SHACKLED: one woman's amazing triumph over abuse, persecution and a death sentence

Our Lord shines brightest in the darkness, as so many of the stories we post here display and trumpet. A new book by Sudanese doctor Mariam Ibraheem—while gut- and heart-wrenching—also proves a remarkable testament to the power of Jesus.

Born and raised in the same Sudanese refugee camp that her mother, a refugee from Ethiopia, had grown up in, Dr. Ibraheem’s life has taken far too many dark twists and turns. Her Christian mother had at 16 married a Muslim man decades her senior who promised to protect her from the horrors of camp life. Instead, he turned out to be an abusive bully who brought the horrors indoors. 

Incredibly, Mariam’s mother did her best to raise her children in the Christian faith. Against all odds in Islamic Sudan, her efforts bore surprising fruit. Young and determined Mariam grew strong in her faith, studied and became a doctor, married a Christian man she met at church, and had a baby boy.

Then, one day in 2013, Sudanese authorities insisted she was Muslim because of her father’s background … which meant she had broken Sharia law by marrying a Christian man. Authorities insisted she abandon both her marriage and her son and adopt Islam. Yet no matter how intensely they pressured her, Mariam repeatedly refused.

Ultimately a Sharia court sentenced her to 100 lashes and death by hanging. She received the lashings, but because she was pregnant her death sentence was postponed till after the birth.

Imprisoned along with her toddler son, mentally and physically tortured, she never accepted Islam or rejected the name of Jesus. She was forced to give birth to her second child while in chains.

Her book Shackled: One woman’s dramatic triumph over persecution, gender abuse, and a death sentence details the young doctor’s gripping story from life under Islamic law, through imprisonment and childbirth while shackled, to her remarkable escape from death following an international outcry and advocacy that included diplomats, journalists, activists, and even Pope Francis.

 “You will be encouraged to persevere no matter the circumstance you are facing and to have faith that God will work it will out as you trust in Him.”
Amazon reviewer, Naghmeh Panahi

Hindu festivals always mean trouble for converts from Hinduism: Please pray for Pastor Ashwin in India

Hindu festivals always mean trouble for converts from Hinduism, especially in increasingly radical and authoritarian Hindu nationalist India. Hindus across Kerala and some neighboring areas of India celebrate Vishu, the beginning of their traditional new year today (the day is celebrated elsewhere but called by other names).

While some prepared for the festival in a home in Karnataka State yesterday evening, they overheard Bibles for Mideast Pastor Ashwin sharing the gospel and his testimony nearby. Enraged on learning he had converted from Hinduism to Christianity, they left with steel pipes to find and brutally attack the pastor. He suffered serious injuries and is now in hospital, desperately needing our prayers. He has three little children. The church where he has been ministering is as rich in the Spirit as its members are poor.

Please pray for Pastor Ashwin, his family and church and our many other converts from Hinduism: that God would protect, guide, and provide for miraculous growth.

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UPDATE ON PASTOR ASHWIN (April 30)

After spending 16 days in ICU, Pastor Ashwin has been finally moved to a regular room and is now able to speak—and praise and thank our Lord! Thank you to all who have prayed … please keep it up, for him and all of our workers.

PLEASE PRAY for the Ukraine, and for Bibles for Mideast believers there

All of the Ukraine and all Ukrainians now face a dire situation, so of course we must be praying.  Bibles for Mideast has an underground ALG (Assembly of Loving God, our umbrella organization) church in Kyiv, where about twenty converts from Islam have been gathering weekly to worship our one true Lord. While they face persecution from the Muslim community, some more mainline, orthodox Christians do secretly support them. 

Due to the Russian invasion, the Bibles for Mideast church in Kyiv has been under far more pressure and danger. Yesterday the house they have been meeting and worshiping in came under heavy fire and was completely destroyed. Most fortunately no worship service was ongoing and our Pastor Aadeel miraculously escaped physical harm, but his wife Amina and their young daughter Angel Mary were both seriously injured and are now recovering in a nursing home.

The Kyiv church members gathered under a railway subway for prayers, as you can see in the video below. Please join with us and with them in prayer for a soon end to the war and for protection, especially of our believers.

