our city around this time.

There was a crackdown on religious minorities.

The government was under pressure from conservative religious leaders to enforce Islamic law more strictly.

Christian gatherings were being raided.

People were being arrested.

Our church stopped meeting for several weeks.

It was too dangerous.

When we finally gathered again, we met in groups of no more than five or six in different homes, never the same place twice in a row.

Fear was thick in the air at every gathering.

People spoke in whispers even when doors and windows were locked.

Every car passing outside made us freeze, listening, wondering if this was the night they came for us.

My father lost another job when his employer discovered his faith.

Work was increasingly hard to find.

Money was tight.

My mother started taking in sewing to help, but it wasn’t much.

We ate more rice and lentils, less meat.

My school uniform got worn and patched but not replaced.

Raza started talking seriously about leaving Iran.

He wanted to go to Turkey then maybe Europe.

He wanted a life where he didn’t have to hide, where he could breathe freely.

My parents listened but said nothing.

I knew they were torn between protecting their children and feeling called to stay.

I found myself praying differently during this time, less for my own comfort, more for others.

I prayed for persecuted Christians across our country.

I prayed for Muslims to encounter Jesus.

I prayed for courage for my family.

I prayed for God’s will to be done even when I didn’t know what that meant.

And through it all, I felt this growing sense of anticipation.

Something was coming.

I didn’t know what, but I could feel it building like pressure before an earthquake.

God was preparing me, though.

For what? I couldn’t imagine.

I was 13 years old.

I was scared.

I was lonely.

I was tired of hiding and pretending and living in constant fear.

But I was also learning something important.

Faith isn’t the absence of fear.

Faith is choosing to trust God, even when you’re terrified.

Faith is taking the next step even when you can’t see the path ahead.

Faith is believing that God is good even when life is hard.

I didn’t know it then, but all of this, every hard thing, every lonely moment, every time I chose to keep praying, even when I wanted to give up, was preparing me for what came next.

For the day that would change everything, for the day I would meet Zara, the gift became impossible to ignore in the months leading up to my 13th birthday.

what had been occasional incidents of prayer and healing became something more frequent, more powerful, more undeniable.

And with that power came a weight that pressed down on my shoulders until some days I could barely stand up straight.

I remember the first time I truly understood that this wasn’t just coincidence or natural recovery.

It was a Tuesday afternoon.

I was walking home from school alone as usual, my bag heavy with textbooks, my heart heavier with the loneliness that had become my constant companion.

The autumn air was crisp and leaves skittered across the sidewalk in front of me.

I passed by Mrs.

Ahmadi’s house.

She was an elderly widow who lived alone, a Muslim woman who had always been kind to me.

Despite never quite fitting in with the other neighborhood children, she was sitting on her front step, and even from a distance, I could see something was wrong.

Her face was twisted in pain.

One hand pressed against her chest, the other gripping the railing as if it was the only thing keeping her upright.

I should have kept walking.

That’s what I’d been taught.

Don’t get involved.

Don’t draw attention.

Stay invisible.

But something stronger than fear pulled me toward her.

Not my own courage.

I had none.

It was something else, something outside myself.

I approached her slowly and asked if she was all right.

She looked up at me with watery eyes and told me her heart was acting up again, that she’d had these episodes before, that she just needed to wait it out.

But I could see real fear in her face.

This was worse than usual.

Without thinking, without planning, I sat down beside her on the step.

I asked if I could pray for her.

She looked confused.

She asked what I meant.

What good would prayer do when she needed medicine? I told her I would pray to my God and maybe he would help her.

She didn’t ask which God.

She didn’t ask if I was Muslim or what faith I practice.

She was in too much pain to care.

She just nodded weakly.

I placed my hand gently on her shoulder.

I closed my eyes and I prayed silently in my heart where no one could hear the name I spoke.

I prayed to Jesus.

I asked him to have mercy on this kind woman who had always treated me with gentleness.

I asked him to heal her heart, to take away her pain, to let her live.

