I could not keep pretending that I believed in what we were doing, that I could go back to killing, that the beings at the church had been nothing more than a fever dream.

The dreams continued every night.

Sometimes the beings would appear and say nothing.

Sometimes they would speak words I did not fully understand, phrases in languages I did not know but which somehow resonated in my heart.

And always, always, the one with the wounds would look at me with those eyes full of sorrow and love.

One night, 2 weeks after the church incident, I had a different dream.

This time I was not at the church.

I was standing in an unfamiliar place, a town I had never seen.

And in this town, there was a building with a cross on it, another church.

But this one was different.

It had a blue door, a small courtyard, a tree growing beside it.

And in the dream, the being with the wounds stood in front of this church and said, “Come.

” I woke before dawn.

The camp was still quiet.

I lay there on my mat staring at the dark canvas of the tent above me and I made a decision.

I did not fully understand what was happening to me.

I did not know what these dreams meant, who these beings were, or what the voice wanted from me, but I knew I had to find out.

And I knew I could not find out here in this camp surrounded by men committed to violence.

I had to leave.

The opportunity came four days later.

A supply run was planned to a small town about 30 kilometers away to purchase food, fuel, and other necessities.

I volunteered to go and Commander Usuzman agreed.

I think he was glad to get me out of camp.

My behavior had been strange and I had become a source of concern.

We left in the morning, three of us in a pickup truck.

The drive was uneventful.

We reached the town, parked near the market, and split up to make our purchases.

I was given money and a list of items to buy.

I walked through the market looking at the stalls, the people, the normal life happening around me.

It felt surreal after months in the camp, after years of violence.

And then I simply walked away.

I did not think about it.

I did not plan it carefully.

I just started walking in a direction away from the market, away from where we had parked, away from my fellow fighters.

I walked faster, then began to jog, then to run.

I expected to hear shouts behind me, to hear gunfire to be chased.

But when I looked back, there was no one.

Either they had not noticed yet or Allah or someone had blinded them to my departure.

I ran until my lungs burned and my legs achd.

I ran until the town was far behind me and I was in open country.

Then I collapsed under a tree, gasping for air, my whole body shaking.

What had I done? I had just deserted from J&M.

If they found me, they would kill me slowly and painfully.

I had no money, no food, no water, no plan.

I was alone in a hostile world with nothing but the clothes on my back.

But I was also free.

For the first time in 2 years, I was free.

I spent that night hiding in the bush, terrified at every sound, expecting fighters to appear and drag me back.

But no one came.

The next day, I began walking.

I did not know where I was going.

I just knew I needed to move.

To put distance between myself and the camp.

I survived by begging for water at small settlements.

By eating wild berries and roots.

By sleeping wherever I could find shelter.

And every night the dreams came.

The beings in white.

The church with the blue door.

The voice saying, “Come.

” After 3 days of wandering, weak from hunger and exhaustion, I stumbled into a larger town.

And there, at the edge of the town, I saw it.

The church from my dream, the blue door, the small courtyard, the tree.

I stood there, unable to move, staring at it.

This was impossible.

I had never been to this town before.

I had never seen this church.

And yet here it was, exactly as it had appeared in my dream.

My legs carried me forward without conscious thought.

I crossed the street, walked through the gate into the courtyard, and stood before the blue door.

My hand reached out and touched the wood.

It was real, solid, warm from the sun.

I do not know how long I stood there.

Minutes, maybe hours.

I was afraid to go inside.

Everything I had been taught told me that entering a church was forbidden, that it would defile me, that Allah would be angry.

But the voice in my dreams had told me to come, and I needed answers.

I needed to understand what was happening to me.

The door opened before I could knock.

An old woman stood there, her face kind and weathered with age.

She looked at me at my dusty torn clothes, my thin frame, my desperate eyes, and she smiled.

She asked if I was looking for someone.

I tried to speak, but my voice cracked.

I tried again.

The words that came out surprised even me.

I said, “I think Jesus is looking for me.

” The woman’s smile widened.

she called out in the local language and a man appeared behind her, a pastor, I assumed from his simple clerical collar.

He was in his 50s with gray hair and gentle eyes.

He looked at me with no fear, no suspicion, only curiosity and compassion.

The woman stepped aside and the pastor invited me in.

I hesitated at the threshold.

My whole life I had been taught that churches were places of evil, places where people worshiped false gods.

But I thought of the beings at the church I had tried to burn.

Beings who had protected it, who had spoken to me with love, even as I came to destroy.

