Hope Road

Even If It Costs Me My Life

From Daughters of Hope by Kay Marshall Strom and Michele Rickett (a book I chose to read as part of my internship requirement):

There are very few Bibles and very little Christian literature available in Tunisia. “It’s so hard for new believers to grow when they don’t have access to the Bible,” Taiza said. “If they can have God’s Word, and also other books and literature, it is such a wonderful help to them.”

“It’s impossible,” she was told when she asked about it. “There aren’t any men who can bring that kind of material in - especially not Bibles. It just can’t be done!”

“But I am doing it,” she told us. “I am securing Bibles for the church and also other materials that will help new Christians to grow.”

“How?” Michele asked her.

“By the grace of God,” she answered.

It was several minutes before our minds began to register what this young woman, this four-year-old Christian, this wife and mother of two toddlers, was risking.

“Taiza,” Kay asked, “if they should realize - if they catch you with those Bibles - Taiza, what would they do to you?”

A smile crossed her face. “I refuse to worry about it,” she answered, “because my job is so very, very important. I am a Christian today because I got hold of a Bible twelve years ago. Do you know what a woman once told me? She said, ‘I’m scared to read the Bible, because if I read it, in the end I may believe in it.’ She was right. She read it, and she believed. That’s why I have to get Bibles into this country. I have to do it even if it costs me my life.”

We watched out the window as Taiza walked down the street with her husband and little children. Her smile never faded.

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