The prayer lasted maybe 30 seconds.

When I opened my eyes, Mrs.

Amadi was staring at me with an expression I couldn’t read.

The pain had left her face.

Her breathing had evened out.

The hand that had been clutching her chest now hung loose at her side.

She asked me what I had done.

I told her I had just prayed, that I hadn’t done anything, that if she felt better, it was God’s mercy.

She stood up, testing her body, expecting the pain to return.

It didn’t.

She looked at me with something between wonder and suspicion, thanked me quietly, and went inside.

I walked the rest of the way home in a days.

My hands were shaking.

What had just happened? It was one thing to pray for my family in private to see gradual improvements that could be explained away.

This was different.

This was immediate, undeniable, and it had happened in public, even if only one person had witnessed it.

I told my father about it that night.

He listened carefully, his face grave.

He reminded me again to be careful that such things could draw the wrong kind of attention.

But he also said something else that stayed with me.

He said that God doesn’t give gifts to be hidden away completely.

He gives them to be used with wisdom for his purposes.

The incidents increased after that.

It was like something had been unlocked.

a door I couldn’t close even if I wanted to.

At church gatherings, people began quietly asking me to pray for them.

A man with a persistent cough, a woman with migraines, a teenager with an injured knee.

I would pray sometimes with my hand on them, sometimes just sitting near them with my eyes closed.

And more often than not, they improved.

sometimes immediately, sometimes over the next few days.

The church elders watched this happen with mixed emotions.

I could see the joy in their faces when people were healed.

But I could also see their fear.

In a country where we already had to hide, where our very existence as Christians was illegal, a young girl with a healing gift was both a blessing and a potential disaster.

Pastor David took me aside one evening after a small gathering.

We sat in a corner of the dimly lit basement while others cleaned up and prepared to leave separately, staggered as always to avoid suspicion.

He was a thin man, maybe 50 years old, with gray streaking his beard and deep lines around his eyes.

He had been imprisoned twice for his faith and bore the marks of it in his body and spirit.

He told me he’d been praying about my situation.

He said he believed the gift was genuine, that God had chosen me for something, but he also warned me that gifts from God often come with suffering.

He reminded me of the prophets, of the apostles, of Jesus himself.

He said that being chosen by God isn’t about comfort or safety.

It’s about obedience, whatever the cost.

I was 13 years old and I wanted to cry.

I wanted to tell him I didn’t want to be chosen.

I wanted to be normal.

I wanted friends and safety and a life where I didn’t have to be afraid all the time.

But I also felt deep in my spirit that he was right.

God was preparing me for something and I couldn’t run from it no matter how much I wanted to.

The dreams intensified during this period.

Night after night, I would dream of people I didn’t know, suffering in ways I couldn’t fully understand.

Sometimes I dreamed of faces twisted in pain.

Sometimes I dreamed of crowds of people in darkness reaching out for light.

Sometimes I dreamed of a specific woman with a cloth covering her eyes sitting alone while people pass her by.

I started keeping a notebook hidden under my mattress where I wrote down the dreams.

I didn’t know what they meant, but I felt they were important.

I felt God was showing me something, preparing me for something.

The woman with the covered eyes appeared in my dreams at least a dozen times over several months.

She was always in the same position, sitting on the ground, people walking past her as if she were invisible.

In the dreams, I would approach her.

I would reach out my hand and then I would wake up, my heart pounding, the image seared into my mind.

I asked God what it meant.

Why did I keep seeing her? Who was she? What was he trying to tell me? But I received no clear answer, just a persistent feeling that I needed to be ready, that something was coming.

My relationship with God changed during these months.

Before, he had been somewhat distant.

Someone I prayed to out of duty and sometimes desperation.

Now he felt closer, more present, more real.

When I prayed, I felt him listening.

When I read the Bible, words seemed to leap off the page, speaking directly to my situation.

But closeness to God didn’t make life easier.

If anything, it made it harder.

The more I sensed his presence, the more aware I became of the spiritual battle happening around us.