And I thought that if this was where these beings came from, then maybe it was not evil after all.

I stepped through the blue door.

The pastor led me to a small room at the back of the church.

He offered me water, which I drank desperately.

He offered me bread, which I ate with shaking hands.

He did not ask questions at first.

He just let me sit there, let me breathe, let me exist.

Finally, when I had eaten and drunk my fill, when my body had stopped trembling quite so violently, he spoke.

He asked my name.

I told him.

He asked where I was from.

I hesitated, then said simply that I had come from far away, that I had been lost, but felt drawn here.

He nodded as if he understood, though I had not really explained anything.

Then he asked the question I had been dreading.

Why did you come to this church, my son? and I broke.

Everything I had been holding inside for weeks came pouring out.

I wept like a child, tears streaming down my face, my body shaking with sobs.

And through the tears, I told him.

I told him I had been with Jay Nim.

I told him I had killed Christians.

I told him I had burned churches.

I told him about the night I tried to burn a church and saw beings in white, heard a voice, collapsed in the presence of something I could not explain.

I told him about the dreams that would not stop, about running away, about being led here.

I expected him to recoil in horror.

I expected him to call for help, to have me arrested or driven away.

I expected anger, hatred, fear.

Instead, Pastor David, for that was his name, looked at me with tears in his own eyes.

He reached out and placed his hand on my shoulder, and he said words I will never forget.

Jesus knows, brother, and he brought you here anyway.

That’s what grace means.

I did not understand what he meant.

Grace was not a word I knew in this context, but the way he said it with such certainty, such gentleness, made something in my chest loosen.

For the first time since the night at the church, I felt like perhaps I was not completely lost.

Perhaps there was a path forward, even for someone like me.

That night, Pastor David gave me a mat to sleep on in a back room of the church.

He gave me a blanket, more food, and assured me I was safe, that I could rest.

As I lay down, exhausted in body and soul, I expected the dreams to come again, and they did.

But this time, there was no fear.

This time, when the being with the wounds appeared, he was smiling.

And when he spoke, his words were simple.

Welcome home, Abdul Razak.

I did not understand what he meant.

This church was not my home.

These people were not my family.

This Jesus they worshiped was not my God.

But as I drifted into a deep peaceful sleep, the first peaceful sleep I had experienced in years, some small part of me wondered if perhaps impossibly I had finally found the place I was meant to be.

I stayed in that back room of the church for 3 weeks.

Pastor David told the congregation that I was a traveler in need of help, which was true, though not the full truth.

Only he and his wife, Marama, knew who I really was and what I had done.

They kept my secret, and they cared for me with a kindness I did not deserve and could not understand.

Those first few days, I mostly slept.

My body was exhausted from years of stress, from weeks of poor food and constant fear, from the emotional and spiritual weight of what I had experienced.

Pastor David would bring me meals, simple food, rice and sauce, bread and tea, and I would eat and sleep, eat and sleep.

But the dreams did not stop.

Every single night they came.

Sometimes I would see the beings in white again, standing in a circle just as they had around the church.

They never spoke in these dreams, just stood watch, and their presence brought both comfort and deep unease.

I was comforted because they did not seem angry or threatening.

I was uneasy because I still did not understand what they were or what they wanted from me.

Other nights I would dream of the being with the wounds, the one who had spoken to me, who had called me by name.

In these dreams, I would see him more clearly.

His face was both ordinary and extraordinary.

Human, yes, but with a quality of light or goodness, or something I had no words for radiating from within.

His wounds were always visible, the marks in his hands and feet and side, and I found myself fixated on them, wondering how he had received them, wondering why they had not healed.

Sometimes in these dreams he would speak to me, but the words were not in Arabic or French or Mo or any language I recognized.

Yet somehow I understood the meaning behind them as if the words bypassed my ears and went straight to my heart.

He would say things like, “I know your pain.

” Or, “You are seen.

” Or, “I have always loved you.

” These phrases made no sense to me.

How could this being I did not know claim to love me? How could he know my pain when we had never met before that night at the church? The most disturbing dreams were the ones where I saw my own actions played back to me, but from a different perspective.

I would see myself and my fellow fighters approaching a village, but instead of seeing it through my own eyes, I would see it through the eyes of the people we attacked.

I would feel their terror as they heard our vehicles approaching.

I would feel their desperation as they tried to hide their children.

I would feel their agony as bullets tore through their flesh, as their homes burned, as their loved ones died.

I would wake from these dreams, gasping, sometimes screaming, drenched in sweat.

Pastor David would hear me and come to check on me, his face concerned.

