From Bethlehem to Ireland to Rwanda, with Love

When 20-year-old Saleem left his home in Bethlehem in the West Bank to attend a Discipleship Training School in Belfast, Northern Ireland, he felt like he had nothing to offer anyone. “I felt like I was a nobody because of my past, and who I was,” he recalls.
But all that was about to change as Saleem’s DTS outreach team traveled to Burundi and Rwanda. While playing soccer with a few friends there, he was able to talk to them about his past, the situation in his country and what God was teaching him about forgiveness. Saleem remembers it well. “After I spoke, one man, a Hutu, stood up and said that his family was killed by Tutsis in the war. He said nobody knew, but he was getting ready to go to the Congo to join a Hutu rebel group so he could get revenge by killing Tutsis.” But after hearing Saleem’s testimony, God touched the man’s heart and he told Saleem that he now will choose the grace of God.
“That night, God really spoke to me,” Saleem says. He said, ‘See my son, your past is important, and you are everything to me.’ From that night on, I knew that I was really someone!”