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UPDATE: All our Bibles for Mideast (ALG) church members in Ukraine have fled to Turkey. While Pastor Aadeel’s wife Amina and young daughter Angel Mary have not fully recovered, by God’s grace they were carried to safety on the believers’ shoulders. Our ALG church in Turkey received and is caring for them. Please pray for the churches in Ukraine and Turkey and the situation as a whole. God is good, powerful and will prevail.

She once ran with drug addicts and prostitutes; now she ministers to them!

While Sharon Dutra’s story is an American one, we share it with you because she shares this ministry’s heart for Jesus and for others. Her hardships and her tumultuous ‘life before Christ’ could all have happened in any country in the world—places where she also now freely shares her ministry and Bible Study books. Over the years, she has become a great friend, prayer partner and encourager of the ministry and of me personally.

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Sharon Dutra’s emotions ranged from wonder to worry and back again as she headed—voluntarily this time—into the California Institution for Women. She had shared a tiny cell at this women’s state prison in southern California with another inmate several decades ago in what proved to be the last stop in an already long series of arrests and incarcerations.

Like most who end up ‘on the wrong side of the tracks,’ Sharon’s early life reads like a dark thriller. Her mother left when Sharon was about five; her alcoholic, womanizing father had been married four times by the time she was 17.

Young Sharon, shuttled from one foster home to another, felt abandoned and alone. By 13, she resorted to drugs to dull the pain and growing sense of worthlessness and by 15, had run from her latest home to an even worse life on the streets.

In and out of various detention facilities in the years that followed, with each escape she learned more about ‘life on the streets’, while her self-hatred and contempt for others escalated.

Marriage with an ex-con and two children later, her life continued its increasingly dark and steep downward spiral. Hard-core drugs, near-death experiences, prostitution, homelessness, suicide attempts—all culminated in her thirteenth and final arrest.

“Because of my lengthy criminal record,” she explains,” I was sent to a women’s prison in Southern California, where I already knew some of the inmates from my time on the street.”

A view from Outside the California Institution for Women; photo: Tag Christof

That, thankfully, proved to be her ultimate conviction in more ways than one. While there, she read Al Capone’s Devil Driver, by and about George Meyer, the notorious crime boss’s chauffeur who had killed many people himself and ended up in prison, where he eventually traded in his life of crime for Life with Jesus.

The book helped open her eyes to the divine realization that God alone could help her out of her misery and pain and was right there with her, waiting to be invited into her life.

“I got on my knees and cried out to Him for over an hour,” she remembers, “weeping for all the wrongs I had done. When I got up off the cell floor, I was a brand-new person.”

A few weeks later, Sharon moved from 23-hour-a-day lockdown to the general prison population. She immediately began attending church, where the prison chaplain presented her with her very own bible.

“I read it for hours every day!” she recalls. “After a lifetime derailed by destructive lies, finding God’s truth felt like discovering a cool stream in the desert.”

“At first, I could hardly fathom that Jesus would love a sinner like me, much less that my sins were totally forgiven,” she marvels. “But the more I read, the more the Holy Spirit confirmed the shocking reality of the Gospel! I drew special encouragement from Joel 2:25, which speaks of God ‘repaying us for the years the locusts have eaten’.”

She couldn’t help but share the astonishingly freeing Good News with others in prison, and soon picked back up her guitar-playing to lead in worship. Eventually, she also began teaching Bible studies for fellow prisoners. When finally released, she returned to her hometown of Santa Cruz, California.

“But the only people I knew there were drug addicts and prostitutes!” she recalls. “I wondered why God had returned me to this kind of environment. How would I overcome my reputation there? But God graciously gave me many opportunities to witness to those I had run with.”

She eventually returned to school, earned a registered nursing degree, and married. She and her husband Michael, through their Be Transformed Ministries, now help people from many backgrounds both come to know Jesus and become His disciples.

She began leading Bible studies while still in prison and continues to, now using books she has written herself to fill needs and answer questions she couldn’t find in existing materials. Her books (Be Transformed, New Beginnings, and Fishers of Men) have been translated into Spanish, Japanese and Farsi; many have been freely sent overseas (mostly for pastoral training) and over 35,000 of her books have been sent to prisons, jails and rehab centers across the U.S.

250 Bibles and 500 of Sharon’s books were shipped to Ghana to be used in Churches and Prisons. Here is a presentation in a Ghana prison

Pastors in South Africa gather after training with Sharon’s books

On her December return to the prison where she had met Jesus, Sharon shared her story with a roomful of hungry inmates—making new friends and several new converts before ‘escaping’ into the waiting arms of her husband outside the prison. They rejoiced together over all God had done and continues to do through their own and others’ lives redirected to the One who created them.

