Voice of the Martyrs

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Sudands in the middle of a really, really bad civil war,
and unfortunately in darfour this is a repeat of stuff
that has happened before in our lifetime. We heard about
a young man in this area of Darfour who is
a young believer. His father was an e mom in
a local village. So the father comes in to the
place where his son is at. Actually during one of

(00:23):
his Bible studies with the local pastor. He liked what
he heard and he was interested by it, so he
decided to keep coming back and his son and the
pastor actually led this emam to faith.

Speaker 2 (00:35):
Jesus never promised his followers an easy path. In fact,
he told his disciples that the world would hate them.
He sent them out as sheep among wolves. Jesus' words
came true in the life of the Apostles, and they're
still coming true today in the lives of his followers
around the world. Joint hosts Todd nettletons we hear their
inspiring stories and learn how we can help right now

(00:57):
on the Voice of Martyrs Radio Network.

Speaker 3 (00:59):
Welcome again to the Voice of the Martyrs Radio My
name is Todd Nettleton, and we are in our studio
today in Bartosol, Oklahoma with Ty Scott. Tye is a
first time guest here on Voice of the Martyrs Radio.
He is the leader of Voice of the Martyrs work
in East and Southern Africa. Ty, Welcome to Voice of
the Martch Radio.

Speaker 1 (01:18):
Thanks thanks for having me.

Speaker 3 (01:19):
It's slaughter to be here. We're going to talk through
some of the countries that you lead our work in
and I want to start out in Comoros because I
don't think we've ever mentioned Comoros on Voice of the
Martych Radio before. So more than ten years of your radio,
I don't think that word has ever been said. Where
is it? Because some of our listeners are like, what
that's a country? And then let's talk about what does

(01:40):
it look like to follow Jesus though.

Speaker 1 (01:42):
Comoros is a smokeroup of islands in the Indian Ocean,
about halfway between Mozambique and Madagascar. The archipelago consists of
four islands. Three in nineteen seventy five voted for independence
from France. They were a French colony. One voted to remain,
so today they are actually French overseas territory, so when
you're there, you're actually on French sovereign territory, which is

(02:05):
the island of Mayot, but the other three voted to
separate and seek independence. Komoros itself actually claims Mayot as Comorian,
and so they have a very sharp disagreement with the French.
They contend that the French were not forthcoming when they
had the vote for self determination.

Speaker 3 (02:25):
So what is the religious makeup of those nine hundred
thousand people.

Speaker 1 (02:31):
Komoros is by constitution Islamic country. However, there are some
Christians there. They probably make up less than one one
hundred of percent, so you're probably talking about less than
one thousand people total. They are not allowed to freely
express worship very very much an underground church.

Speaker 3 (02:49):
So in a place like that, I would think, because
it's such a small population, if you're a Christian, it's
not going to be very long before people know, hey,
that guy's not going to Mosco anymore, or hey, he
talks to me about Jesus. We need to do something
about this. Is that sort of community form of persecution
The main way it's happening.

Speaker 1 (03:10):
Absolutely, community and family for sure. Yeah. In fact, one
culturally interesting fact about Comorian society is that when people
get married, the husband moves into the wives home, since
you don't go form your own nuclear family independent perhaps
of the larger extended family, and makes it even harder
for individuals or couples or nuclear families within that broader

(03:34):
context to live out their faith.

Speaker 3 (03:36):
We're talking this week on Voice of the Martyrs Radio
with Ty Scott. He leads vom's international ministry work in
East and Southern Africa. Ty, one of the things that
is really interesting about some of the countries in your
region is the fact that if you look at the stats,
you would say that's a Christian country, and in some

(03:58):
of them, I think it's over eighty percent of the
people say yup, I'm a Christian. But within some of
those countries there are places you can go where it's
almost one hundred percent Muslim. That's right, And it is
just like living in the Middle East. It's just like
living in Somalia where you cannot be a Christian. What
is it like to try to do ministry in those

(04:20):
sort of Islamic enclaves and what is it like if
someone in one of those villages becomes a follower of Jesus.

