Building a Far-Reaching Network – Together

Rojan spent years in misery before coming into contact with two members of our network through a substance abuse program. Now, with her life transformed by God, she is proclaiming the Gospel in nearby slums.

Rojan, who is 43, was born into a family of addicts. Her childhood memories are dominated by images of her parents hungover or high on drugs.

When she was 15, uneducated, and looking to escape her home situation, Rojan married a 30-year-old man. Her husband was kind and gave her the loving attention she craved, and they had two sons.

But Rojan’s husband became addicted to drugs. She wound up mired in the same emptiness and loneliness she hoped she had left for good.

Rojan’s husband encouraged her to try drugs. She did. And, gradually, she became an addict too.

Rojan turned to an addiction treatment program in an attempt to save her life. Two people working with the program’s addicts befriended her. She appreciated how they helped her and stayed in contact with her during her treatment process. Rojan left the program with her addiction broken but with the same lack of self-value caused by all the friends who—she always eventually seemed to discover—were only using her. She cut off contact with the two friends from the rehab program.

Off drugs, Rojan’s day-to-day life improved to the point that she and her husband purchased a home. Then her husband died from a drug overdose, leaving her alone to provide for their sons.

“My world was dark,” she recalls. “I kept saying, ‘There is no God. If there is, why does He allow me to suffer so much?’” Rojan returned to the rehab center, began crying, and asked God, “Where are you? Enough of all this hardship and darkness!” The same two workers who had befriended her before saw Rojan. They prayed for her, and Rojan says her entire body instantly overflowed with peace and comfort—“like rain from the sky.”

“It was as if that great distance between me and God had been removed,” she says.

Rojan’s two friends told her they were associated with Iran Alive Ministries and gave her a Bible. They described how they prayed for their neighborhood and distributed food and medicine to those in need. Then they led Rojan in a prayer of salvation.

“At that moment,” she describes, “my eyes were opened, and I was no longer in darkness.”

This time, Rojan stayed in contact with the two, and they helped her start her faith journey. Rojan said she grew stronger day by day as they taught her more about Christ.

The peace Rojan felt praying in the rehab center remains, and she has devoted her life to helping drug addicts and prostitutes discover the peace that only God can bring.

“By the grace of Christ,” she reports, “I am spreading the words and love of God so that they can kneel in the same ruined neighborhoods and recite the prayer of salvation. Hallelujah!”