Esther was a student leader in our Monash movement during her undergraduate degree and attended our local summer mission, as well as the Philippines medical project, with Power to Change’s Global Aid Network (GAiN). This year she is doing Honours research at Monash Hospital. She shares the story of connecting with ‘J’, an Afghan woman who is on her research team, and inviting her to read the Bible together.
We read through Genesis 1 and part of Genesis 2 – the entire creation story. It was so cool as we went through the DBS (Discovery Bible Study) process – she was really in awe of how God created the world because that had not been outlined in the Koran apparently. She was also in awe of how the Bible is written like a story that points to God because she had not experienced the Koran in that way. When I asked her what stood out, after we summarised the passages together, she said the bit about being created in the image of God.
We talked a lot about that – it really piqued her interest because she heard that verse quoted in the Oscar-winning movie “The Shape of Water”. She commented that the movie misquotes the Bible because the movie claimed that only some people (Whites I think) were made in the image of God, and not black people. Yet she pointed to the fact that clearly all of us were made in the image of God. That was cool to see, and we talked about how it would change the way we both lived if we truly believed that. She said she would share this idea with her friend who didn’t come that day, and also another Afghan girl we met in our lab. We are meeting up again next Friday, so we are really praying her friend comes along too. She has invited me to her Koran study group, so I may be going along to that if time permits.
Esther took the knowledge and skills that she learned as a student with Power to Change at uni, and has continued to live a lifestyle of evangelism and discipleship after her degree.
