Dispatches: Tunisia Survey 2019

By Gary Fallesen, founding president, Climbing For Christ

A cedar in western Tunisia.

Our time as a team has come to an end and we are all headed in different directions. There are many airports and many flights‎ ahead. We leave the country with a prayer we have lifted over numerous brothers and sisters in Christ during the past nine days. It comes from Psalm 92:12-15, which one of my brother's on the team shared from the start of our trip as the verses God put on his heart for our journey together:

"The righteous flourish like the palm tree and grow like a cedar in Lebanon. They are planted in the house of the LORD; they flourish in the courts of our God. They still bear fruit in old age; they are ever full of sap and green, to declare that the LORD is upright; he is my rock, and there is no unrighteousness in him."

May the church in Tunisia flourish like the palm tree and grow like a cedar, ever green and full of sap, declaring Jesus is LORD!

Tuesday, April 9

The place where early Christians, like Perpetua and Felicitas, in North Africa were martyred.

‎Perpetua was a 22-year-old Roman aristocrat and mother of a young child who was brutally executed in 202 AD for following Jesus. She and her personal slave Felicitas were stripped naked and tortured by a mad heifer before being beheaded. Their martyrdom grew the church here.

It was sad to walk where the blood of the martyrs was spilled (and thousands were killed) only to become a land of Islam. The church needs to reclaim this land for HIS glory.

The remains of the church where the Councils of Carthage were held.

Later, as the call to prayer was being broadcast from a mega-mosque built by the Tunisian president deposed by the Arab Spring, we stood in the remains of an old church.‎ This was where the Councils of Carthage canonized the Bible in 397.‎ Again, the irony of the moment was striking.

We walked and drove through history throughout the day. ‎We saw and learned many things. But, as one brother said, "The history we want to make is tomorrow, not yesterday."

Roman ruins preserved in western Tunisia.

Monday, April 8

The remains of an ancient church with a mosque standing behind it in western Tunisia. The church (body of believers) does still stand here.

Our host prayed for our protection before we headed West, saying: "The strongman has a grip on this place. He is holding people hostage‎." He will not easily release them from bondage. We have seen this in our travels into the enemy's strongholds.

We met many along the way - from souks (public markets) to village cafes and historic sites to shepherds tending sheep in the field. We have prayed for workers to come and connect with those who are here. This area in western Tunisia, like the south and certainly the north, is accessible to anyone. It does not seem to be Climbing For Christ territory.

But the church of Tunisia - and the church across all of North Africa (especially these days in Libya) - needs our prayers. Obedience and boldness are required.

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Looking farther West toward the mountains of Algeria. Is God calling us there?

Sunday, April 7

‎It's a joy to see God at work. I watched one of my brothers lead five Tunisians through a second day of training in business. It was an HIStoric time. My role was simply to lift them in prayer, which was an honor.

We are staying with another family that is serving here, but will again head out tomorrow. GO-ing West this time to explore some more mountains and survey another Muslim unreached people group. Praying.

Saturday, April 6

Reunited with lost luggage.

And on the sixth day, I was reunited with my backpack.‎ And God saw that it was good.

One brother caught the train to the city in the north where we were going. He needed to arrive early to prepare for a two-day training in business with a few local believers. This was what brought him to Tunisia.

Tunisian coliseum.

My other brother needed to meet up with local workers in the city where we stayed Friday night. We had breakfast and prayed with them. Then we hit the road, stopping at ‎a beautifully preserved Roman amphitheater, which dates to the 3rd century and was used as a location for the film Gladiator. The amphitheater is considered one of the most impressive remains of the Roman Empire in North Africa.

From there, God directed us to the airport we'll be departing from on Wednesday. This is at the other end of Tunisia from where we arrived on Tuesday. And this was where my backpack finally landed. All praise to God! I won't have to hike again in the mountains in dress shoes. But I have learned that I can GO with only the shirt on my back and the Spirit of the LORD in my heart.  

We joined the business training‎ and heard the amazing God stories of five Tunisian believers who are participating. These young men will become the trainers as business is used to glorify God. They are the next generation of the church.

After training, we were blessed to take the precious ‎family hosting the training in their apartment out to dinner. It is a sweet young Tunisian family full of love for our God.

Friday, April 5

Boats used to carry a dozen people illegally across the sea in search of a new life.

The young Muslim man overhead us speaking English as he was Facebook messaging with his Christian "spiritual mother" from America while we rode on the ferry Thursday. She encouraged him to speak with us. He approached and shared this information and struck up a conversation in very good English. We spoke with him, somewhat suspiciously, wondering if he might be secret police. One of my brothers suggested we meet this morning and he agreed.

