Her older brother was a secret believer for years before she learned of his faith. He had left the war-crushed country in the late 1990s – the devastation was such that he left at age 11 in search of work – and had met Christians in China, Italy and Iran. He mostly rejected their efforts to give him aid because they were Christians, she said.
In Iran, he rebuffed a Christian who asked if he could pray for him, but two months later he accepted an offer from the same man to attend a prayer meeting.
“At the end of the meeting, the pastor offered to pray upon those who wished for it,” Esin said. “My brother said in his heart that if Jesus Christ brought comfort and peace to his heart, he will accept Him as his God; or else He will remain [just] a prophet for him.”
That night her brother sensed God’s touch; he felt his burdens and problems vanish, and he had the most peaceful sleep of his life, Esin said. He asked for a Bible from the Iranian and began to read it.
When Esin’s brother became a Christian in 2005 and was baptized, he received several threats from colleagues as he boldly professed his faith, though she had yet to learn of his conversion. An Afghan whom her brother had met in China found out about his faith and telephoned his own family in Afghanistan, informing them of the conversion, she said. He told his relatives to either drive Esin’s family away from the village or kill them.
At the time, no one in the family knew that the father was a secret Christian. When Esin’s brother phoned his father and revealed that he had become a Christian, she said, his father replied, “I am so happy, I know you have chosen the correct Way. For security reasons I could not tell others [of my own faith in Christ]. I feared and could not risk the lives of the other members of the family.”
Though Esin’s father did not tell anyone else that he was a secret Christian, he encouraged her when she brought a Bible home and started to read it. Esin did not get the opportunity to talk with her father about his faith, because he died the same year she became a Christian in 2018, she said.
That year she found out her older brother had a Bible and studied it regularly. Only then did Esin, her mother and brother tell each other of their faith in Christ, she said.
Esin said she believes with all her heart that she will be reunited with her mother, brother, and younger sister.
“I have hope and I will continue to kindle this hope, because the day my hope is lost, my faith is lost,” she said.
This article originally appeared here.
