Pray for Tajiks

Drug abuse had brought Jamshed into prison, where he was now serving time. Food and medicine were scarce, corruption rife and labor gruelling. Was this to be the story of his life?

It all changed when a few local Christians visited the prison. Even though he came from a Muslim family, Jamshed did not consider himself to be religious. But when these visitors gave him a Bible in Russian, he read it eagerly. He took the book to the prison mosque. “Look,” he told the leaders there. “This is the truth.” However, his discovery was not welcome. “You are a traitor,” they told him. “This book is for Russians, not for Muslims. Look, it is even written in the Russian language!”

Jamshed started to wonder whether the Bible also existed in Tajik and was delighted to find out that it did! Jamshed got hold of a Bible in his language and went back to the mosque, reading from it in both Russian and in Tajik. “It says the same things in our language as in Russian”, he exclaimed. “This is not a book just for Russians; this is our book, too. This is not about a Russian God; he is our God as well!”

Jamshed started sharing his discovery with others in the prison and people started asking him questions about his faith. “Some of these people were from the secret police,” Jamshed remembers. “But I was not afraid of them. I shared with them, too – they needed Christ more than anybody!”

Now that his prison days are long past, Jamshed leads a tiny house church which meets under a tree in his backyard.

How to Pray

• Pray that Tajiks would hear the Word of God in their own language and that it would capture their hearts.
• Pray that small local churches like Jamshed’s would be bold in living out and sharing their faith in their tight knit communities.
• Pray for economic breakthroughs. Tajikistan struggles with poverty, unemployment and dependency on migrant workers abroad.