I began to notice things I’d missed before.

The oppression hanging over our city.

The darkness in people’s eyes.

The way fear and anger seemed to permeate everything.

I also became more aware of the Muslims around me.

Not as enemies or threats, but as people trapped in a system they didn’t choose, seeking God, but looking in the wrong direction.

I started praying for them differently.

Not just for safety from them, but for them to encounter Jesus the way my parents had.

This shift in my prayers troubled me at first.

How could I pray for Muslims to become Christians when I knew what that conversion would cost them? I had seen what it cost my parents, what it was costing me every single day.

Was I praying for their destruction by praying for their salvation? I wrestled with this question for weeks.

Then one night, reading the Bible by flashlight under my blanket so as not to wake my brother in the next room, I came across Jesus’s words about losing your life to find it.

about how following him might mean losing everything but gaining what truly matters.

About how nothing in this world compares to knowing God.

I realized that what I was praying for wasn’t their destruction but their freedom.

Yes, it would be hard.

Yes, it would cost them.

But wasn’t knowing Jesus worth any cost? My parents thought so.

Pastor David, who had been imprisoned and beaten, thought so.

Every believer in our small underground church who risked everything just to worship together thought so.

And slowly, painfully, I was beginning to think so, too.

My 13th birthday came and went with little celebration.

We couldn’t afford much, and besides, celebrations drew attention.

My mother made my favorite meal with what little we had.

My father gave me a small notebook for journaling.

Raza gave me a scarf he’d bought with money from odd jobs.

It was simple, but it was ours and it was filled with love.

That night, after everyone was asleep, I sat by my window looking out at the dark street.

I prayed a prayer that felt significant even as I spoke it silently in my heart.

I told God that I didn’t understand his plans, that I was scared of whatever was coming, but that I wanted to be obedient.

I told him that if he could use a scared 13-year-old girl for his purposes, then I was willing.

I’m not saying I was brave.

I wasn’t.

I was terrified, but I had seen enough of God’s faithfulness in my short life to believe that he would be with me whatever came next.

The following weeks felt like standing on the edge of a cliff.

Everything seemed normal on the surface.

I went to school, came home, helped my mother with chores, studied, prayed.

But underneath there was this constant sense of anticipation of something building.

The dreams about the woman with covered eyes became more frequent and more vivid.

I could see details now.

the type of cloth covering her eyes, the street where she sat, the musk in the background, the texture of the wall behind her.

These weren’t just symbolic dreams.

They were specific, detailed, almost like memories of something that hadn’t happened yet.

I mentioned the dreams to my mother one evening while we were preparing dinner together.

She stopped chopping vegetables and looked at me seriously.

She asked if I thought the dreams were from God, told her I didn’t know for certain, but they felt different from regular dreams.

They felt important.

My mother was quiet for a long moment.

Then she told me about a time before I was born, right after she and my father had converted.

She had a dream about a storm coming, about their family being tossed by waves, but ultimately reaching shore safely.

A week later, my father was arrested and questioned for 3 days.

She said the dream had prepared her, had given her courage to stand firm.

She said that God sometimes shows us things ahead of time, not to scare us, but to prepare us.

She said that if these dreams were from God, then I should pay attention to them, pray about them, and be ready for whatever he was preparing me for.

But she also gripped my shoulder firmly and looked into my eyes.

She told me that I was still a child, that my father and she would protect me as much as they could, that I didn’t have to face anything alone.

Her eyes were fierce with the mother’s love even as they brimmed with tears.

She was trying to hold back.

The crack downed on Christians intensified in our city.

We heard reports of house churches being raided in other neighborhoods.

Several believers we knew were arrested and held for questioning.

One man was beaten so badly he couldn’t walk properly anymore.

The fear in our community grew thicker, more suffocating.

Our church stopped meeting altogether for a full month.

It was too dangerous.

Pastor David sent word through trusted contacts that we should pray at home, stay low, wait for things to calm down.

