When Rajaa and her sister, Samia, talk about the gospel, their eyes sparkle. The joy on their faces, however, belies the suffering they endured after civil war erupted in Syria more than a decade ago. “We discovered the real living God,” said the younger sister, Samia, speaking of the newly awakened faith they experienced after fleeing their war-torn homeland. “Jesus has changed my life radically,” Rajaa added.

 

But even as the women share testimonies of God’s salvation and restoration, the shadow of death from which they narrowly escaped is never far away.

In March 2011, pro-democracy activists launched a campaign against Syria’s repressive dictatorial regime, organizing massive demonstrations in several cities.

 

Еhe peaceful protests quickly devolved into armed rebellions when numerous rebel factions, including Islamist groups like al-Qaida and the self-proclaimed Islamic State (ISIS), began fighting Syrian government forces. And as war engulfed the country, the Islamist groups took advantage of the chaos to target Christians.

 

Rajaa and Samia were from a traditionally Christian family and lived in a predominantly Christian area where Muslim extremists began their assault.

 

ISIS fighters began shooting at the homes while hurling insults at the Christian residents. “They used to call us names like pigs and some very diminishing, belittling names,” Rajaa said. “Of course, they used to call us blasphemous kafirs [infidels]. They wanted to Islamize us by force.” “They will take whatever for their physical enjoyment,” Samia added. “They think they can use us for abuse, rape, whatever.”

 

Samia had been married for six months when, about two weeks before Christmas 2011, Islamists launched an attack near her home. She and her husband stayed inside as fighting between ISIS militants and government troops raged nearby. After three days and nights, the couple ran out of food. And though sporadic fighting continued in the area, Samia’s husband, Habib, decided to go look for supplies. That was the last time Samia saw him alive.

 

Samia waited a day and a half before leaving the house to search for him. When she found his body lying in a street, he was barely recognizable.

 

That night Samia fled on foot. Forced to leave her husband’s body, she would never learn what happened to him.

 

Eventually, Samia reached her parents’ home, but her sense of safety there was short lived.

In January 2012, ISIS fighters invaded the area where Rajaa lived with her husband, Fouad, and their baby. It then became clear why the Islamists had marked Christians’ houses. “They had a list of the names of the Christians for execution,” Rajaa said. “Our neighbors told my husband to get out of here, they wanted to kill Christians.”

 

The Islamists executed Christians, forcing them to stand against a wall with outstretched arms in the form of a cross while they shot them with automatic rifles. They also abducted, raped and killed Christian women, while torturing and burying alive some of the men.

 

On Feb. 7, the area around Rajaa’s house was consumed by a full-scale battle. When extremists shot out the windows in their home, Fouad told Rajaa to take their baby into a back room and hide while he took a rifle and went outside to fight.

 

Fouad was wounded and captured by ISIS militants, who beat him. They injected diesel fuel into his veins. After torturing him for seven hours, they left Fouad on the porch of his house so his family would witness his agony.

 

A group of Christian men quickly buried Fouad in a local cemetery, without a funeral. Rajaa then took her baby and fled to her parents’ house, moving in with them and her sister, Samia.

 

As ISIS fighters gained control of more territory, the two sisters and their family were again in great danger. When Islamists attempted to break through the door of their parents’ house, Rajaa and Samia’s father, Nader, tried to protect the family. The militants beat him but eventually left the house.

 

Around that time, the family learned that four of Rajaa and Samia’s brothers, along with two additional male relatives, had also been killed in the fighting. “All the young men in the families were taken and mercilessly slaughtered,” Rajaa explained.

 

Within a month of the attack on Nader, the militants fired a rocket-propelled grenade into their living room, destroying the house. The family survived but were forced to flee on foot to a neighboring country. “We just ran with the clothes which were on us,” Samia said.

The sisters and their surviving family members were determined to get out of Syria but traveling on foot with a 5-month-old baby and their elderly parents was difficult. In addition, they had to dodge areas of combat.

 

The family walked for about a week before reaching the border, sleeping on the ground and surviving on what food they could find.

 

Rajaa and Samia’s mother, Nawal, said she cried to the Lord for help during those difficult days, and he provided. “Every time I feel very desperate,” she said, “I say ‘Lord, Lord,’ and I feel like a light shining in our darkness.”

 

After crossing the border into a neighboring country, the family received emergency housing and basic supplies. They lived in a tent at a refugee camp for two years, and their sorrows were compounded when Nader died of a stroke. Most of the other refugees were Muslims who didn’t accept them. But with help from the global body of Christ, they eventually found a more secure place to live.

 

A local pastor also started teaching them more about the Bible. “When the pastor told us all the Good News, I felt like I am a little baby,” Rajaa said. “I was really born again, like a little new baby. It was a spiritual birth, something giving me comfort, something new I didn’t know before.”

 

Samia described experiencing a similar revival of faith. “When we read the Bible,” she said, “we feel like a new birth is being done in our heart by Jesus Christ.”

 

The two sisters, along with their pastor, now regularly deliver aid and share the gospel with Muslim refugees. “This is the first time I have seen non-Christians hear about Jesus and accept Christ!” Samia said, her eyes sparkling with joy.

The family still faces many challenges. They live in a Muslim-majority area where some men view them as prey; Samia suffered an attempted attack by a Muslim man.

 

“The Lord is my shepherd, and I shall not want,” Rajaa said, quoting Psalm 23.

 

“I discovered that God will never forsake anybody who seeks him with a whole heart,” added Samia.

 

Their mother, Nawal, said in turn, “He is our Lord, our Savior, and I learned a lot from him; he is supportive and patient and faithful.”

 

Finally, Rajaa’s teenage daughter, Yara, summarized a profound lesson: “I learned that our Lord is the only one who can continue standing near us during the most difficult times of our life to give us hope and peace and faith and joy and strength to live.”

 

The four women request prayer for God’s provision, as they continue to hope for an eventual return to their Syrian homeland.

 

“We want to go back and tell them about Jesus,” they told their pastor, wondering if they could somehow utilize their parents’ bombed, roofless home. “Maybe we could start preaching Christ through our destroyed house,” they suggested.

 

Despite, and partly as a result of, their deep suffering and personal loss, the four women long to share the hope of Christ with their countrymen who are in desperate need of reconciliation with one another and the God who loves them.