Speaker 1 (04:27):
So I think the three countries that we're probably talking
about in this setting or maybe even four. The main
ones that come to mind are gonna be Kenya, Uganda, Ethiopia,
and Tanzania. All of those have freedom of religion, but
there are areas in each of those countries that are
are dominated by groups that are ethnically tied to the

(04:48):
religion of Islam. And so while somebody can live in
one of the cities like Nairobi or even Dar Salam
or Kampala and Uganda and and be an evangelical Christian,
they can grow up going to church and Sunday school,
they can go to youth group, they can do outreach
events with their church, they can go on mission trips

(05:09):
locally and stuff like that. But they are very very
in very very close proximity to people who are completely
on the other side, who are lost in the darkness
of Islam. So what I've seen largely are two kind
of parallel societies where people might interact in the workplace

(05:30):
or the marketplace or school, but then they go live
their private lives their lives of faith separately, completely separately.

Speaker 2 (05:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (05:39):
Now, where that has caused some I guess tension is
in the larger cities where people come for economic opportunity
and generally speaking, they have to be fairly neutral when
it comes to how they interact with one another. But
once you get out into some the rural areas or

(06:01):
areas that are historically dominated by one group who identifies
as one religion or the other, then you get a
little bit more tension when people come to faith. So
in a heavily Islamic area of Kenya, perhaps if someone
were to come to faith, generally speaking, even the local
authorities are going to be sympathetic to Islam. And so

(06:23):
if they are kicked out of their home or if
they are beaten or even killed, generally speaking, not much
is going to happen to prevent that or to find
justice for the people that are abused for coming to faith.

Speaker 3 (06:37):
So the attitude is kind of like, hey, they brought
that on themselves, that's exactly right. Like it's not our
fault that they decided to leave the religion.

Speaker 1 (06:44):
That is exactly right.

Speaker 3 (06:45):
Yeah, So let's talk a little bit about like I'm
thinking particularly of Somali people, because I have gone and
interviewed some of them and met some of them. In
the mindset of an ethnic Somali person, being and being
Muslim are essentially the same thing. Right, like you cannot
mentally separate the two.

Speaker 1 (07:05):
Yeah, that's correct, and that's actually similar to being Komorian.
To be Komorian is to be Muslim, and to be
Somali in their minds is to be Muslim.

Speaker 3 (07:12):
So how do gospel workers go into those contexts and
plant the seeds of the Gospel and kind of assure them,
I'm not asking you to not be Somali anymore, but
like I want you to be Samali. God loves the Somalis,
but I am trying to tell you about Jesus. Sure,
how do you sort of slide something into the crack

(07:35):
and say it's okay to follow Jesus and you'll still
be a Somali.

Speaker 1 (07:40):
The idea of being Somali or being any ethnic group
is equal to being Muslim is interesting when it comes
in contact with the Gospel because God established diversity on
this earth, and he established all the different peoples that
reflect Him in different ways. And while we are fallen
and we live under the curse of sin, what God

(08:04):
wants to do with the Gospel is actually not to
change what it means to be a Somali or make
them not Somali anymore, but actually to fulfill what it
means to truly be a Somali in the way that
God has designed them or any of us really to
live in a relationship to Him. And so when gospel

(08:24):
workers in that field, especially Somalis who have come to faith,
engage their fellow Somalis with the Gospel, they do so
with that understanding that it's not actually asking them to
leave their ethnicity or their people, but it's asking them
to fulfill what God would actually have them be.

Speaker 3 (08:43):
Yeah, which is an interesting different way of thinking about it.
At the same time, they know ninety nine point nine
percent of the people they know who are Somali are
going to say, you're a traitor. You've rejected us, You've
rejected your heritage. How could you be so shameful?

Speaker 1 (09:01):
Exactly. Yeah, that's absolutely true.

