Muslims Coming to Christ
Steve and Marty McFarland are second term missionaries distributing Christian materials in Tanzania, Africa with KEY CONNECTIONS MINISTRIES. According to Marty, the heart of the ministry is “to serve the African church with the resources that they so desperately need.” They shared about their first experience using Kiswahili filmstrips and a solar powered audiovisual pack supplied by Good News Productions, International.
 “. . . We had been asked to share with the Kigongoni congregation, located in a small remote village. The meetings were scheduled for five hours each day for the three-day Easter weekend. The first day the congregation was slow to fill the rugged benches of the mud and stick church structure, but by the time we were ready to darken the windows and show the filmstrips, the building was full. They loved them! Both the pastor and his congregation were thrilled with this high-tech presentation of the Gospel and eager to see more. So, we happily agreed to show a filmstrip at each session before Sunday morning’s Easter celebration. Each showing brought more people. There was no room to sit and little room to stand–even by Maasai standards.
The pastor had shared that there were increasing numbers of Muslims in their little community, but they, of course, would never come to hear the Gospel presentation.  However, in light of this new technology, they were enticed to make an exception. Fifteen Muslims arrived to watch the filmstrip. Like everyone else, the filmstrip completely held their attention. As quickly as the filmstrip ended, they departed, but they had already heard the Good News of Jesus. Later, we learned that five Muslims, as well as a large number of others in the community came to Christ. The pastor was thrilled.
And on a rather humorous note: We had shown our entire repertoire in advance of the Easter Sunday morning service except for an HIV/AIDS filmstrip that somehow didn’t seem quite right for these Easter weekend evangelistic meetings. When we arrived at the church on Easter morning, the ladies were already hard at work covering the church windows. When we explained that we wouldn’t be seeing filmstrips this morning, they were devastated. The pastor soon came to ask that we show another filmstrip. When we said that all we had left was a filmstrip on HIV/AIDS, he said that would be no problem. Nobody there knew that it was Easter anyway, but they did know that they wanted to see more Good News productions.
So, we thank you again. And we hope that we will be effective partners in distributing your fine products to those who will benefit eternally from their use.”
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