‘Come, Please, My Daughter’: How Radio Reached a Muslim Woman in Ethiopia

Quick Summary: A recurring dream and a secret meeting with a local pastor led a Muslim woman in Ethiopia’s Afar region to faith in Christ — one of roughly 20 believers reached through Christian radio in this hostile region.




Nahima* was enjoying the radio station she stumbled on until she realized it was a Christian station. True to her Islamic faith, she stopped listening. 

Then she had the dream.  

Welcome to TWR’s Hope Within Reach campaign. This month and next, we’re presenting “Hope in the Shadows,” a look at how God uses media to reach people in places of persecution. Specifically, this month we’re exploring the Horn of Africa. That includes the Afar region of Ethiopia, a place that is hostile to Christianity. Those who follow Jesus do so as underground believers. 

Wakshuma Terefe, director of TWR partner Yemisrach Dimts Radio (The Voice of Good News) in Ethiopia, recently was able to talk to 20-some of those believers. All of them had come to faith, at least in part, through radio. Nahima was one of them, and in an online interview Terefe passed along that story. 

A Dream She Couldn’t Ignore

In the dream, she said, someone gave her a radio and on it she was hearing the Christian station. She couldn’t see the other person’s face, but his voice was so deep and pleasing that she felt herself shaking. It must be an extraordinary person, she thought.  

After that, Nahima, who had been suffering from chronic pain, resumed listening. Attracted, she approached a Protestant church – allowed in the Afar region for “Highlanders” from other regions. But the Afar people don’t go to Highland churches. She didn’t dare enter.  

That night she dreamed again, and the same voice spoke to her: “My daughter, please continue going to that church,” it said. “Go and see the person. He is waiting for you.” 

Frightened and unsure, Nahima didn’t go back to the church. But when someone pointed out the pastor to her in town, she handed him her phone number. That evening, he called, and when Nahima shared her story the pastor said, “I am waiting for you, Come, please, my daughter.” 
 

A Secret Meeting After Dark 

Nahima protested that it would be too dangerous. She should come that evening, the pastor responded. “We have already put off the lights so that no one can notice you.” 

Nahima went after convincing her teenage daughter to come along. The pastor and two evangelists welcomed them, Terefe said. “At that moment they prayed for [Nahima] and evil spirits came out of her. She was sick, and now she was well.”  

Nahima received Christ, but not without opposition. About a year later, she was beaten and almost killed. “Somebody took her to the hospital,” Terefe said. “They brought her out of the Afar region and she got treatment, and now she is back in the Afar region.”  

Her daughter also follows Christ, Terefe said. And Nahima is a “vibrant Christian. She is ready to give her life. … She doesn’t fear anything.”  

*Name changed for security purposes.  

Source: Online interview with Wakshuma Terefe