“After so many years on the run—from home, from authority, from life itself—I praise God for giving rest to my weary soul,” she explains. “No life is too broken for God to heal. I am living proof.”

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Christianity Today recently featured Sharon’s story (I Used to Run with Drug Addicts and Prostitutes. Now I Share the Gospel with Them) and Victorious Living has her story in their January 2022 issue.

Michael and Sharon Dutra with one of Sharon’s books

To see and hear Sharon’s testimony, please visit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UuH8U_dRdiw

To contact Sharon or learn more about her ministry, please visit:
betransformedministries.comor email her at: betransformed@betransformedministries

Evangelizing during Covid continues in Somalia with Pastor Mustafa and team

Holding strong to their Islamic faith, 36-year-old Azma* and her husband Fakru* also worked hard to support their six young children in their native Somalia. When Covid swept through their area several months ago, the disease claimed the life of one of their children and left Azma battling ‘long Covid’, feeling weaker rather than stronger as the days dragged on. Her husband did his best to work and support the family on his own.

When Pastor Mustafa and a Bibles for Mideast gospel team visited their home to distribute bibles, Azma mistook them for health workers due to the team’s full PPE gear. [You can read our most recent story on Pastor Mustafa’s work in Somalia here: Evangelization in the time of Covid: PPE x 2 (Personal Protective Equipment + Powerful Personal Evangelism)!]

“No, we aren’t health workers,” the kindly pastor explained. “We have come to pray for you, and to proclaim the gospel of Jesus Christ.” Azma stared from her doorway in disbelief.

“Jesus is the Way, the Truth and the Life, and the Son of Most High God,” the pastor continued.  “He came from heaven to save us from sin and death. And for that, He was crucified on the cross of Calvary, died, and on the third day rose from the dead. If you believe, you will be saved.”

When he offered her a Somali bible, Azma pulled away. At his offer of prayer, she told the team to ‘get lost’ and slammed the door.

Then, about two weeks ago, Azma’s husband Fakru fell ill as the omicron variant swept through their village. He died within two days.

Rural Somalian village

Inconsolable, Azma had no idea how to deal with her remaining children. Two sleepless nights after his death, she had a vision of hell and of Fakru being tormented there, while countless demons tried to drag her and her children into the pit as well. But then, the vision transformed, lightened and brightened as a beautiful, powerful man came—in the form of light!—and chased away all the tormenting demons from her house. She knew it had to be Lord Jesus, the Savior Pastor Mustafa had told her about.

The next day (Sunday before last), Pastor Mustafa and his congregation were engaged in ‘socially distanced’ deep worship at their church. As they worshiped the Lord Jesus in Spirit and Truth and with gifts of tongues accompanying, they suddenly heard an unusual cry in front of the church.

Someone went out, and found a woman lying face down before the church door, wailing and weeping uncontrollably. Between the loud wails, she seemed to be begging for forgiveness.  

Pastor Mustafa headed out to investigate, saw the prostate woman, and entreated her to stand up. Quaking with fear, she slowly rose to her feet. It was Pastor Mustafa’s turn to be surprised at the sight of tear-streaked Azma standing in front of him.

She asked for forgiveness, saying how sorry she was for demanding they leave when they had come to her with a Bible and an offer of prayer. She poured out her trials of the past few weeks and said she knew now how much she needed Jesus as her Savior.

Pastor Mustafa reached out to comfort her, gently holding her hands. He asked if she would come with him into the church, and there he told her more about Jesus. All in attendance had been praying for her, and she soon fully accepted Jesus as her personal Lord and Savior.

Azma was back at church with her children for services of prayer and fasting during the week, and says she feels such “a great and powerful peace” in her mind now. She knows her Savior Jesus will always be with her, and will help her with her children.

‘All fear is gone,’ as the great old hymn reminds us, and Azma now holds that Truth in her heart and mind.

Please pray for Azma and her children. Please also pray for Pastor Mustafa and his team as they continue to minister and distribute bibles. They urgently require 10,000 Somali bibles to continue their work.

Children walking from village well in rural Somalia. Photo: Sabal Abdulle

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*Names changed for security reasons