Belfast OutReach

    Leaving the Jehovah's Witnesses and coming to Christ My upbringing was not particularly religious. My father was Church of England, though I never knew him go to church, but he did believe in God. My mother was in the Salvation Army and attended fairly regularly, I went occasionally. But no attempt was made to give me any religious teaching.  My father had to give up work through ill health, so family life was a bit of a struggle back then in the early 1960’s. My mother died when I was 16.  I had an older brother and sister but they lived away from home. Because of the family situation, it just being my father and myself, as soon as I left school I had to get a job. so any plans for further education went out the window.  I suppose I embarked on the usual things for a young man going out drinking etc, with friends.  Strangely in our sessions in local pubs we often discussed God, why are we here, where are we going, the usual questions.  I started to be d

Bassam's Testimony   I live in the Middle East. I was born as a Muslim, and at the age of 18 I became a member of one of the Islamic groups, as I had a relative who was one of the leaders of this group. I thought I was doing everything I could for God as I knew him at this point. After a short time I started to get some training in using guns and making explosives. I wasn't very comfortable with what I was doing - hurting people for God's sake. I thought that either I or the group had misunderstood the teachings of God. I started to study the Qur'an and the Hadith all over again, (with the help of one of the leaders of the group, without telling him my real reasons for studying) to see what I had missed. After a couple of years I was astonished at what I found. I found that Islam is not the peaceful path to God, as I used to believe; on the contrary, it's so violent. If *I* have to establish God's will by any means possible, even by ki

Chinese translation in traditional & simplified script Walid's Testimony My name is Walid . I was born in Bethlehem, Israel. On the day that I was born it was one of the holiest days to Islam, the birthday of the Muslim prophet Mohammad (Al-Mauled Al-Nabawi). This was an honor to my father. For that, he named me Walid which relates to the Arabic word (Mauled) and in English (The Birth) to always remember the birthday of the Muslim prophet. My father was a Palestinian Muslim who taught English and Islamic studies in the Holy Land. My mother was an American who married my father during his studies in the United States in the year of 1956. Fearing the impact of the American way of life for their two children and while my mother was pregnant with me, my parents left to live in Israel in 1960 which was called Jordan at that time. When they arrived to Bethlehem I was born. As my father changed jobs, we moved to Saudi Arabia, then back to the Holy Land -- this tim