He would sit with me in the darkness, not saying much, just being present until my breathing slowed and my heart stopped racing.

After the first week, when I had recovered some physical strength, Pastor David began to talk with me, not preaching, not lecturing, just talking.

He would sit in the room with me, sometimes bringing tea, and he would ask me questions.

What was my childhood like? What did I believe about God? What had led me to join J&M? What had happened the night at the church? I answered as honestly as I could, though some things were hard to put into words.

I told him about growing up in a devout Muslim family, about my father’s teachings, about the hatred for Christians I had been raised with.

I told him about the appeal of jihad, the sense of purpose it gave me, the brotherhood I found among the fighters.

I told him about the attacks, the killings, though I spared him the worst details.

And I told him about the beings in white, the voice that spoke my name, the collapse, the dreams that would not stop.

Pastor David listened to everything without interrupting, without judging.

When I finished, he was quiet for a long moment.

Then he said something that confused me.

You met angels, Razak, and you met Jesus.

I did not understand.

In Islam, we believed in angels, Gabriel, Mikail, Israel, and others.

But the angels in Islamic teaching were servants of Allah who carried out his commands.

They did not appear glowing in white to protect churches.

And as for Jesus, we called him Issa.

and we believed he was a prophet, a messenger of Allah, but nothing more.

The idea that I had somehow met him made no sense.

Pastor David must have seen my confusion because he began to explain.

He told me that Christians believe Jesus is not just a prophet, but the son of God, God himself in human form.

He said that Jesus came to earth, lived a perfect life, and then willingly died on a cross to pay the penalty for humanity’s sins.

He said that Jesus rose from the dead 3 days later, defeating death itself, and that he now lives forever, able to reach into the lives of people anywhere at any time.

I listened, but my mind resisted.

Everything he was saying contradicted what I had been taught my entire life.

We Muslims believed that Allah had no son.

That saying so was blasphemy.

That the Christian understanding of God was fundamentally wrong.

How could God become a man? How could God die? It made no sense.

But then I thought about the being with the wounds.

The wounds in his hands, in his feet, in his side.

The kind of wounds you would get from being nailed to something, from being pierced by a spear.

The kind of wounds you would get from crucifixion.

I felt cold.

The one I saw in my dreams, I said slowly.

He had wounds like someone had stabbed him and put nails through his hands and feet.

Pastor David nodded, his eyes bright.

Yes, those are the wounds Jesus received when he was crucified.

They remain as signs of what he did for us, of the price he paid.

But why? I asked, frustrated.

Why would God let himself be killed? What kind of God is weak enough to die? Pastor David smiled gently.

It was not weakness, Reszach.

It was the greatest strength.

He chose to die.

No one took his life from him.

He laid it down willingly because the penalty for sin is death and someone had to pay that penalty.

Jesus who never sinned paid it for us, for you, for me, for everyone.

I shook my head.

This was too strange, too foreign to everything I knew.

In Islam, we earned paradise through good deeds, through following the five pillars, through submission to Allah.

The idea that someone else could pay for my sins, that I could be forgiven, not through my own efforts, but through someone else’s sacrifice, it seemed too easy, too good to be true.

But Pastor David kept talking, kept explaining.

Over the days and weeks that followed, he taught me about Jesus.

Not in a pushy way, not trying to force me to believe, but simply sharing what he knew, answering my questions, letting me wrestle with the ideas.

He showed me a Bible, a book I had never read.

In JNIM, we were taught that the Bible was corrupted, that Christians had changed it to suit their own purposes, that only the Quran contained God’s true word.

But as Pastor David read passages to me, stories of Jesus healing the sick, forgiving sinners, eating with outcasts, dying for his enemies, I found myself drawn in despite my resistance.

There was one story in particular that struck me.

Pastor David read it from the book of Luke about a man named Saul who persecuted Christians who hunted them down and had them killed.

Saul was traveling to a city called Damascus to arrest more Christians when suddenly a bright light shone around him and he fell to the ground.

A voice spoke to him asking, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me?” My breath caught.

Those were the same words I had heard at the church, the exact same words.

Pastor David continued reading.

The voice identified itself as Jesus, and Saul realized he had been persecuting Jesus by persecuting his followers.

Saul was blinded by the encounter and had to be led into Damascus.

But then Jesus sent someone to heal him.

And Saul’s sight was restored.

He converted to Christianity and became Paul, one of the greatest missionaries and teachers in Christian history.

When Pastor David finished reading, he looked at me.

