Most people do not come to Christ through intellectual arguing,” says Dan McCoy. “For many it arises out of a gradual overcoming of wrong impressions and wrong ideas. It comes from seeing the real love of Jesus.”

Dan McCoy has worked with International Students Incorporated (ISI) for more than 25 years, sharing Christ’s love with students who come to America from other parts of the world. During that time, he has seen many students give their lives to God. The story of one Muslim couple stands out in his mind.

Dan was living in Colorado Springs when he met Khaled and Nuha at Seven Falls, a tourist spot consisting of a series of waterfalls. Dan saw the pair sitting on a bench, noting that the woman was entirely covered.

“I don’t think many people had spoken to them,” he says.

After greeting them, Dan asked where they were from. Khaled and Nuha hailed from an Islamic country but were studying in Dallas, their visit to Colorado only part of a short weekend vacation. Dan was planning to travel to Dallas soon after and the couple enthusiastically encouraged him to call them while he was there.

While in Dallas, Dan called Khaled and Nuha and offered to visit their home on Sunday afternoon. They eagerly accepted. But he had one request. “I said, ‘Please don’t fix a big meal because I’ll be at a church in the morning and we’re having a potluck dinner. Before I come I’ll have eaten a big meal, so I won’t need to eat again. You know, just some tea or something will be fine.’”

After the potluck, Dan went straight to the couple’s house. They opened the door and led him to a table loaded with wonderful food. Dan remembers praying, “God, please expand my stomach!” Within two hours he had eaten two large meals.

They talked as they ate and the couple told Dan they disliked their home country, as well as the Islamic religion. “I was stunned,” Dan says. “And I said, ‘I’m here working with some churches to get families to volunteer to be friends with internationals. Would you like to have a family from a church be your friend?’”

The couple immediately agreed. Dan matched the couple with a family and then returned to Colorado. The couple and the family became very close. “They took vacations together; they did everything together,” says Dan.

After Khaled graduated, the couple returned home and Dan didn’t hear from them for two years. In the meantime, Dan moved to Tempe, Arizona. Then one day the phone rang and the caller said, “Dan, this is Khaled.” They were in Alabama and wanted Dan to find them a Christian host family.

“I didn’t know anyone in Alabama, so I called ISI,” says Dan. ISI had connections with a church in the area and soon the couple were matched with a Christian family. Then when Khaled’s period of study ended, they again returned home.

“I sent them a Christmas card every year,” says Dan. “I didn’t hear from them for years.”

Dan wondered what had happened to Khaled and Nuha, but he only received silence. Little did he know what was to come.

Seventeen years later, Dan was in a church of about 60 people in Tokyo. An American was speaking that Sunday and it happened to be the missions minister from the church in Alabama. After church Dan and the minister had lunch together. Dan still remembers the conversation.

“I sat down with him and I said, ‘I have to ask you a question: How long have you been at the church?’ He said, ‘18 years.’ I said, ‘Okay, 17 years ago I sent you a Muslim couple.’ And he immediately said, ‘Khaled and Nuha.’ I said, ‘Yeah, what happened?’ He said, ‘They both accepted the Lord.’”

“That was a special moment,” Dan remembers, his voice full of emotion. “Seventeen years later in a little church in Tokyo . . . God is good.”

Dan never imagined that his visit to the waterfalls in Colorado so many years ago would mark the start of a rich and profound journey for two individuals disillusioned with Islam. “What are the chances of some of these things happening?” he asks. Dan says you never know how God will use you in the lives of others. And of all the Muslims he has known who have come to Christ, “all have come through the love of a host family.”

That is a testimony to the power of God’s love. It is the love that Dan continues to show international students, with the hope that they will come to know its source, just as Khaled and Nuha did so many years ago. |L

OTHER COLUMNS:
September 30, 2005 - A new song