Speaker 3 (09:03):
And as you mentioned, Somalia is not the only place
ethnic Somalis are, not the only place that's happened. I
have heard from Turkish workers. To be Turkish is to
be Muslim. You can't separate those, and so this is
not an uncommon thing in the Muslim world to have
that sort of identity that is both ethnic and religious

(09:24):
sort of all wrapped into one. If someone is interested
in going to one of those places. Because we have
folks who listen to the home radio who are going
to be missionaries. I say that by faith, and I
say that because I've heard from some of them. How
do you unpack that as a gospel worker to know
what to emphasize and how to sort of start planting

(09:47):
seeds in that field.

Speaker 1 (09:49):
That's a really good question. I think the first thing
is for people to do their research. There are a
lot of really great organizations out there that engage all
sorts of different people groups including Somalis and the to Africa,
and a lot of them have learned through trial and error,
and so you know, sometimes it's more error than trial
or But would I would suggest to anybody that's considering

(10:12):
or praying through that potential calling to talk to either
their denominational sending agency or whatever sending agency they might
be interested in going with and just have a good conversation.
Usually those groups will be pretty open after some vetting
about the possibilities and the realities of life and ministry

(10:33):
in those fields.

Speaker 3 (10:34):
We're talking this week on Voice the Martist Radio with
Ty Scott. He leads vom's international ministry work in East
and Southern Africa. Ty. We've just come through Bible Month
at VOM. We've asked our listeners, We've asked our vo
readers to sponsor Bibles to go into hostile areas and
restricted nations. I know one of the places in your

(10:54):
area that we're doing Bible distributions. It's Tanzania, and I
love that's what I've heard about how strategic it is
because it's not just hey, here's a truckload of Bibles,
figure out who needs them. It is really some research
and some in depth look at well, who already has
Bibles and what are the last miles that we need

(11:14):
to go to have a Bible for every believer.

Speaker 1 (11:17):
Well, like one of our main strategies, one of the
main things that we do here at VOM is trying
to get a Bible into the hands of every believer,
or making sure that every believer has access to a
copy of Scripture in whatever format that be be at audio,
if they're oral preference learners, and whatever their heart language
is or trade language if the heart language is not available,

(11:38):
but if we're actually going to put tread on those tires,
and if we actually mean that we want to see
every believer have an access to copy of Scripture. It
means that we've got some research to do so in
our region. A lot of what we do is we'll
go into an area and we'll talk to you denominational
or associational leaders, and we'll ask them to get numbers

(11:59):
on church is, how many churches are in your area,
how many families are in your churches, how many of
them have Bibles, how many of them do not, what languages,
what formats, And then we ask for them to come
back to us with all of those numbers, and from
there we're able to target pretty specifically what we need
to get to where. And I've been at some distributions

(12:22):
where pastors from an area, the church leaders from an area,
like a pretty broad area, will come in to a
distribution point and some of them will take a few Bibles,
and some of them will take boxes and boxes and
boxes of them, just depending on the need in their
own church, even seeing where if somebody's been missed or
if there's been a number that's been slightly off, we'll

(12:44):
commit to rectify that and we'll get them a copy
within a couple of weeks after the main distribution occurs.
And then from there, we'll go back through a little
bit later and ask for updates from those leaders that
represent the area where we did the distribution and ask
if there are any new churches that have been planted,

(13:04):
if there's been any like awakenings or movements with new
believers who need copies of scripture, and we try to
stay up on those numbers in real time.

Speaker 3 (13:13):
That shows a couple of things. Obviously, that's a commitment
on your staff's behalf.

Speaker 1 (13:19):
It's a lot of work for the y.

Speaker 3 (13:20):
Yeah, and not just sitting in an office somewhere, but
but out on really difficult roads, really difficult places to
start asking those questions. It also shows the way VOM
works through partnerships. We're not just out there with you
know VO, I'm on the side of the truck handing
out Bibles. It's like, no, we want to talk to
the pastors. We want to talk to the leaders. We

(13:41):
want to know what's there, what's already there, talk a
little bit about that and how that functions in your area.
Those partnerships and how reliant we are on the local
believers and the local leaders.

