Author: Bible Society, 21 June 2024
Hrayr Jebejian shares the Bible with the immense populations of impoverished migrant workers in the Gulf countries. He explains what that looks like and what he’s hoping to achieve this year with your support:
Here in the Gulf, we are a ‘glocal’ Bible Society. We are local but we’re also global, because we have 170 nationalities here. We don’t need to travel the whole world in order to share the gospel. The whole world is right here with us!
Bible Society’s work in the Gulf covers five countries in the Arabian Peninsula. I tell you, it’s the best job. Bible Society is not a bookshop. Yes, we have resource centres, we have bookshops all around the place, but we are much, much more than that. ‘Society’ means people, so we work with people and for people. We interact with people and we live with the challenges of the people of the Gulf.
It’s all about finding new life in our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ.
We have centres in these different countries – staff based everywhere – and that makes our work really challenging. It requires a lot of my attention. Can I say the job is 24/7? My wife shouldn’t see that. One of my senior staff asked yesterday if I ever sleep. I do, sometimes.
You always need to be behind your email, your WhatsApp, your Zoom and so on. This is our situation and we do it with love. I do it with joy. I like to work, and especially for the Bible Society. Just don’t count the minutes!
The last ten years I’ve been based in Kuwait. From there I travel to the different places – to other parts of the Gulf or overseas. The last three weeks I’ve been in Norway, Scotland, England and Switzerland. I’m coming from a very hot country, so for me it was freezing over there.
As a ‘glocal’ Bible Society, it’s very much a diversified ministry where we try to cater to the needs of all these different people in different communities at different levels. When you see a picture of Dubai with all its giant glass buildings, you don’t see the people who make these buildings. They’re coming from Asia and Africa, men and women. They come here as construction workers and domestic workers. They clean the streets. Their salaries are very low and their living conditions are poor. There are no unions that will protect their rights.
Migrant workers face psychological and sometimes physical abuse. We have to meet the spiritual needs of these people so they can see that in spite of the difficult situation they’re in, there is hope. And where do they get that hope? It’s from the Bible.
And we can see how lives have been transformed, even though their physical or economic life isn’t changing. They’re gaining faith through the word of God. They’re becoming new people. They are able to tackle their problems from a completely different perspective. This is the greatest impact that the Bible is having in these communities.
Once they are engaged with the word of God, they have this strong desire to share it with others. They say, ‘Hey guys, I’ve found something which no other source has been able to provide. That’s the word of God. The word of God has changed my life. I want you to experience this new life.’
They share their experience, they share their faith with their fellow migrant workers, with others in the Gulf. And then when they go back home, they’ll share with their families what they’ve found here.
This year we have 26 projects we are working on. First of all we have storytelling. A lot of migrant workers are either semi-literate or illiterate, so storytelling helps them to engage with the Bible and understand it much better. They’re able to see themselves in the Bible’s story. They say, ‘Ah! I have been in this situation.’
And they see a way for their life to be changed. This is having a great impact. They’ll learn the story and share it with others. This means that first, Christ is in their lives. And second, they have this desire to share the stories with others.
Another project is Bible-based trauma healing. We have a lot of traumatised people, especially among the migrant workers, so this project has really expanded. We are helping communities in their traumatised situation by using the word of God.
We have a number of Scripture distribution projects for people who cannot afford Bibles. We have projects for leadership, helping the leaders of migrant churches who are mainly untrained volunteers. We have special training courses that we conduct to help the leadership.
We have a project called End To End. Every year we take one particular church and we work with them throughout the year, disciple them, and establish a curriculum for them so we can see how this church will eventually grow. It starts in January and ends in December each year.
And of course we have all these projects in different parts of the Gulf. We’re dealing with seven countries, so all our projects are located throughout the region. It’s a big portfolio. Sometimes we’re frightened. But the Lord will help.
Hrayr needs your help to reach people like Kanti, a housemaid from Sri Lanka with a troubled background, now living in tough conditions. She arrived in Bahrain full of anger, but after an encounter with God’s word she’s telling everyone about Jesus. ‘I want my fellow Sri Lankan maids to find the peace that only Jesus gives.’
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