A Quran, a Bible, and a Machete

Djallo looked at the two books placed on the table before him.  The Quran he had been taught since he was a boy.  The Bible he had just begun to know.  The Bible had been given to him by a missionary in Guinea.  He had taken it so that he could highlight all the mistakes and errors in it.  But instead of mistakes and errors he found Jesus.  He found salvation.  Upon his Bible had been placed a machete and he knew what this meant.  Apostasy meant death.  His father stood before him and said, “Choose one.” In a moment of weakness, Djallo chose the Quran.  But Djallo’s story does not end here.

Djallo, grew up in a pious Muslim home.  Trained in a Quranic school, he had grown very serious about his faith. His father taught him to write in Arabic with his right hand and French with his left, because according to his father “the left hand is unspiritual and French will not be used in heaven.” Leading the daily prayers for his family eventually inspired Djallo to go to Senegal to study Islam further.  In Senegal his zeal for Islam grew along with the collection of talisman, which he thought would bring him magical powers.  With his talisman he set off to Spain, but when he reached Morocco he was arrested.  As the others in his group lied about their nationalities, Djallo alone told the truth.  Returning to Guinea with nothing but the clothes on his back, he was discouraged.  It was at this point the Djallo was befriended by a missionary.

“As he tried to convert me to Christianity, I was trying to convert him to Islam,” Djallo said with a smile.  He and the missionary met regularly to argue about their respective faiths.  The turning point came when Djallo was given a Bible.  “I was happy to take the Bible,” Djallo said, “I thought, now I can find all the mistakes of the Bible. But I was surprised to find that there is salvation and I can go to heaven without judgment.  It is only by faith and without works.” Finally, Djallo went back to the missionary and told him the Bible was true and he believed in Jesus.  From that moment Djallo’s faith grew little by little.

Each night Djallo would listen to Christian radio broadcasts.  He still attended the mosque, but was no longer leading the prayers.  Instead, Djallo went to the back row where he would pray to Jesus as he went through the motions he had been taught so many years before.  After a month he felt he could no live a double life and wrote his parents a letter describing his newfound faith. 

Unsurprisingly, Djallo’s parent were upset. “My parents persecuted me. They practiced witchcraft against me.  They got a special potion from the imam and spit it on my food because they believed that the potion would wash the Christianity from my heart. Of course it did not work,” Djallo said plainly.

It was at this point, Djallo’s father placed the two books before him. Stripped of all his possessions, except the small radio he had hidden, and separated from the rest of his family, lest they get converted too, Djallo was discouraged.  Again, it was the evening radio broadcasts that kept his faith alive.  It was during one of those radio broadcasts that he heard about a Christian discipleship program in Niger.  Something stirred in his heart.  Remembering the courageous and faithfulness witness of the missionary that had led him to Jesus, Djallo decided that he would follow in his footsteps and be a missionary too.  Scrounging together a little money and a few extra clothes, in faith, Djallo boarded a bus for Niger.

It has been 9 years since he came to faith in Jesus and Djallo serves as a full time missionary.  He is receiving further ministry training and continue serving in Mali, which as Djallo notes, “Is 95% Muslim and they need to know about Jesus.”