Speaker 1 (13:54):
Well, that is hugely important. Like we are field driven.
That means that we don't come into any any field,
any country, any people group and say this is what
you need, or say this is what we even think
that you need. What we want to do is that
we want to stand as representatives of the global body
of Christ and find out what it is that the

(14:15):
church needs and what it is that the believers need
in those specific places to help them be the Church
and help them to be believers in areas where it's
really hard. And so oftentimes we'll have local leaders that
would have an initiative, a ministry initiative that they would
really love to seek it off the ground, and for
whatever reason, they simply might not be able to accomplish it,

(14:36):
for the lack of resources or the lack of manpower,
and others might not have that particular thing as a priority.
So what we want to do is we want to
come in and fill the gaps and see things happen
that local leaders, local pastors, local laymen would like to
see to advance the Kingdom that perhaps for whatever reason,

(14:59):
just hasn't been provided for yet. And that goes for
not only our persecution response, but it also goes for
our Bible efforts as well as our frontline ministries too.

Speaker 3 (15:11):
And I love that you emphasize that how everything is
field driven. There is no menu here in Bartlesfeld that
says this is what we're going to do. It is
how can we help? What do you need us to do?

Speaker 1 (15:24):
Exactly. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (15:25):
We're talking this week on Voice of the Martist Radio
with Ty Scott. He leads vom's international ministry work in
East and Southern Africa. Ty, I want to ask you
a question about missionary activity, because some of the countries
that you're working in now have one hundred years, one
hundred and fifty years of missionary history. How do you

(15:47):
see that heritage played out on the ground and in
terms of churches and Christians that are there firmly established
and standing boldly for christ.

Speaker 1 (16:00):
It's amazing. I've been with churches in one of the
countries that I won't name, in our region where their
church movement was started over one hundred years ago by
Swedish missionaries coming up and down the coast on ships. Wow,
and so many of the fields in our area, our
legacy fields. I got to see the place where the

(16:23):
body of doctor Livingston was held before it was returned
to England after he passed away, and you know, a
lot of the mapping that he did was not for
you know, colonial exploration, but it was so that missionaries
could have access to people so that they could share
the gospel with them. So really everything that we do,

(16:45):
like we're really standing on the shoulders of other people,
and the faithfulness from people one hundred plus years ago
is really really clear in the fruit that it is
still bearing out today. So that's really exciting. What we
have now, though, is we have still a lot of
missions organizations that are in the area, but they are

(17:07):
partnered with equally strong or stronger local churches, local missions,
even people from going from one people group to a
near people group, or from one people group to a
far people group within or even outside the region. We're
not talking any more about the West being the sending
field and places in our region being receiving fields. Like yes,

(17:28):
they're receiving missions, but they're also sending themselves as well
to their own people and to people's beyond. So it's
really really exciting to see that.

Speaker 3 (17:38):
It is really exciting to see that, and I know
part of that equipping is happening with the help from
vom from our materials, from our stories that we tell
of persecuted Christians. Talk a little bit about that, how
that's happening, but then why that's important for a Christian
who may face persecution to know the stories of others

(17:59):
who already.

Speaker 1 (18:01):
Just for a little bit of context. Like I mentioned before,
you can live a very normal Christian life in much
of our region, while right next door or across the street,
or across town or in the next village over, people
are are trapped inside Islam. Now, one of the things
that we're working on doing is equipping the next generation

(18:23):
not only to give them the heart to take the
gospel to those people that they live amongst, really, but
also to help them know how to care for them.
Sometimes when somebody comes to faith in Jesus, the local
church can can be a little bit nervous about incorporating
them into their body. People come out of Islam with

(18:46):
very very unique discipleship needs, and sometimes churches either feel
it fearful about bringing somebody in and getting attention, getting
the wrong kind of attention from the people who are
angry about that person converting, or they simply don't know
how to care for that person and how to disciple
them with the specific needs that they have. So one

(19:10):
of the exciting things that we're working on is to
start book studies with youth groups in the area, to
using our very own some of our very own material
in order to one highlight the need for them to
continue taking the gospel to those near them, and two

(19:31):
to make them aware of the needs that those people
will have and the big importance of their need for
a church family. And through kind of helping them learn
the stories of other people who have come to faith
and suffered for the name of Jesus, we're opening up
the door for them to see how they can help

(19:52):
make that happen on a broader scale. So we're really
working on equipping the next generation of people who will
share the faith and disciple those who do come to
faith out of out of Islam.