After again finding no backpack at the airport we joined the conversation and found a Muslim who God might be preparing. He told us about those in his generation doing anything to get to Europe. Nearby small boats used to take people across the Mediterranean to Italy rocked on the shoreline. A young Tunisian man entered the café where we were meeting escorting a white woman who could be his grandmother. Our hearts ached for the indecency happening here.

Our new Muslim friend was a Tunisian Arab and that unreached people group was the Joshua Project's UPG of the Day. Pray for this encounter. "...for the Lord is not restrained to save by many or by few" (1 Samuel 14:6).

We spent time with him and then we enjoyed lunch with friends before leaving the south to go north for more meetings, surveying, and divine appointments. The first stop along the way was dinner with a Sub-Saharan pastor and his family, who have served here for many years. The pastor's oldest child is a student at a college near me in Houghton, NY. Small world.

Thursday, April 4

A mosque stands in the center of a mountain village.

We visited the homes of Berber people and then went to Luke Skywalker's childhood home from the original Star Wars movie. It was a surreal mix of fact and fiction, culminating in an odd divine appointment with a Muslim man on a ferry boat back to our starting point.

Such was life on this ‎day in southern Tunisia, another day that ended with my backpack still missing. The airline (Turkish Air) claimed it had been sent from Paris and the baggage handlers at our Tunisia destination claimed (once again) nothing had arrived. It is lost somewhere, but our mission to reach the lost goes on. God is too good to do anything else.

Wednesday, April 3

Homes built into the side of a mountain.

The Luke 9:3 Experiment began. We left the city and headed to a mountain village - a village literally built into the mountainside - in southern Tunisia. We left without my backpack, which remains a no-show, following Jesus' instruction in Luke 9:3: ‎"Take nothing for your journey."

Gary's local backpack with what little he has and a borrowed jacket.

We entered the land of Star Wars. This is where‎ the Star Wars movies were filmed. Our in-country friend often takes tourists to see the locations used for those movies.‎ It is other-worldly looking. We four surveyed the area, where a Muslim unreached unengaged people group lives.

Tuesday, April 2

God held the plane for me. I was landing two minutes after my next flight was scheduled to takeoff. But there on the monitor, where every flight was "on time," I read "Delayed" for the next leg of my journey. I managed to board‎ during the last call for passengers and arrived in Paris to connect with my two North Africa-bound brothers.

Unfortunately, my backpack did not make the connection. So I arrived in Tunisia tonight with only the clothes on my back and wearing the full armor of God. The fiery arrows have been plentiful for our team. The spiritual warfare is intense, and it goes much deeper than my four delayed flights and lost luggage. The backpack is supposed to arrive a day late, which would be a blessing.

Monday, April 1

The heroes of faith are not limited to Hebrews 11. I was blessed to meet a few of the lions of missions, upon whose shoulders we stand, during a gathering in 2017. Included among those modern-day legends was Greg Livingstone.

Livingstone’s life story – born out of wedlock, unwanted as a child, and a man who would become a pioneer worker among Muslim unreached people groups (MUPGs) – is a testament to God’s goodness. Livingstone helped start the great ministries Operation Mobilization and Frontiers. But when he was a second-year student at Wheaton College in 1959, he reluctantly attended an all-night prayer meeting being led by George Verwer.

Upon meeting him, Verwer asked Livingstone: “What country are you claiming, brother?”

“I was momentarily speechless,” Livingstone wrote in his autobiography. “I wasn’t sure I knew what he meant by ‘claiming.’ But street kids like me are quick on our feet, so I pretended I was tracking with him and shot back, ‘What’s left?’

“‘Libya. You’ve got Libya.’

“Semi-stunned, I wandered toward one of the prayer circles, trying to think of where Libya was. ‘It’s probably one of those islands off of Florida!’ I told myself.

“That night I found out where Libya was – and a lot more! Never before had I realized that there were millions of people out there who had no access to a church in their language, and no Christian friends who could tell them the Christmas and Easter stories. Those facts bothered me more and more as the night went on.”

Those facts, which still exist in too many places in the world 60 years after that HIStoric moment, should bother us all.

Today, I head for North Africa. The countries there have weighed on my heart: Morocco (with its 99.6-percent Muslim population), Algeria (95.4%), Tunisia (99.0%), Libya (97.1%), and Egypt (86.7%). Along the way I will meet up with two brothers in Christ who also serve in Africa. We will be visiting Tunisia, where I will survey if and how God would have us serve the MUPGs. The population of Tunisia, where the Arab Spring began nine years ago, is almost entirely unreached. That bothers me.

What would the author of You’ve Got Libya: A Life Serving the Muslim World say about that? “Why not serve God where the workers (are) the fewest?” Greg Livingstone wrote. Amen, brother, and thanks for the inspiration.