"Greg"

A few days ago, I experienced a humorous incidence with my friend, let's call him Greg.  He was checking to see how much memory my computer had on it.  He told me that my computer had 250 GB and, "that that is pretty good--for a girl."  I pounced on that pretty quickly and we've been joking about it ever since.

That joke led to a conversation about women's equality issues and how women are treated in different countries.  Greg was telling us about villages in his country, Cameroon, and how a village king can command any woman he sees, and likes, to become his wife, even if she already has a husband or boyfriend.  He told us that sons usually succeed the kings, even if they are young, like 7 years old.  And if the 7 year old King sees a pretty girl that he wants to sleep with, he just has to say the word and that girl must go to him. We were all appalled.  He said one of his friends in high school wasn't there one day and when he inquired to where she was, he found out that the king in her village had summoned her to become one of his wives.  It is quite sad for women, who have no voice in these matters.

That conversation turned into how Greg became a Christian.  It is a really incredible story. God can be so gentle and persistent with us.

Greg's family sits in a community of Muslims.  Five mosques surround his home and they hear the call to prayer several times a day as mosques have speakers blasting songs, prayers and teachings at them constantly.  Surprisingly, most of Greg's family is Christian because some missionaries converted his grandfather many decades ago.  (Greg told us the Bible in their native tongue was translated by his grandfather - really cool!)  The faith of the grandfather has been carried down through the family, but Greg didn't want to believe just because they did.  At one point Greg went to live with his brother's family. His brother is a Christian, but he was very pushy about Greg attending church with them. Greg didn't want to go to church with them, but if he did attend, he would just go to see the pretty girls.

Eventually he had to move out of his brother's because his lifestyle conflicted with theirs. So Greg lived with one of his friends and they would go out drinking and dancing every night.  He felt something was missing in his life, so he tried to fill it with soccer, girls and partying.  These things didn't fill the void.  Greg also found that when no one was nagging him to go to church, he felt in his heart that maybe he should.

One day he decided to go for a walk and he felt compelled to take a small hand-held radio with him.  He'd rarely ever taken a radio with him on walks before, but randomly he took it.  He turned it to a station where a Christian preacher was speaking, and he said that the words directly applied to his life and circumstances. At the end of the preacher's message, their was a call to accept Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior by praying with the preacher.  Greg, who was now sitting on a rock on the side of the road, thought this was  crazy and weird... but he did it.  And he's been a Christian for the the last six years (and he's been serving with Mercy Ships for the last two).