Your story and Paul’s story are not identical, but do you see the similarities? Paul was a violent persecutor of Christians just like you.

Jesus appeared to him and called him by name just like he did to you.

And Jesus transformed Paul from a killer of Christians into a champion for Christ.

If Jesus could do that for Paul, he can do it for you.

I wanted to argue to say that my situation was different, that I had done far worse things than Paul, that there was no redemption possible for someone like me.

But the words stuck in my throat because the truth was I wanted it to be possible.

I wanted to believe that even someone with blood on their hands could be forgiven, could be changed, could start over.

But wanting something and believing it were two different things.

The dreams continued every night, and as the weeks passed, they became more specific.

I began to see images of Jesus’s life, not things Pastor David had told me, but scenes I could not have known.

I saw him as a carpenter working with wood.

I saw him teaching crowds of people.

I saw him touching lepers that everyone else avoided.

I saw him weeping over a city.

I saw him washing his disciples feet.

I saw him praying alone in a garden so distressed that he sweat drops of blood.

And I saw his death.

I saw him being beaten, mocked, spat upon.

I saw the nails driven through his wrists.

I saw the cross raised up.

I saw him hanging there, struggling to breathe in agony.

But what struck me most was not the physical suffering.

As terrible as it was, it was what he said.

Even as he died, he looked at the people who were killing him and said, “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.

” I woke from that dream with tears streaming down my face.

What kind of person prays for the people who are murdering them? What kind of God asks for his killers to be forgiven? The same kind, I realized, who would speak to me with love even as I came to burn his house.

The same kind who would call me by name even though I had killed his followers.

The same kind who would send dreams to guide me to safety even though I deserved nothing but judgment.

The next morning, I asked Pastor David a question that had been building in me for days.

If Jesus really died for everyone’s sins, does that include mine? All the people I killed, all the churches I burned, all the hatred I carried.

Can even those things be forgiven? Pastor David did not hesitate.

Yes, Razak.

That is exactly what Jesus’s death means.

There is no sin too great for his forgiveness.

No one beyond the reach of his grace.

The only question is whether you will accept it.

But how? I asked desperately.

How do I accept it? What do I have to do? You have to believe, Pastor David said simply.

Believe that Jesus is who he says he is, the son of God, the savior.

Believe that his death on the cross paid for your sins.

believe that he rose from the dead and is alive today.

And you have to surrender your life to him.

To stop trying to save yourself through your own efforts and instead trust in what he has already done.

I sat with those words for days.

Surrender.

Trust.

These were not easy things for me.

I had spent my whole life trying to be strong, trying to earn God’s favor through my actions, trying to prove my devotion.

The idea of simply accepting a gift of admitting I could not save myself felt like weakness.

But then I thought about the weight I had been carrying.

The guilt, the shame, the nightmares, the faces of the people I had killed.

I had tried to bury these things to justify them, to live with them, but they were crushing me.

I could not carry them anymore.

3 weeks after arriving at the church on a quiet evening, I finally broke.

I was alone in my room and the weight of everything just became too much.

I fell to my knees and I cried out, not to Allah, but to Jesus.

I did not have fancy words or proper prayers.

I just spoke from my heart.

I said, “Jesus, if you are really there, if you really died for me, I need you.

I cannot live with what I have done.

I cannot fix myself.

I cannot earn forgiveness.

If what Pastor David says is true, if you really offer grace freely, then I am here.

I am broken.

I am guilty.

I am sorry.

Please forgive me.

Please change me.

I believe you are the son of God.

I believe you died for my sins.

I believe you rose from the dead.

I give you my life.

Do with it what you will.

The moment I finished speaking, something happened.

It was not dramatic, not a vision or a voice, but I felt something inside me shift.

The crushing weight I had been carrying.

It lifted.

Not completely, not all at once, but enough that I could breathe.

For the first time in years, I felt hope.

Real hope.

Not the false hope of earning paradise through violence, but the hope that maybe, just maybe, I could be forgiven.

That I could be made new.

That night, I slept without nightmares.

And when I woke the next morning, I knew something had fundamentally changed.

I was not the same person I had been when I closed my eyes.

I could not yet articulate exactly what was different, but I felt it in my bones.

When I told Pastor David what had happened, he wept.

He embraced me like a father embraces a son and said, “Welcome to the family, brother.

” I did not fully understand what he meant yet, but in the days and weeks that followed, I would begin to learn.

I had taken the first step on a journey that would cost me everything I had known and give me everything I had been searching for.

Becoming a follower of Jesus did not make my problems disappear.