But things didn’t calm down.

They got worse.

During this time of isolation, of not being able to gather with other believers, I felt the loneliness more acutely than ever.

The gift continued to manifest.

I prayed for family members who got sick and they recovered.

But there was no one to talk to about it.

No community to help me understand what was happening.

just me and God and this growing terrifying sense of calling.

I spent hours reading the Bible during those weeks.

I read about Moses being called to confront Pharaoh and saying he wasn’t eloquent enough.

I read about Gideon being called to lead an army and saying he was the weakest in his family.

I read about Jeremiah being called to be a prophet and saying he was too young.

I read about Mary being called to bear the son of God and saying simply yes even though she didn’t understand how it could happen.

All of them were scared.

All of them felt inadequate.

But all of them obeyed.

I understood something during those long hours of reading and praying.

God doesn’t call the equipped.

He equips the called.

He doesn’t choose people who are ready.

He He makes ready the people he chooses.

My youth wasn’t a disqualification.

My fear wasn’t a disqualification.

My weakness wasn’t a disqualification.

Actually, these things made me a better vessel because I had no choice but to depend completely on him.

It was a hard lesson to learn.

Part of me still wanted to be strong and brave and fearless.

But God was teaching me that his strength shows up best in our weakness, that his light shines brightest in our darkness.

One night, about 6 weeks after my 13th birthday, I had the dream again.

The woman with covered eyes.

But this time it was different.

This time I heard a voice, not audible, but clear as anything I’d ever heard in my spirit.

The voice said one word.

Soon I woke up with tears streaming down my face.

I knew.

I didn’t know all the details, but I knew soon whatever God had been preparing me for would happen.

Soon I would meet this woman.

Soon everything would change.

The next day, I told my parents about the dream and the word I’d heard.

My father’s face went pale.

My mother started to cry.

They knew too something was coming.

We prayed together as a family that night.

Even Raza, who usually remained quiet during family prayers, joined in earnestly.

We prayed for protection, for wisdom, for courage.

We prayed for God’s will to be done.

We prayed that whatever was coming, we would bring honor to Jesus through it.

The political situation continued to deteriorate.

There were protests in the streets about economic conditions, but the government blamed religious minorities for the problems.

Christian homes were being marked, vandalized.

It was becoming dangerous to even be known as a Christian.

My father sat us down for another family meeting.

He said he’d been contacted by someone who could help us get to Turkey if we wanted to leave.

It would cost most of what little savings we had left.

And it would be dangerous, but it was possible.

He wanted to know what we thought.

Reza wanted to go immediately.

He was 18 now, desperate for a future where he could breathe freely.

My mother was torn, wanting to protect her children, but also feeling called to stay.

My father watched me carefully, waiting for my response.

I told them about the pull I felt in my spirit, the sense that God had planted us here for a reason.

I told them about the dreams, about the woman I kept seeing, about the word soon that echoed in my mind.

I told them I felt we were supposed to stay at least for now.

My father nodded slowly.

He said he felt the same, that God wasn’t releasing them to leave yet.

Raza was angry, frustrated, but he agreed to wait.

My mother wept quietly, knowing that saying meant continued danger, but trusting that God had a plan.

Two days later, I was walking home from school when I felt a strong urge to take a different route.

Not the usual way I walked, but through a neighborhood I rarely passed through.

The urge was so strong.

It was almost physical, like someone gently pushing me in a different direction.

I followed it, my heart beginning to pound.

I turned down unfamiliar streets, passing houses and shops I didn’t recognize.

And then I saw it.

The mosque from my dreams, the specific architecture, the color of the walls, the small market stalls nearby.

everything exactly as I’d seen it night after night.

My hands started shaking.

I looked around, searching, and there, sitting against a wall not far from the mosque entrance, was a woman.

She had a cloth tied around her eyes.

She was begging, one hand extended toward the people passing by, most of whom ignored her completely.

It was her, the woman from my dreams.

I stood frozen on the corner, staring.

This was it.

