By Nicole James 

When Sophie*, heard about a camel beauty show happening a few hours’ drive from her home, she booked a hotel for the weekend. However, the organisers later shifted the show’s dates, leaving her with a non-refundable room. She talked to her friend, Rebecca*, and the women decided to travel together, using the weekend as an opportunity to pray for the region—composed of remote villages without access to the gospel—and maybe meet some local women.

After Sophie and Rebecca arrived, they spent all day driving through neighbourhoods, passing well-kept but seemingly abandoned houses. “We didn’t see a single soul, not even a man,” Sophie said. “Though we had lots of time praying for the many villages we drove through, we were a little disappointed at the end of that day because it didn’t turn into even a ‘hello’, let alone maybe time to sit with some women.”

As they headed out the next morning, Sophie suggested that they stop by the camel beauty show grounds on their way home, reasoning that some of the Bedouins would have already transported their best-looking camels to the site.

Entering the show grounds, they passed by paddocks in the car, admiring the camels. Then Sophie saw a special black herd in the distance. They drove over and stopped by the camels. The Bengali herder immediately greeted them, then, noticing a pick-up truck headed their way, he informed the women that the camel owner was coming.

“We needed to at least greet him…and not roll up the window because we’re looking at his camels,” Sophie explained.

When the owner pulled up to her car, he asked a surprising question: “Would you like to meet my mother and sisters?”

“I would love to,” Sophie responded. “I totally felt we could trust him… He was very appropriate and very polite, and I was just not wanting to let this chance go.”

Because they could not possibly sit in the cab squeezed in with the man, Sophie and Rebecca climbed into the back of the pick-up truck, bounced over three sand dunes and arrived in front of seven tents with around 30 women welcoming them.

They spent the whole day with the women inside the tents, drinking coffee, eating lunch and laughing. While they were eating, one of the women brought up how they blessed the food in Islam, which opened the door for Sophie and Rebecca to share about how they blessed the food and explain their faith in Jesus and what they believed. “I enjoyed the chance to get to know them, so then we talked about where they live, and they actually live in that area. So of course, we exchanged phone numbers, and we left later that night because we had to go back,” she said.

The next weekend, Sophie woke up without an alarm at 03:00. Realising it was the second day of the camel beauty show, she spontaneously decided to drive back to the area. She arrived at 07:00, enjoyed the early morning camel competition, and afterwards, drove over three sand dunes in hopes of finding the same spot with the tents of the women. She found them, and they cheered, amazed that she had remembered the way and returned to visit them again so soon. “I stayed overnight, and we had such a blast,” she recalled. “We had really good conversations, and they invited us to visit them at their home after the camel beauty show... It’s actually amazing to have a contact there, which involves several different families.”

“We have a passion and we have a calling to reach local people, but… sometimes it feels like it’s always this one-way street where you have to push yourself into these relationships,” she explained. “So these days when you say, OK, we’re going to get all our courage together and not visit the contacts we already know but just try to make new contacts from scratch, it’s actually the reward if you meet some.”

During the coronavirus crisis, I can’t even use the time to make visits to local people,” Sophie shared. “But praise God for WhatsApp! …It is a good time to talk about fear versus trust, worry versus hope, facing death versus eternal life. I am thankful for this unexpected time of rest, where the speed was taken out of our lives and for the opportunity to connect via phone and social media chats with my local friends and contacts.

*name changed
Credit: Nicole James