In fact, in many ways, it created new ones.

The first challenge was understanding what it meant to be a Christian.

Everything I had learned about Christianity from my Muslim upbringing was wrong or incomplete.

Pastor David became my teacher, spending hours each day reading the Bible with me, explaining the basics of Christian faith, answering my endless questions.

I learned that the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, was not three gods, but one God in three persons.

This was a mystery I could not fully comprehend.

But I was learning that not everything about God needed to be fully understood to be true.

I learned that salvation was not earned through good works, but received as a gift through faith in Jesus.

I learned that the Christian life was not about following rules to earn God’s approval, but about relationship with God, about being transformed by his love.

I also learned about the church, not the building, but the community of believers.

Pastor David explained that when I gave my life to Jesus, I became part of a worldwide family of people who followed him.

This concept was both beautiful and terrifying to me.

Beautiful because I had always longed for true brotherhood, for belonging.

Terrifying because I had spent two years murdering members of this family.

Pastor David must have sensed my fear because one evening he said something that shook me.

Rozek, you need to understand something.

The people you killed, they are with Jesus now.

They are at peace.

And because of what Jesus did on the cross, because you have accepted his forgiveness, you will one day see them in heaven.

And they will embrace you as a brother.

I could not imagine such a thing.

How could the people I murdered embrace me? How could they forgive me? It seemed impossible.

It is impossible.

Pastor David agreed when I voiced this.

Humanly speaking, it is completely impossible.

But with God, all things are possible.

That is what grace means.

That is the power of the cross.

After a month at the church, Pastor David said it was time for me to be baptized.

He explained that baptism was a public declaration of faith, a symbol of dying to the old life and rising to new life in Christ.

The thought terrified me.

Public declaration meant people would know.

And if people knew that Abdul Razak Sawado, former JNIM fighter, had converted to Christianity, my life would be in immediate danger.

Pastor David acknowledged this reality.

He said we could do a private baptism, just him and his wife and me.

But he also said that faith sometimes required courage, that hiding forever was not sustainable, that at some point I would need to take a stand.

I thought about this for several days.

I thought about the being with the wounds, Jesus, who had not hidden but had publicly proclaimed truth even though it cost him his life.

I thought about the Christians I had killed who had refused to renounce their faith even at gunpoint.

If they could be brave, could I be any less? I told Pastor David I wanted to be baptized publicly.

He arranged for a small evening service.

Only about 30 people attended, the regular members of this small church.

I sat in the back row, my heart pounding as they sang songs of worship.

The music was strange to me, so different from the Islamic chants I had grown up with.

But there was something in it that moved me.

The people sang with joy, with freedom, with love in their voices.

When it came time, Pastor David called me forward.

I walked to the front on shaking legs.

He asked me to share my testimony to tell the people who I was and what had happened to me.

This was the moment I had been dreading.

I stood before these people, these Christians, and I told them the truth.

I told them my name.

I told them I had been a member of JNIM.

I told them I had killed Christians, burned churches, caused suffering and death.

My voice broke multiple times as I spoke.

I saw shock on some faces, fear on others.

I would not have blamed them if they had run from the building or called for me to be arrested.

But I also told them about the night at the church, about the angels, about the voice of Jesus calling my name.

I told them about the dreams that led me here.

I told them that I had given my life to Jesus, that I believed he died for my sins, that I wanted to follow him no matter the cost.

When I finished, there was silence, long, heavy silence.

I stood there, exposed, vulnerable, certain that I had made a terrible mistake.

Then an older woman in the front row stood up.

She walked toward me slowly and I braced myself for her anger.

But when she reached me, she did not strike me or curse me.

She embraced me.

And as she held me, she began to cry, whispering in more, “Welcome, my son.

Welcome home.

” One by one, others came forward.

Not all of them.

Some stayed in their seats, clearly uncomfortable, clearly unsure.

But many came.

They embraced me.

They wept.

They welcomed me.

Pastor David later told me that several people in that congregation had lost family members to jihadist attacks.

They had every reason to hate me, but they chose love instead.

That night, Pastor David baptized me in a large basin of water they had prepared.

As I went under the water, I felt the symbolism of it.

the old Razac, the murderer, the terrorist, dying and being buried.

And as I came up out of the water, gasping for air, I felt new.

Not perfect, not suddenly sinless, but new, washed, given a fresh start I did not deserve, but desperately needed.

Pastor David also gave me a second name that night.

He said that in the Bible, God sometimes gave people new names when he transformed them.

