Names have been changed, but Mostafa’s experience is typical of many listeners who respond to our Arabic evening broadcast to Yemen

Lying on his back, Mostafa was listening to an Arabic song before going to bed. It was 10:15pm in Yemen. The song finished and he decided to look for something interesting on another station. While searching, he heard the voices of two people talking: “We are Arab Christians of several nationalities … Lebanese, Jordanian, Yemeni, Iraqi…”

Is it true?

‘Are there really Christians in Yemen?’ Mostafa wondered. ‘Aren’t all Yemenis Muslims?’ He listened as broadcasters Noor and Souheil tried to explain what Christian meant when they spoke about the ‘Son of God’. To Mostafa this was blasphemy, as God doesn’t have sons! ‘I wish I could write to them or talk to them and tell them the truth about Isa (Jesus)’, he thought.

A phone number to encourage listeners to send questions and comments to Noor and Souheil by text message was announced. He grabbed his mobile phone and wrote, “My name is Mostafa. I heard you saying that Jesus is the Son of God. We (Muslims) say that Jesus is the word of God. Please explain to me the difference.” He hesitated then clicked ‘send’.

Everybody prayed

In the morning Noor and Souheil printed his message and discussed how to explain again what they meant by ‘Son of God’. They received this and similar questions almost every day from listeners, but answering them is never boring. They shared Mostafa’s message with the rest of the team during prayer time and everybody prayed that Mostafa and thousands like him would be touched by the answer they would broadcast. Noor and Souheil went into the studio and spoke about Jesus. A few hours later, Mostafa was lying on his bed again, his mobile phone in hand, waiting eagerly for the answer to his question.

Questions and answers came and went and Mostafa finally decided it was time to get a Bible, even if he believed the text message was unreliable. Some weeks later, he started reading the Bible and asking more questions, and one day told a close friend about the Christian station. They listen regularly now, reading the Bible and sending text messages to the broadcasters. They haven’t decided to follow Jesus yet, but Noor and Souheil believe that God will use their programmes and that Mostafa and many others will eventually take this step of faith.

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