Post taken from the Samson Missions page (Facebook):
I wanted to share this photo of one of our most recent training sessions, particularly because of the back stories connected to it. What you’re seeing is a group of our Muslim friends preparing a presentation for the rest of the class. It’s an agricultural seminar hosted by one of our ministry partners that specializes in sustainable farming. Most notably, they have also figured out a way to present the Gospel to Muslims through this training. Our team members are also students in this seminar so that they too could learn how to cultivate the land at our ministry center. They also received extra training strictly for missionaries in order to learn how to teach this class as an outreach tool (when the non-Christians left of course).
What do you notice in this picture? In the background you can see the cross. That’s because we’re hosting the training at the church, Hope for the Nations. Often times we are hyper-sensitive to the people we are ministering to and try to avoid points of contention or offense. But we decided to keep the cross up because these people know us well. They know that we are members of a church. They know that we are Christians. And they are also aware of the fact that we conduct weekly outreaches at their mosque…their own place of worship. And we don’t ever give off that we’re offended by their religious traditions. So we felt that this situation was okay.
Our missions headquarters is at this building. It is called the Hope Center. It houses the church, our office, the Hope Kids Clinic, the Hope Playground, and the newly planted Hope Garden. We’ve hosted many Muslims and other non-Christians here for our outreach seminars and even to simply sleep over so that we could have a recreational excursion with them. We know that we are blessed because in our network, it’s not common practice to have Muslims enter a church or missions agency office or Christian dorm building. It makes sense of course, because of all the awkwardness. But with a vision to build relationships with Muslims and to take them to a place that our team would feel safest and most comforable in, we invested a lot of energy into ensuring that we had our own building. This picture represents just one of the instances of our vision coming to fruition.
The training is being hosted by a ministry partner organization. We became connected after serving one of their leaders during the pandemic. He was in a dire situation and we were told many times that he may not survive on the ventilator. But he won the Covid fight and was discharged after 3 weeks in the hospital. We were there to help with oxygen, transportation, and to pull some strings to get him a bed at a hospital when all facilities were full at that time. That leader was the guy that set this training up for us. And he was enthusiastic because he saw first hand why we have a team of first responders and an ambulance. To serve as Christ served!
Pray with us as our team continues to serve and reach people with the love of Christ. And rejoice with us as God opens more and more doors to bridge the Gospel to the unreached.