He said, “My new name, my Christian name would be grace.

” Abdul Razak, grace saw because grace, undeserved favor, unearned mercy was what had saved me.

The days and weeks that followed were both wonderful and difficult.

Wonderful because I was learning what it meant to live in freedom.

to know I was forgiven to experience the love of Christian community.

Difficult because the past did not simply disappear.

I still had nightmares.

Not the dreams from Jesus anymore, but memories of the things I had done.

I would wake in the night seeing the faces of people I’d killed, hearing their screams, smelling the smoke of burning buildings.

Pastor David said this was normal, that trauma leaves scars, that healing takes time.

I also struggled with forgiving myself.

Jesus had forgiven me, yes, but I could not seem to forgive myself.

How could I? How could someone who had done what I did simply accept forgiveness and move on? It felt wrong, almost insulting to my victims.

Pastor David helped me understand that refusing to accept forgiveness was actually a form of pride.

It was saying that my sin was greater than Jesus’s sacrifice.

That what I had done was beyond his power to cleanse.

He reminded me that Jesus had paid for all my sins.

Not just the small ones, but the worst ones, too.

To reject his forgiveness was to say his death was not enough.

This was a hard truth to accept and honestly I still struggle with it.

But I am learning to live in the tension to accept that I am both guilty and forgiven, both broken and being healed.

About 2 months after my baptism, something happened that changed everything again.

Word began to spread in the region about a former JNIM fighter who had converted to Christianity.

I do not know how the information got out.

Perhaps someone from the church talked.

Perhaps someone from the town recognized me.

Perhaps JNIM had informants who reported my location.

But suddenly I was in danger.

Pastor David came to me one morning with grave news.

He had received a message that JNIM was looking for me, that they had put out word among their networks that I was a traitor who needed to be eliminated.

He said I could no longer stay at the church, that it put both me and the congregation at risk.

I did not want to leave.

This church had become my home, these people, my family.

But I understood.

I packed the few belongings I had.

some clothes Pastor David had given me, a Bible, a small notebook where I had been writing down things I was learning and prepared to go.

But where I had no money, no contacts, nowhere safe to go.

Pastor David made some phone calls to other pastors in his network.

There was an underground system, he explained, of churches that helped protect Christians who were in danger, including Muslim converts like me who faced death threats for apostasy.

They arranged for me to be moved to a different town to stay with a different pastor.

From there, I would be moved again after a few weeks, and then again, always staying ahead of those who hunted me.

This would be my life now, I realized.

always running, always hiding, never able to settle in one place for long.

Before I left, Pastor David prayed for me, he asked God to protect me, to guide me, to use my story for his glory.

And then he said something I have never forgotten.

Razak, you may spend the rest of your life running from J&M, but you are running toward Jesus, and that makes all the difference.

Over the next months, I moved from place to place, staying with different pastors and Christian families who risk their own safety to shelter me.

Each place taught me something new about following Jesus.

I learned that the Christian faith was not uniform.

Different churches worshiped in different styles, emphasized different aspects of theology, had different traditions, but at the core they all believed the same essential truth.

That Jesus is Lord, that he died and rose again, that salvation comes through faith in him.

I also learned that the Christian life was not easy.

These believers I met were not wealthy or powerful.

Many of them faced discrimination, harassment and violence because of their faith.

Churches were burned, family members killed, livelihoods destroyed.

Yet they continued to follow Jesus.

When I asked why, why they did not just renounce Christianity and return to Islam or traditional religion to save themselves, they looked at me as if the question made no sense.

One pastor said, “Once you have met Jesus truly met him, how can you turn away? Where else would we go? He has the words of eternal life.

” I understood what he meant.

I had met Jesus.

I had heard his voice.

I had felt his love.

I could never go back to who I was before, no matter the cost.

About 6 months after my conversion, I had an encounter that nearly broke me.

I was staying with a family in a small village when a woman came to the house asking for me.

The family was hesitant.

They did not know her and I was supposed to be in hiding.

But she insisted, saying she needed to speak with Abdul Razak, that it was urgent.

When I came out to meet her, I did not recognize her at first.

She was middle-aged, thin, with eyes that held deep sorrow.

She said her name was Salamata, and then she told me why she had come.

Her husband had been a pastor.

Two years earlier, during a raid on their village, he had been killed, shot by JNIM fighters while trying to protect his church.

She had been searching for months for information about who had killed him.

And recently, she had heard rumors about a former JNIM fighter named Abdul Razak, who had converted to Christianity.

