From Iran to God’s Ultimate Freedom

Her escape from Iran was not a carefully planned journey. It was a desperate attempt to survive. For years she had lived under the weight of domestic violence, religious control, and a fear that shapes the daily lives of many women in her homeland. At last she made a decision: to risk everything in search of safety for herself and her son.

She did not know where they were going. One airport after another, hurried layovers, sleepless nights, tickets bought wherever a flight was still possible. Thus began a journey toward freedom that, quite unexpectedly, ended in Poland.

Straight from the airport they were taken to a refugee center—exhausted, disoriented, carrying little more than a few belongings and a heart heavy with uncertainty. It was there that something happened that, as she would later say, changed her life forever.

One day a pastor visited the center. He carried a Bible and spoke about a God of love—a God who does not control, intimidate, or strip people of dignity, but who seeks them where they are.

For Raha[*] it was a revelation. In the religious tradition she had known since childhood, God appeared primarily as a strict judge, and women held lesser value—socially and theologically. Now, for the first time, she heard about a God who sees pain, knows names, and bends toward human stories.

Not long afterward Raha and her son were transferred to another refugee center. Her first question upon arrival was not about documents or material aid. She asked whether there was anyone there who read the Bible.

At that center a volunteer named Ania—a Seventh-day Adventist from Białystok—was working with a local foundation. When she heard that an Iranian refugee was asking to meet someone from the church, she agreed immediately. Their meeting quickly became a conversation that touched them both.

Raha did not ask about doctrines. She asked about God. About who He truly is.

After several meetings she asked quietly whether she might attend a worship service.

That Sabbath several congregations gathered for a joint service in a rented convention hall. Among hundreds of people, right at the entrance, Raha unexpectedly met Marek Micyk—a pastor she had never met before.

After the service, everyone gathered at Ania’s home to continue the conversation. Raha spoke some English, but to express her thoughts precisely, she spoke with Micyk through Google Translate, carefully translating sentence by sentence into Farsi. It was then that she heard words that would forever change the way she thought about God.

“You do not have to earn God’s favor,” she was told. “He is the one who comes—to find you and invite you to Himself.”

The words moved her deeply. After a moment of silence, she said she wished she had a giant megaphone aimed at all of Iran, so she could tell people what she had just discovered about God.

From that moment on, regular online conversations about God’s plan of salvation began. Eventually a pastor from Germany was found who studied the Bible with Raha and her son in Farsi. Month after month, patiently and faithfully, he prepared them for baptism. Despite the hardships of refugee life and an uncertain future, their commitment to the church never weakened.

At last a baptismal date was set. It was a Sabbath, outdoors by a river—beautiful, though the sky was overcast and rain began to fall. And as many had witnessed before, when the candidates stepped into the water, the clouds parted and the sun appeared. Some might call it coincidence. Everyone present knew better.

“Raha’s story is a reminder that God often works quietly—beyond the spotlight, in refugee centers, in conversations mediated by a phone translator, in the hearts of people who fled fear and found hope,” Micyk said. “It is also a story of a church that is present wherever someone begins to ask questions about God—and that answers not with theory, but with love.”

[*] The name of the individual has been changed for security reasons.