From the Streets to the Nations
A TESTIMONY FROM A MISSIONARY IN THE MIDDLE EAST
Growing up on the streets in New Zealand and learning to fend for himself, the leader of the Middle East Mission Base has a salvation story that is unique. His journey through a world of emptiness, loneliness and darkness set the stage for what the Lord is doing through him now, in the Middle East. This 50 Hours, the Middle East Mission Base, for the first time, sent out believers from their base back into that same dark world-in the surrounding region-to bring the light.
“From ages 12 to 16 I was off the rails, going down a really bad route,” said our Middle East Mission Base (MEMB) leader. “My whole life as a child… my mom was a heroin addict. I kind of blamed my mom as a child. That is why I grew up on the streets. As much as I blamed my mom, I realized I was becoming just like her. I decided to become a normal person. I went to night school. Started a career. I got to that place and realized I was still empty and hollow inside. I had a bunch of friends who had traveled overseas and they always came back different. So I decided to travel.”
Our MEMB leader traveled to Thailand and other regions before his money ran out. He said he later heard he could obtain a job cleaning superyachts. The cleaning crews lived on the yachts and got to travel the world. He decided to go for it. While living and working on the superyachts, he met the first Christian he had ever met in his life (aside from his sister, who became a Christian just before he began his travels). He was approximately 21 years old at the time.
“He just began to tell me about God and to tell me about Jesus and I didn’t want anything to do with it. But we lived and worked together for five months. I realized there was a peace about him. After a while, I was like ‘clearly, they have something that I don’t.’ He said, ‘what are you afraid of? If Jesus isn’t real, you will just be back in the same spot. But what if He is?’ So… I decided to start praying, ‘God, do you really exist?’”
Soon, our MEMB leader faced something very traumatic in his life. He blamed the Lord for it and decided he did not want anything to do with God. Later, he went on to get a job hosting parties on the boats.
“The reality was that drugs and partying and girls made me feel good at the time, and so that is what I did. All of a sudden, I could have as much as I wanted of what I thought made me happy. But I would wake up in the morning feeling completely broken and more miserable than I had ever been,” he said.
In 2012, he once again met up with the Christian couple he had first met while cleaning the superyachts. They convinced him to go to church with them, or, in his words, ‘basically dragged,’ him to church.
“I remember being in this church that was like this big stadium. I was just drawn to the words that the pastor was saying. All of a sudden, I was filled with this peace and joy and love that I had never felt before,” he said. “Then I felt this voice say my name and He said to me, ‘You’ve been asking me if I am real. Here I am.’ I gave the Lord my heart that day. I knew that day that God was real.
That is how my life changed. I remember ringing my sister and telling her. She cried and said that she had prayed every day [for me]. The Lord told me that the purpose of my life was to share with those who had never heard.”
He later went on to get married in 2016 and he and his wife stepped into ministry in 2018. They went through MAPS Global’s training school and did their student placement in the Middle East. They did not receive a “big word from the Lord,” to move to the Middle East.
“The Lord just asked, ‘Are you willing to move here for me?,’” he said. So they did.
Today, after many years of prayer and intercession for the Lord to raise up indigenous missionaries from their home base to go into the spiritually dark regions of the Middle East, they are beginning to see those prayers answered. This year’s 50 Hours was a milestone marking that shift.
“This 50 Hours was the first 50 Hours that we have actually sent [missionaries] as well as received [missionaries],” he said. “The heart here is to train and send locals both nationally and regionally. It was just important, prophetically. We are approaching what we have been praying for for years. We are physically building towards training and sending locals. It is not something we are just praying for anymore. We are literally building the foundations of it.”
“Over the past two years, we’ve run small internships. We’ve trained two people at a time. They’ve come on staff with us. Very small. Just two at a time. But last year, in 2023, we launched on a bigger scale. We had nine students. We did a full-blown school. That was when the shift really happened. That was a big change for us in terms of disciples and people willing to go.”
“As they build the structure to support the new missionaries ready to go, the Middle East Missions Base is planting a second base this year, in 2024. They will have missionaries traveling back and forth to that base. They hope to have a full-time team serving there by 2026.
“This region that we are looking at sending towards has no churches. No workers there. It is untouched. We only know of one secret believer there,” he said. “There is a real prophetic destiny for this city.”
Looking back, the Lord is bringing this story full-circle. He called our Middle East Missions Base leader out of the darkness and into the light and told him his purpose: to share with those who have never heard. Now, he himself is sending indigenous believers into the unreached regions to share with those who have never heard. They are going into the darkness and bringing the light.