This was the moment God had been preparing me for.

But now that it was here, I was more terrified than I’d ever been in my life.

I couldn’t approach her then.

There were too too many people around and I was expected home.

But I knew now where she was.

I knew I would have to come back.

I practically ran home.

I burst through the door and told my mother what I’d seen.

She sat down heavily, her face a mixture of fear and resignation.

She knew, as I did, that this was no coincidence.

God was calling me to do something.

We just didn’t know what yet.

That night, I couldn’t sleep.

I prayed for hours, asking God what he wanted me to do.

Should I just pray for the woman from a distance? Should I approach her? Should I tell her about Jesus? What was I supposed to do? The only answer I received was a deep sense of peace and the feeling that I should wait, that God would make it clear when the time was right.

Over the next week, I walked past that corner every day after school.

I saw the woman there each time, always in the same spot, always with her hand extended, always largely ignored.

I learned her name by listening to others.

Zara.

She had been blind for many years.

She was known in the neighborhood as a fixture, someone people had grown accustomed to seeing.

Watched her from a distance, praying silently for her each time.

I asked God to show me when and how to approach her.

I asked for courage I didn’t have.

I asked for words I didn’t possess.

The breakthrough came during a small house church meeting.

The crackdown had eased slightly and Pastor David called together a small group of trusted believers.

Only about eight of us were there squeezed into a tiny room with the curtains drawn tight.

Pastor David spoke about divine appointments, about how God orchestrates meetings between people for his purposes.

He talked about how we need to be obedient when God opens doors, even when we’re afraid.

He didn’t know about my situation specifically, but his words hit me like a hammer.

After the meeting, I pulled him aside and told him everything, the dreams, the woman, my fear, my uncertainty about what to do.

He listened carefully, nodding occasionally, his weathered face thoughtful.

When I finished, he was quiet for a moment.

Then he told me he believed God was calling me to pray for this woman, to offer healing in Jesus’s name.

He said it would be dangerous, that it could draw negative attention, that there could be consequences.

But he also said that sometimes God calls us to do dangerous things because the stakes are too high to play it safe.

He prayed over me right there, his hands on my head.

He prayed for boldness, for wisdom, for God’s protection.

He prayed that God would be glorified through whatever happened.

And he prayed that I would have the courage to obey.

I went home that night knowing that I couldn’t put this off much longer.

God was making it clear.

The woman was there.

I knew where to find her.

I had the gift.

The only question was whether I would obey.

3 days later on a Thursday afternoon, I woke up with absolute certainty.

Today was the day.

I couldn’t explain how I knew, but I knew.

Everything in my spirit said today.

I told my mother at breakfast.

She went pale but nodded.

She said she would come with me that I wouldn’t face this alone.

My father was at work but she left him a note in case things went wrong and we didn’t come home.

We dressed simply trying to look as unremarkable as possible.

My mother wore her headscarf tied tightly.

I carried my school bag as if this were any other day, but inside my heart was racing so fast I thought it might burst out of my chest.

We took a bus to the neighborhood where Zara sat.

As we got closer, my mother reached over and took my hand.

Hers was shaking as much as mine.

We were two frightened women, one barely more than a child, about to do something that could change everything.

We got off the bus a few blocks away.

As we walked toward the corner where I knew Zara would be sitting, my mother stopped me.

She pulled me close and whispered in my ear.

She told me she was proud of me, that she loved me, that no matter what happened next, God was with us.

Then we walked around the final corner.

And there she was, exactly where I knew she’d uh be Zara, the blind woman, sitting against the wall, her hand extended, waiting for mercy from passers by who had long stopped seeing her.

I had no idea that in a few minutes everything I’d ever known would be torn apart and rebuilt.

I had no idea that my obedience would cost my family more than I could imagine.

I had no idea that word of what was about to happen would spread across the city and beyond.

All I knew was that God had led me to this moment and now I had to take the next step.

Even though my legs felt like water, even though my hands were shaking so badly, I had to clasp them together.

