“I want to be baptized,” Abdul said. “Is it possible for me?”
The young Middle Eastern refugee was speaking to Otis Neumann, an International Mission Board missionary who has spent fourteen years working among refugees. Then his story came tumbling out.
Abdul was only a child when raiders swept into the quiet, isolated countryside where his family lived. They murdered his father. His older brother fled for his life. Abdul was left behind, terrified and alone, with nowhere to escape, and his father’s murderers became his new family.
Years passed. Then one day his older brother came back. In the world Abdul had grown up in, there was only one thing a returning son could do: avenge his father. Abdul remembered the years of terror and fear, and he urged his brother to take blood for blood.
His brother refused. Somewhere along the way, as a teenager on the run, he had heard the gospel and begun to follow Jesus. Now he did something no one around them expected. He offered forgiveness to the men who had killed their father and torn their family apart. And instead of talking about revenge, he talked to Abdul about the peace he had found in Jesus, not knowing how his little brother would respond.
Abdul decided to follow Jesus too. “He described that from the moment his brother shared the gospel with him those many years ago, the anger and bitterness and pain that he had felt his whole life just washed away,” Neumann said. “And he felt peace, because of God’s grace to him.”
That peace did not make his life safe. When local Muslim leaders began enforcing an extremist version of religious law, it became clear Abdul would have to leave his homeland or likely die for his faith. So he fled. For months he crossed entire countries on foot, by bus, and by train, until he reached a place where he could ask for asylum. There another Middle Eastern refugee befriended him and brought him to a local church, which is where he met Neumann’s family.
Not long after that first conversation, Abdul was baptized. He became part of the church’s heartbeat, showing up early every Sunday to help set up and staying to break down. He walked 45 minutes each way whenever the church was open, sometimes arriving wet and cold, sometimes walking home in the dark. When a church in the United States sent a special gift, Neumann bought him a bike, and now Abdul rides to church and serves on several teams.
Neumann marvels at the people he will never meet: “Along the way, witnesses, invisible to us, somehow found Abdul’s older brother somewhere when he was just a teenage boy, and they shared the gospel with him. We don’t know who discipled him, but he was able to return home and offer forgiveness to his father’s murderers and share the gospel with his younger brother.”
At his baptism, knowing what could wait for him if he is sent home, Abdul told his church family plainly: “Whether they kill me or not, I’m a Christian.”
Maybe you are carrying a debt someone owes you, a wound that still asks for payback. Abdul’s brother shows that forgiveness is not pretending the wrong was small. It is letting Jesus carry what you could never collect. And Abdul shows what that forgiveness can do to the people watching: it opened a door no argument could. “And be kind to one another, tender hearted, forgiving each other, just as God also in Christ forgave you” (Ephesians 4:32, WEB). If Jesus has washed away anger in your life too, you are welcome to share your story.
Adapted from “From vengeance to baptism, a refugee’s journey to Christ” by Kristen Sosebee, International Mission Board (3 March 2025). Licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0. Original article. Some names in the original report were changed for security. Except where otherwise noted, IMB site content is CC BY-NC 4.0 (Legal Permissions).