Creative Access Nations (CANs) are so called because, as the traditional missionary visa won’t give you residency, creativity is needed to enter and live in these countries. Rachel and Amy were part of a Timo team working in one such country.

We call them CANs because, as the traditional missionary visa doesn’t work, creativity is needed to enter and live in these countries — pretty obvious really! Our team’s ‘platform’ was English teaching. Platforms are a curious thing, on the one hand they can be viewed as a means to an end, they get us into the country and they allow us to stay. But on the other hand a second-rate offering for the sake of a visa is offensive to both locals and to Jesus. Our team wanted to provide a quality service and, at the same time, use what we did to help build relationships with the local people, in a way that would allow us the time to invest in those relationships.

So once you’ve figured out how to get in, what next? You may think that, as a group of Christians arriving in a small Muslim country, we wouldn’t be accepted, let alone welcomed. We certainly thought so. It was with a certain amount of trepidation that we stepped off the plane for our first experience of the islands. How would the locals react to us, what would we say? Or maybe more importantly, what should we not say? In the end I was to be pleasantly surprised by how open I could be.

As a team we wanted to be known as followers of Jesus, and we were widely known and welcomed as Christians working for a Christian NGO*. Being known as a follower of Jesus is one thing, but how do you actually go one step further and introduce people to Jesus?

First of all you need to understand the people, you need to be able to present the gospel in a way they can understand and, ideally you need to do it in the context of a relationship.

What does that look like in practice? It means spending time with people, hanging out with women in their homes, cooking and eating together, going to weddings and funerals, visiting them in hospital, in essence sharing their lives.

It didn’t take us long to identify some of the many misconceptions Muslims have about Christianity. The most glaring misconception is that any Westerner is a Christian and Christianity is therefore seen as a foreign religion. We try to remove those barriers, and show them the truth about what it means to be a follower of Jesus. We try to make the gospel less foreign. We dress like them, speak their language, and think about how to share with them about Jesus without all our Western ‘baggage’.

And finally we proclaim. We speak truth. Sometimes we can have set ideas about who to talk to and what our strategies should be. We need wisdom mixed with boldness remembering that we follow in Jesus’ footsteps, somebody who turned human wisdom and strategy upside down when he spoke to a woman at a well. I loved sharing Bible stories with women, starting in the familiar ground of the Old Testament and working through the Bible towards a more controversial understanding of who Jesus is.

While learning to speak the language well and being culturally sensitive are important they need to spring from our love for the people and our love for God. We want to learn to love the people we’re working with as God loves them — funnily enough, this isn’t always easy!

Many of those who turned to Christ knew different members of the team, and we saw how God used our varying gifts and personalities to open doors into their lives. Being in a team also provides much needed community. Not that we agreed all of the time on the best way forward, with some drawing the line between being bold and being unwise in quite different places.

As a team working in a spiritually challenging environment you quickly discover that you won’t get far on your own. Our total dependence on prayer had to become more than just an idea; it had to become the reality that we lived out.

Fear can stifle action, but what is the worst that can happen to us? Well we were spoken against in a public meeting and even, one day found a pile of human excreta on the doorstep. In our country we may not have had a secret police to deal with, but nosey neighbours who don’t have much else to do can be just as effective at keeping tabs on exactly what is going on. But for nationals who do respond to Christ it can be quite a different story.

During our time in the islands we saw a number of people accepting Jesus. For them this is the beginning of a hard road. They will face rejection, and quite possibly persecution. How you best disciple them through the coming storm is just one of the many questions we had to wrestle with as a team.

Ultimately we found ourselves living and working in a place where we were completely out of our comfort zones, and quite often out of our depths! But that’s okay, we’re called to continue following Jesus, trusting that he’ll take our meagre offerings and through them bring his transforming love and power to those who need to see the Light, and know the Truth.

* Non-Governmental Organisation