Speaker 3 (20:05):
It's interesting to me how often in Islamic context we
hear that need for family because the likelihood of your
Muslim family rejecting you and kicking you out, even literally
kicking you out onto the streets. The church has to
become your family. And like you say, and in some
case that's hard for the church. Sometimes it's a matter

(20:27):
of they don't have the resources to feed another mouth.
And sometimes like you say, it's like, Okay, how do
we do this? I don't know? Or is this going
to make trouble for us? I find it interesting that
that is such a recurring theme. I've heard that story
in North Africa. I've heard that story in the Middle East.
I'm hearing it in Eastern and Southern Africa that Okay,

(20:47):
the church has to be your family and you've got
to be ready for that. Yeah, as a part of
your evangelism process.

Speaker 2 (20:52):
Really.

Speaker 1 (20:53):
Yeah, I think it's all of our responsibility.

Speaker 3 (20:54):
Really.

Speaker 1 (20:55):
I mean, if we're literally asking people to count the
costs and leave everything behind, and we're inviting them to
join us in the church and to experience salvation, then
we are kind of on the hook for the consequences
of that, because there are consequences, and there are real
consequences for people.

Speaker 3 (21:14):
So is that a situation that VOM is involved in
helping out? When you know someone, a young person is
kicked out of their house, is can a pastor say, hey,
you know this guy just got kicked out of his house.
We're helping him find a place to stay.

Speaker 1 (21:29):
Yeah. Absolutely. In several of our countries, we have some
pretty big initiatives on helping train churches on MBB care
Muslim Background Believer Care, and we identify willing churches who
are able and equipped to bring in these people who
are in need, who have literally been kicked out, left
on the street, some of them very young, some of

(21:52):
them at a very very young age, and so we
help equip churches to see the need, understand it, and
then support them as they meet those needs of those individuals.

Speaker 3 (22:03):
I remember now it's been a number of years ago
being in southern Ethiopia and having the chance to interview
some who were young teenagers that had been completely rejected
by their family, kicked out and left everything, as you say,
to follow the Lord. We're talking this week on Voice
of Martys Radio with ty Scott. He leads vom's international

(22:24):
ministry work in East and Southern Africa. Tyler's one more
place I want to mention before we get to how
we can pray, and that's Darfur, because I know many
of our listeners, maybe not from Christian perspective, they've heard
of darfour, but they've heard of it from the war.
They've heard of it from maybe George Clooney going there
and seeing what's going on there. What is the Gospel

(22:46):
doing in darfour and how is vom involved in that.

Speaker 1 (22:49):
As most people know, Sudans in the middle of a really,
really bad civil war, and unfortunately in darfour, this is
a repeat of stuff that has happened before in our
lifetime and it's a really unfortunate situation. However, there are
some areas in Darfur that are so rural that people
have fled the cities and towns along the nile and

(23:13):
along the coast trying to escape the violence, and they
find themselves in these very rural areas. Some of those
are believers who have just who literally left everything when
war came to their doorstep, escaped with their clothes on
their back, and they're in new places such as world darfour.
They don't have anything, much less access to scripture. And

(23:36):
so we've been able to send some Bibles to darfour.
Thankfully they've made it to their destination and we've been
able to use those to I would say encourage the
believers who are there, some who are new believers, because
as they come into these areas, the churches that are
there are doing their very best to care for them,

(23:58):
to care for the believers that come, but also to
share the Gospel with non believers who come who are
in a very vulnerable situation and are really open to
hearing about Jesus. This war has been terrible, but everyone
that I talked to who's doing ministry on the ground
has said that it's actually afforded them an amazing opportunity

(24:18):
to share the love of Jesus Christ. And so one
cool story we heard about a young man in this
area of darfour who is a young believer. His father
was an e mom in a local village, and we
were able to help get some Bibles to that village,
and this young man started studying the Bible is being

