From Cave to Christ...

Esmerelda's Testimony...

...from living in a

cave to LIFE in Christ!

Tue, Oct 23, 2012

This is a POWERFUL testimony that strongly moves me when I read it because:

a.  It glorifies God

b.  It speaks of how God continues to move from, and beyond, Athens

c.  It speaks of how God used Gregor and Gregor's parents to share God's life-changing love

with Esmerelda

d.  I personally know Esmerelda, and she is a bright, beautiful, joyful, loving and humble

servant of God.  We are supporting her, and we hope you will pray about supporting her if

you can.  She is a WORTHY investment!  You can give a tax-deductible investment online at:

https://give.cru.org/2880510 (then click "give a gift")

"I was born in Shkoder, Albania, a country devastated in many levels under the harshest

Communist regime of Eastern Europe. I belonged to a race that even among a poor and

devastated people was marginalized, despised and made fun of.

They call us Gypsies.

And among my own people I was an unlucky case.  As a kid I new nothing of my mother.

She left us when I was two to go to Italy, thinking of finding a better life. I learned later her

intentions were to come back and take us when she would have made some money, but this

never happened.  We were three children but I remember only my father with whom I stayed 

when mother left.

I was little but was told latter because the house was so old and crumbling, my father and

me moved to a cave in a hill nearby.  No doors, no windows, when it rained, water would

drip in over our “bed”.  We had a dog and a cat. Once the cat got a snake in our bedding

and killed it saving my life. Another time the dog saved me from criminals who pepper-

sprayed my father and tried to kidnap me.

That is the first “house” I remember.

We begged for daily bread from shop to shop, from coffee bar to coffee bar.  I did not know

what family meant. I coveted other children when I saw them hugging their mothers, thinking

in silence, I want to have a family.  The only person that loved me and I loved him was father. 

I loved him so much that I never wanted to be separated from him.  I did not want to know 

about God. I thought He does not care for me.

At around age seven, my grandmother took us in and we shared a room with her in my

uncle's apartment.  I never got to go to school. Daily survival was the theme of our lives.

One day while playing in front of the apartment building, my cousin, the uncle's daughter,

invited me to a place they called “fellowship place”.  Almost all kids from the neighborhood

would go there. I went.

It was a dark red metallic door in front of which stood what seemed then to me to be an

older lady. She welcomed children with hugs. They all called her mother Roza. That sounded

strange.  Being a timid child I did not go to her, but as I waited my turn to go in through the

door, she, with a big smile and a love I did not know how to describe, opened her arms 

towards me and said, “Come and give a hug to mother.” It was the embrace I had longed for

all my life. I did not want to be separated from it. I felt love, perfect love, unconditional love.

Inside I was asking, “Where is this love coming from?".  With time I was to discover that the

love mother Roza had, was the love of Jesus Christ.

Soon that woman would become my mother for real.

My father passed away suddenly when I was eight years old. I did not know but mother Roza

had promised my father to send me to school. She had a long hard battle with my grandmother

who was in charge. Sheherself being uneducated, did not see a need for me to go to school. 

Then mother Rosa and her husband (my new father) Zef and my brother Gregor (who came to

Christ in Athens and was the pastor of the church) took me in for good. This was another hard

battle with my grandmother.  Everything changed. I had a family. My own room, a warm bed,

food, clean clothes, and I went to school like the other kids. Father Zef would take me to 

the school and waited to pick me up when I finished.

But only at eleven years old I deeply understood my need to be born again by making the Lord

Jesus Christ my Savior and my Lord. I did this with all my heart, on my knees, with tears in my

eyes. It was something Gregor had said when he came to share once at the Children's Church:

“God told Noah to make one door to the Ark through which he his family and the animals had

to go to be saved. And in the same way Jesus is the Door to Salvation. He is the only way to

the Father. No one goes to the Father except through Him."

From that moment on I am holding His hand and never want to let go. I got a new life both

ways, in this world and in eternity.  I still faced many difficulties and challenges. Father Zef

passed away one year after I was adopted. So I lost my father again.  As Gregor got married

to Kela and they moved to Kosovo to serve the Lord there in the city of Gjilan me and mother

Roza moved also there. Mother Roza’s heath was deteriorating and in a few years she also

went to be with the Lord.

I got to go to high school and university in Kosovo. God’s faithful hand has been with me

always and according to the promise He made that He will never leave me, He will never

forsake me.  For many years growing up in the new family and the church I had a dream,

one desire to serve the Lord all my life. I did this in the churches I have been helping in kids

and youth ministries in Shkoder, Albania and in Gjilan and Prishtina (in Kosovo).  Doing as much as

I could, counting it a privilege.  During the university years I got also very active with Campus

Crusade for Christ.  And in the last year of my studies God put it in my heart to join them

full-time. I applied, and was accepted.