Even though every instinct in my body screamed at me to turn around and run, I took a deep breath, squeezed my mother’s hand one more time, and began walking towards Zara.

The gift God had given me was about to be used in a way I never imagined.

And nothing would ever be the same again.

The morning started like any other, except it didn’t.

Everything looked the same.

The sun rose the same way it always did.

The call to prayer echoed through our neighborhood at the same time.

My mother made breakfast, the same simple meal of flatbread and tea.

But underneath the ordinary surface, everything felt different.

I woke up with that absolute certainty still sitting in my chest like a stone today.

It had to be today.

I couldn’t explain it to anyone who hasn’t heard God’s voice in their spirit.

But it was as clear as if someone had spoken audibly in my ear.

The waiting was over.

The preparation time had ended.

Today I would meet Zara.

Today I would have to choose obedience or safety.

I could barely eat breakfast.

My stomach was twisted in knots.

My mother kept glancing at me across the table, her eyes full of questions and fear.

She knew something was happening.

Mothers always know.

When I told her, her hand froze halfway to her mouth with a piece of bread.

She set it down carefully.

She asked if I was certain.

I nodded.

She closed her eyes for a long moment, and I could see her lips moving in silent prayer.

When she opened them again, her face had changed.

The fear was still there, but something else was there, too.

Determination, faith.

She told me she would come with me.

I tried to argue.

I told her it would be safer if I went alone, that there was no reason for both of us to be at risk.

But she cut me off with a look I’d never seen before.

She said she had carried me in her womb, nursed me as a baby, raised me through childhood.

She wasn’t going to let me face this alone.

Her voice was firm, final.

I knew better than to argue further.

My father had already left for work at a construction site across the city.

My mother wrote him a note and left it on the kitchen table just in case.

Just in case we didn’t come home, just in case something went wrong, just in case.

The note simply said that we loved him and we were being obedient to God.

He would understand.

Raza was still asleep.

We didn’t wake him.

What could we tell him anyway? that his little sister was about to do something impossibly foolish that could get the G family arrested.

Better to let him sleep in peace while he could.

We dressed carefully.

My mother wore her most conservative clothing, her headscarf tied tightly, looking like any other pious Muslim woman on the street.

I wore my school uniform, my bag over my shoulder.

To anyone looking, we were just a mother and daughter going about their daily business.

No one could see the terror and faith warring inside us.

Before we left, my mother pulled me into her arms.

She held me tight, tighter than she had in years.

I could feel her heart beating fast against my cheek.

She whispered a prayer over me, asking God to protect me, to give me courage, to use me for his glory.

Her voice cracked on the last words.

When she pulled back, there were tears in her eyes, but she brushed them away quickly.

We stepped out into the bright morning.

The city was already awake.

people going about their business completely unaware that for us this was the most significant day of our lives.

We walked to the bus stop in silence.

There were no words adequate for the moment.

The bus ride felt endless and too short at the same time.

I watched the familiar streets pass by the window, wondering if I would see them again the same way after today.

Everything looked normal.

Children walking to school, shop owners opening their stores, old men sitting in cafes, life continuing its usual rhythm.

But for me, time felt suspended, as if I were walking through a dream.

My mother’s hand found mine on the seat between us.

She squeezed it gently.

I squeezed back.

We didn’t speak, but we didn’t need to.

Everything that needed to be said was in that grip, that connection between mother and daughter, about to step into the unknown together.

We got off the bus three blocks from where I knew Zara would be.

The walk to that corner felt like walking to my own execution.

Each step was deliberate, measured.

I was intensely aware of everything around me.

The smell of bread baking in a nearby shop.

The sound of traffic.

The feeling of the sun warm on my face.

The weight of my school bag on my shoulder.

All of it seemed heightened, more real than real.

My mother stopped me about half a block from the corner.

She turned to face me fully.

She told me she loved me, that she was proud of me, that God was with us.

Her voice was steady, but I could see the tears.

She was fighting to hold back.

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