(24:41):
discipled by the local pastor there, and so through that discipleship,
he started going out and sharing the Gospel. Now his
father's an e mom and the people in the mosques
started telling the father, you've got to stop your son
from spreading Christianity. So the father said, okay, well I'll
do that, and seemed like a fairly lenient guy, like

(25:02):
he allowed his son to explore Christianity, so he wasn't
threatening him or anything like that for leaving Islam. But
he's like, I do have to stop his evangelistic activity.
So he planned a time to go talk to him.
He comes in to the place where his son is
at actually during one of his Bible studies with the
local pastor, and what he heard was interesting to him,

(25:23):
so he said, well, I'll just sit down and listen
and I'll talk to my son after the pastor here leaves.
And he liked what he heard and he was interested
by it, so he decided to keep coming back and
his son and the pastor actually led this hemm to Faith,
who then turned around and led a bunch of people
in his mosque to Faith and left being an Islamic

(25:47):
teacher to being a Christian evangelist. And so it's stories
like that that are really really huge blessings for us
because sometimes when we sin by Bible to places that
are difficult, we don't know. We just have to rely
on the Lord. And to be able to get feedback

(26:09):
or to hear things that are happening in these places
is a huge blessing for us, and it's an encouragement.

Speaker 3 (26:15):
Tie as we finish up, we always try to equip
listeners to pray. As you think through the different nations
in We've talked about some of them, so I know
there's some prayer requests that people can draw out of
our conversation already, but are there particular places that have
a really intense prayer need right now?

Speaker 1 (26:33):
Yeah? Absolutely, one pray for peace and Sudane. The war
there has taken a lot of lives, a lot of lives,
and it's caused a lot of suffering, and we're thankful
that people on the ground who are gospel workers on
the ground are able to continue sharing their faith and
ministering to those people who need to hear. But we

(26:55):
would like to see peace return to Sudan, a lasting peace.
The second thing I would say is in western Uganda
along the border with the Democratic Republic of Congo. There
have been some Islamist attacks recently over several years, and
that has been a really big struggle for the church there.

(27:18):
They've been targeted specifically in a country that we all
hear about, Uganda and we don't think of it as
a place where it's hostile towards Christians. When you have
Islamist movements that come in and target it really makes
people nervous because they can't predict it. So we can
pray for Western Uganda as well.

Speaker 3 (27:40):
Last question, how do we pray for your staff, because
we talked about them out in villages saying well who
has a Bible and who doesn't? Making contact with those
church leaders and saying hey, what do you need, how
can we help you? How do we pray for vom
workers in that region?

Speaker 1 (27:56):
Yeah, let me add one prayer request for the reason
if that's okay. A Northern Mozambique and the Cabo Delgado
area has an Isis movement right now in Islamic State movement.
When people left Iraq and Syria, many of them went
to other parts of the world, and northern Mozambique is
one of the areas that they've congregated. So they've been
attacking Christians as well in that area. So in terms

(28:19):
of our staff, when we go into places like that,
we need the Lord's protection. So please pray for our
colleagues as they go into some pretty sketchy areas from
time to time. Pray for our partners as they're the
ones who are living in these areas and have to
deal with it day to day and just need protection

(28:40):
and wisdom as they go about their kingdom work. They're
on long, difficult journeys, a lot like really bad roads
they're away from their homes, they're away from their families,
so you can pray for them for strength and endurance
and also grace for their families as they let their
husbands and dads go do this ministry.

Speaker 3 (29:01):
We've been talking this week on Voice of Martyrs Radio
with Ty Scott. He leads vom's international ministry work in
East and Southern Africa. Ty, thank you so much for
sharing with us. Thank you really equipping us to pray
for that part of the world.

Speaker 1 (29:15):
Thanks for having me. It's been an honor.

Speaker 3 (29:17):
It has been a blessing to have you here. If
you are just now joining us, you're gonna want to
go to vomradio dot net you can hear this entire
conversation with Ty Scott and I hope you'll be back
with us next week. We talk every week about what
God is doing around the world, especially in hostilarias and
restricted nations. We'll do that again next week right here

(29:39):
on the Voice of the Martyrs Radio Network.