She wanted to know if I was there that day, if I was one of the men who killed her husband.

My blood ran cold.

I remembered that raid.

It was one of my first operations.

The pastor who had confronted us, who we had shot in front of his church.

I closed my eyes and I could see his face again.

The shock and pain as the bullet struck him, the way he fell.

I opened my eyes and looked at this woman.

At the widow I had helped create.

There was nothing I could say that would make it right.

Nothing I could do that would bring her husband back.

But I owed her the truth.

I told her yes.

I was there.

I was one of the fighters that day.

I did not pull the trigger.

That was my commander.

But I was part of the unit, part of the operation.

I was guilty.

She stared at me for a long moment and I saw so many emotions cross her face.

anger, grief, hatred, confusion.

She began to cry, not loudly, but with deep wrenching sobs.

I wanted to run, to disappear, to escape her pain.

But I forced myself to stand there to witness the consequences of my actions.

When she finally spoke, her voice was hoarse.

Why? Why did you do it? What did my husband ever do to you? Nothing, I said, my own voice breaking.

He did nothing.

I killed him because I was taught that Christians were enemies, that killing them was righteous.

I was wrong.

I was so wrong and I am sorry.

I know that word means nothing that it cannot undo what I did.

But I am sorry.

She looked at me with such pain in her eyes.

You took everything from me.

My husband, my children’s father, my partner in ministry.

You destroyed our family.

I know, I whispered.

I know.

She stood there trembling, and I prepared myself for her to strike me, to curse me, to call for justice.

I deserved all of it and more.

But then something remarkable happened.

Something I did not expect and still cannot fully comprehend.

She took a shuddering breath and said, “I heard you became a Christian, that you follow Jesus now.

Is this true?” “Yes,” I said.

“I gave my life to him.

I am not the same person I was.

” My husband would have wanted me to forgive you, she said, tears still streaming down her face.

He always preached about forgiveness, about loving enemies.

I thought he was naive.

I thought forgiveness had limits.

But after he died, I started reading his Bible more.

I read Jesus’s words and I realized my husband was right.

Jesus commands us to forgive, not because the person deserves it, but because we have been forgiven.

She paused, struggling with the words.

If Jesus has forgiven you, and God knows you need forgiving, who am I not to try? I cannot say I fully forgive you today.

My heart is still too raw, too broken.

But I am choosing to begin the process because that is what Jesus would do.

That is what my husband would want.

I fell to my knees before her weeping.

This woman whose husband I had helped murder was choosing to forgive me.

It was incomprehensible.

It was supernatural.

It was grace in its purest form.

She did not embrace me.

That would have been too much.

But she placed her hand on my head for a brief moment, said a quiet prayer for both of us, and then she left.

I learned later that she continued to pray for me, that she told her story in churches as a testimony of the power of forgiveness, that she and I became unlikely witnesses to what God can do.

That encounter showed me the true cost of grace.

Jesus had forgiven me freely.

But forgiveness for the people I had hurt was a process, a journey, something that required courage and faith from them.

I could not demand it or expect it.

I could only humbly receive it when it was offered, knowing I had no right to it.

As time went on, I began to feel a new calling.

It started as a whisper in my heart during prayer, then grew stronger.

I felt that Jesus wanted me to share my story, to tell other Muslims about what he had done for me, to warn young men not to make the same mistakes I had made.

This was dangerous.

Speaking publicly about my conversion would make me an even bigger target.

Trying to evangelize among Muslims was a crime in many communities and could result in mob violence.

But I could not shake the feeling that this was what I was meant to do.

I talked with Pastor David about it during one of his visits to check on me.

He was cautious but supportive.

He said that God often calls people to dangerous tasks, but that he also equips and protects them.

He helped me start recording my testimony, writing it down, preparing to share it with others.

Over the past months, I am writing this now in October 2025, almost a year after that night at the church.

I have begun carefully, quietly sharing my story.

I meet with small groups of former Muslims who are curious about Christianity.

I speak at underground house churches.

I even recorded a video testimony that has been shared cautiously among Christian networks.

The response has been mixed.

Some people have been touched by my story and have come to faith in Jesus because of it.

Others are skeptical, thinking I’m a fake or a government plant.

Still others are angry, saying I am a traitor to Islam and to my people.

I have received multiple death threats from JNIM and other jihadist groups.

I can never return to my home region.

I have not seen my family since I left.

And I do not know if I ever will again.

But I also know joy I never experienced before.

I know peace that makes no logical sense given my circumstances.

I know that I am loved by the God of the universe, that my sins are forgiven, that I have a purpose.