Now I am ministering on campus and seeing God bring others to Himself and using me and

others to help them find Him and to grow in Him.   Praise the Lord!  In June of 2013 I plan to

marry my fiance and we will minister together for Jesus!

M’s Testimony

I’m a Kurd from Iran. All of my family has been on Haaji, so they are very religious. I fought with my family all the time because I wouldn’t go to the mosque. My dad would tell me that I was like Noah’s son who wouldn’t come to God. So that’s why I separated from my family.

My family was part of a political (and religious) group that believes that Iran should have freedom and that Kurdistan should be a separate country. 

Four years ago, the Iranian religious police came to our house, started shooting at us, and completely destroyed our house. There were no windows or doors left, and they took everything we had in the house. One of my uncles was shot. He had been in jail for six years, and had just gotten out of jail when this happened. After these problems, the government asked my uncle to work for them, but he wouldn’t accept. So he left for Iraq. 

Before this happened, I was just part of the group to support my uncle, but after this I became much more involved in the group because of what the government had done to us. I started going to the judges to petition them to hold the government responsible for destroying our house. I told them that I was not involved with the group, but my uncle was. Instead, they charged me with crimes, and told me I was not allowed to go back to my own city. They laughed at me when I asked why I couldn’t go back, but they just mocked me. Then I found out that they were playing with me, that they wouldn’t help me get justice. 

This is only one example of the reasons I had to leave Iran. The government kept bringing charges against me. If I told you all the things that happened to me during that time, it would fill a whole book. The government kept looking for any reason to lock me away forever. Because the government was against me, many other people took a dislike to me, and I had to carry a knife around with me to defend myself. My situation was like a container of petrol, just waiting for someone to light a match. 

I left Iran with my passport, but at the border I just gave them a lot of money to let me into Turkey. I stayed in Turkey for three months. It was a really bad winter. I stayed in a smuggler’s house. My goal was to go to Bulgaria, because it’s easier to get to the rest of Europe from there. But since it was so cold and there was a way to leave, a group of us decided to come to Greece. 

On the way from Turkey to Greece, I had to go through a river. While I walked through the river, I said “I give all of my past to this river, and begin to live a new life now.”

I came to Athens, and became very sick. I was taken to a hospital, and in the hospital many people came to visit me. They didn’t care that I was not from the same town or even the same country as them. They offered me many things, and I never had to pay for medicine or anything in the hospital. One thing came to my mind, that they are Christian,

and that is the reason they are helping me. In Turkey they were Moslem, but they never helped me. 

I heard in the park that there was a place that gave out food. So I came to Helping Hands. I saw Nader, who was speaking about the gospel. I decided to come one Sunday to the Persian Christian Fellowship. I thought, “all those years I fought against my father about the Moslem faith, but now I should find out what Christians believe.” Nader said that Jesus is the Son of God, and I thought it was blasphemy to say that man became God. 

But it was a big question in my mind, what happened when Jesus was born? I thought that either Mary was adulterous, or it was a miracle. Then I read the entire life of Jesus, and I found out that not only was his birth a miracle, but his death and resurrection were miracles too.

I came to the conclusion that I am a sinner. There were two things in my life that I have always regretted, and always felt guilty about. No person knew about them, but God always knew. But I heard that Jesus came to forgive our sins, and I thought “I really need a savior, to save me from those sins.” I believe that it was a miracle that Jesus was born, to die for us to save us from our sins, and I accepted him as my savior. 

From the day that I gave my heart to Jesus, it was like a heavy burden was lifted from my shoulders. When I raised my hand to accept Jesus in Persian Christian Fellowship, it was like all my guilt and shame left through my open hands. I think everything in my life has been changed. When I was in Iran, I lived in the same city as my parents, but didn’t even visit them once a year. But once I became a Christian, I started to care for them. Before I didn’t love anyone, and only thought about how I could hurt them. Now I want to love them.

I am from a big group of people in Kurdistan, and everyone there knows me. I know if they hear that I became Christian, immediately they would reject me and the gospel at the same time. But I want to show the love of Jesus to them first, to prepare their hearts, then to share the gospel with them. I want to share the love of Jesus to everyone around the world. I started here in Athens. Everyone in Athens knows that I’m a Christian, because I can’t stop talking about my faith. Even the smugglers know. They’ll kill me if they find me. But I know that if everybody in this world would know His love, His peace, and His freedom, there wouldn’t be any more pain in the world.