In Their Own Words
{conversations with Central Asians}
“My father died when I was 16. If someone had told me at that time that God loved me, I would have slapped them. I would have said, ‘How can you tell me that?’” –Rosa
KAZAKHSTAN Winter 2008
Counting the Cost: A Tatar love story
Rosa*, age 54, has a story to tell. On this cold winter day, she hardly waits for her visitors to shed their coats before beginning:
“My mother died when I was seven. My father remarried a Russian woman, but that marriage didn’t last. We were an ordinary Soviet family, with no belief in God. We were Tatars from Kazan, but Muslim in name only.
“My father died when I was 16. If someone had told me at that time that God loved me, I would have slapped them. I would have said, ‘How can you tell me that?’”
Grieving, abused physically and emotionally during the year following her father’s death, Rosa was an angry young woman. She had no family left in her home of Almaty, Kazakhstan. She had no concept of a loving God who might wish to intervene in her circumstances.
At age 18 she met and married a 22-year-old Uighur man, Mehmet. Though ethnically Tatar and thus culturally Muslim, Rosa stepped into a family that practiced folk Islamic tradition in a way her own family had not. Under the watchful eye of her mother-in-law, Rosa learned to make fried bread honoring her ancestors. She learned the obligatory Muslim prayers and blessings.
“God began to teach me how to obey the one you love,” she says. “But I made an idol of my husband, my family, my comfort.”
As the Soviet economy began to sag, black market entrepreneurs found ways to make money—lots of it. Mehmet was one of those successful underworld businessmen. As his and Rosa’s family grew to include a daughter and son, so did their wealth.
“We were rich, but I was not happy. At night I cried and cried, partly because my relationship with my husband was not good.” Like many men in Central Asian culture, Mehmet made no pretense of faithfulness to his wife. Rosa knew this was to be expected in marriage, she says. Divorce was never a question, but she was desperately unhappy.
Life began to change in their household when Rosa’s daughter, Farida, began attending a new school in ninth grade. Farida was befriended by a Christian who invited her to the local Russian Baptist church. Interested, she asked permission, and her parents consented without much concern. However, in time, they began to notice changes: “After church, her face was changed. She became happier,” Rosa explains.
Mehmet, also observing the changes, eventually told his wife to go and check on what was happening at this church.
At that time, Rosa’s view of God was shaped by the words of her mother-in-law, who liked to say often to Rosa, “Allah will punish you.” Rosa also carried other confusing, damaging experiences in her heart.
“I had once visited the Orthodox church and it was very scary to me. I thought to myself, ‘God is not like this.’ I also saw, as a Muslim wife, that Muslims lived one way when they were saying namaz (daily prayers), but the rest of the time they acted completely different.”
Rosa, following her husband’s instructions, visited the church Farida had been attending. “The pastor’s first sentence was: ‘God is love,’ and it was like a light came on in my heart. I said, ‘Yes! This is God!’
“I went to church that day carrying all this baggage…. It was growing and growing all the time. I was ready to throw it off.” She spoke and prayed with a deacon after the service, confessing her sins and receiving Jesus’ forgiveness.
Mehmet continued to cautiously consent to his daughter—and then his wife and son—attending church. “My husband went with me when our daughter was baptized. He cried with joy because he saw her making a firm decision about how she would live her life, following God. It didn’t matter so much in that moment that she was choosing to follow the Russian God.”
As his family grew in their understanding of God, Mehmet also sought to grow spiritually, but he was determined to stay within the confines of his Islamic heritage. The year Farida was baptized he made a pilgrimage to Mecca, hoping to return a better man, a better husband. It didn’t work. He talked with his mother about these things, and she paid a faith healer to come and counsel him. That was also fruitless.
Meanwhile, Mehmet and Rosa’s son was going to the mosque on Fridays with his dad and to church on Sundays with his mom. Mehmet questioned him one day about his reasons for going to the mosque. “Do you understand what is happening?” The son said he didn’t understand, but he went out of love for his dad. Mehmet asked, “Do you understand when you go to church on Sundays?” The boy said he did.
Mehmet then asked him if he wanted to be a Christian, and the boy said yes. Mehmet turned to Rosa with the same question, to which she also responded with a resounding yes. Although she had already put her faith in Jesus, she had not professed her faith publicly out of respect for her husband’s wishes.
Seeing their earnestness, Mehmet gave his consent for them to be baptized. However, as Rosa prepared for this big step, Mehmet decided to put her to the test. One day she arrived home to find an Algerian Muslim man sitting in their living room. Mehmet told her that she could be baptized if she answered the man’s questions correctly. When the man asked her how Jesus could have come to earth and been born of a virgin, she cried and said she couldn’t explain it. She knew she had failed the test. But instead of rebuking her, the Algerian man told Mehmet, “Better to be a good Christian than a bad Muslim.” With that, Mehmet consented once more.
But life changed drastically for Rosa the moment she came home after being baptized. Mehmet began persecuting and abusing her like never before. He forbade her from attending church—from going anywhere. Her home became her prison, she says. Later he would explain: “Your face was different when you came home (from being baptized); it was shining so. I never saw a face like that before. Something happened on that day.”
For nearly two years Rosa was confined to her home. She obeyed her husband and mother-in-law, participating in all the normal Muslim rituals. She cooked the special bread, prayed at the times and in the manner expected of her, but in her heart she did it all for Jesus.
Despite her obedience, Rosa’s marriage deteriorated further to the point of Mehmet making a firm decision to take a second wife. He gave Rosa an ultimatum, the only possibility for keeping him:
“Forget your Bible, your Russian God; just be a Muslim wife. I will wash your feet. Choose God or choose me.”
Rosa says: “I chose God.”
That day was the beginning of the end of Rosa’s marriage. “After 26 years of marriage that was my first time to say no to my husband,” she says. “I thought he would kill me.”
Instead, he later asked her one simple question: “Are you happy with your God?” When she told him that she was, he said, “I’m so jealous that you didn’t exchange God for your husband.”
Ten years have passed since that day. Though the law permitted Mehmet to take a second wife without divorcing Rosa, his second wife demanded the divorce.
Rosa was not happy about Mehmet’s choices, but she nonetheless grieved deeply the complete loss of her marriage. She has battled hate and bitterness toward Mehmet’s second wife, but by God’s grace she has won. She has learned to forgive and embrace that same woman. Though her choice to follow Jesus cost her much, God has blessed Rosa with children who know Jesus, and with grandchildren who will also one day hear of His great love.
For the first time since his family became believers in Jesus, Mehmet—who has since become a Muslim mullah in his own quest for God—has agreed to spend an extended period of time with a Christian family. This man who once forbade his wife from attending church is currently spending three months with his daughter and her husband, who is a pastor in India. During this time Rosa is praying that Mehmet will finally surrender to Jesus, the One for whom his heart has hungered all these years.
Meanwhile, Rosa says she would not trade anything for her own relationship with Jesus. She has learned to obey the One she loves above all others, and this has brought deep, abiding joy.
“I am the happiest person in the world because God loves me so much.”
*Names changed to protect believers. Photos do not represent the people in the story.