I still struggle.

I still have nightmares.

I still wrestle with guilt and shame.

I still fear the day when Jana might find me.

But I am learning to bring all of these things to Jesus, to trust him with my past, my present, and my future.

I look at my hands often, these hands that held weapons, that poured gasoline, that pulled triggers.

They are the same hands physically, but they belong to a different person now.

These hands now serve instead of destroy.

These hands now build up instead of tear down.

These hands now reach out in love instead of violence.

Sometimes people ask me what I would say to other jihadists, to other young men being recruited into extremism.

I tell them this, the hatred is a lie.

The promise of paradise through violence is a lie.

You are not serving God by killing.

You are serving darkness.

But there is hope.

There is a way out.

Jesus meets people in the darkest places.

He met me when I was his enemy, when I was burning his churches and killing his people.

And if he could save me, he can save anyone.

To Muslims who are curious about Christianity, I say, I know what you have been taught.

I believed all the same things.

But what if we were wrong? What if Jesus is not just a prophet, but the son of God? What if he really did die for our sins and rise from the dead? I am not asking you to take my word for it.

I am asking you to seek truth for yourself, to pray and ask God to reveal himself to you.

He did for me.

He can for you.

To Christians, especially those in Burkina Faso and across the Sahel who suffer persecution, I say your prayers matter.

Someone prayed for me.

I do not know who, but I believe someone somewhere prayed that God would reach the jihadists attacking them.

And God answered.

He sent angels to protect a church.

He spoke to a terrorist.

He pursued a murderer until that murderer fell at his feet.

Never stopped praying, never stopped believing that even the worst person can be transformed by grace.

I live now in a state of constant movement, always looking over my shoulder, never settling too long in one place.

Some might see this as a tragic life, but I see it differently.

Yes, I am running from J and I am.

But more importantly, I am running toward Jesus.

Every day I am learning more about him, growing closer to him, becoming more like him.

The angels I saw that night at the church, I now know they were real.

They were not hallucinations or fever dreams.

They were messengers of God sent to protect his people and to stop me from committing more evil.

And the one with the wounds, the one who called my name, was Jesus himself.

The same Jesus who died on a cross 2,000 years ago.

The same Jesus who rose from the dead.

The same Jesus who is alive today.

He saved me when I was his enemy.

He forgave me when I did not deserve forgiveness.

He gave me a new life when I deserved only death.

This is what Christians call the gospel.

the good news.

And it truly is good news, the best news, the only news that matters.

I do not know what tomorrow holds.

I do not know if I will live a long life or if JNIM will find me and I will be martyed for my faith.

But I know that whether I live or die, I belong to Jesus.

And nothing, not death, not threats, not my past, not my sins, can separate me from his love.

Every morning I wake up alive, I thank God, not because I have hidden myself well, but because he is not finished with me yet.

He has a purpose for my life.

And until that purpose is fulfilled, he will protect me.

And when it is time for me to go, whether through old age or violence, I will go knowing that I am going home.

Home to the one who pursued me in my darkness, who called me by name, who transformed me from a son of hatred into a son of God.

This is my testimony.

This is my story.

It is a story of darkness and light, of evil and grace, of death and resurrection.

It is a story that should not have happened.

A jihadist becoming a Christian, a murderer becoming a witness.

But it did happen because Jesus specializes in impossible stories.

He makes all things new.

The angels at the church door did not just stop me from burning that building.

They saved me from burning forever.

And now I spend every day grateful for grace I do not deserve.

Living for the one who died for me and praying that others will hear the story and encounter the same Jesus who encountered me.

My name is Abdul Razak Grace Sawadogo.

I was a terrorist.

I was a murderer.

I was an enemy of Christ.

But Jesus called my name in the darkness.

And when he calls, everything changes.

This is not just my story.

It is his story.

The story of a God who loves so much that he pursues his enemies.

Who forgives so completely that even the worst sinner can be made clean, who transforms so powerfully that hatred becomes love, death becomes life, and darkness becomes light.

To anyone reading this who thinks they are too far gone, too broken, too sinful to be saved, I am proof that you are wrong.

Jesus can reach anyone, anywhere, any time.

He reached into the heart of a jihadist and changed everything.

He can do the same for you.

All you have to do is what I did.

Stop running from him.

Stop fighting him.

Surrender.

Believe.

Receive.

The angels are still standing guard.

Jesus is still calling names.

And grace is still amazing.

This is my testimony.

And by God’s mercy, it is only the beginning.

[Music]

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