Radio, Jail Time, and Regeneration

Sometimes the way the Son sets you free is by first sending you to prison. This is what happened to Red*, a Central Asian friend whose path keeps intersecting with mine in ways both curious and unpredictable. Finding out that he is now born again, a new man, has been one of the best surprises of our return so far.

The first time I met Red I was perusing a bookshop in the heart of the bazaar. This was back in Poet City*, during our first term. I was scanning the shelves when a young bespectacled man approached me, maybe seventeen or eighteen years old. He asked, in English, if I was a foreigner. I responded in the local language that yes, I was. He was delighted I could speak his language and introduced himself as Red, telling me that he lived an hour and a half to the east, in one of the most conservative cities in our region.

Red told me that he led a weekly philosophy group with some of his peers and that he wanted me to come and visit the group sometime. I was fascinated. This was the same city that had lost 500 of its young men a few years earlier. They had been radicalized by an extremely violent terrorist group and had gone off to die in Jihad. What was going on with Red and these other students such that rather than go along with the dominant religious culture of their city, they instead gathered to discuss philosophy? Chances were, some of them were genuinely searching for the truth. We exchanged numbers and I fully intended to visit Red’s group. But for some reason, I never made it out to visit those high school students. Recalling this when we were preparing for our first furlough, it felt like I had missed something that I had been supposed to pursue.

For our second term, we were asked to relocate to the Caravan City*, three hours away, where we planned to form a church planting partnership with the international church. And who should approach me after the very first service we attended? Red, of all people. It had been a couple of years since our bookshop encounter, but we recognized one another right away. I was thrilled to see him attending this solid, gospel-preaching church. Red explained to me that he was now going to university in Caravan City and that he had developed a deep love for Jesus – an affection fostered by his discovery, of all things, of “Positive, Encouraging!” American Christian Radio online.

Inwardly, I chuckled at myself. I was not a huge fan of mainstream American Christian radio music. I felt most of the songs were too shallow, too individualistic, too generic, and too “Jesus is my boyfriend.” This kind of disillusionment with Christian pop worship music had even led me to give up on Christian music outside of church settings for about a decade. But just like action figure Jesus or the song, I Have Decided to Follow Jesus, God seemed to enjoy taking parts of American Christian culture that made me cringe and using them to draw Central Asians to himself.

Red was not yet a believer. But he was clearly drawn to Jesus and also to the church community. Though he would often attend the English-language service over the next six months, he didn’t seem interested in attending our local language Bible study. This trend was not uncommon among young men, but it did make it harder to tell if they were genuinely drawn to Jesus versus English and friendships with Americans. Then the Covid lockdowns came, universities shut down, and Red was stuck back in his hometown. It was at this point that he asked me if we could study the Bible together over the Internet. I happily agreed.

Normally, I start in the Book of Matthew with my Muslim friends. Matthew’s concrete language, regular takedowns of pharisaical religion, and slow and steady case for Jesus’ divinity have meant multiple Central Asian friends have come to faith somewhere in the middle of the book. But, remembering that Red was drawn to philosophy, I decided to read the book of John with him. For the next couple of months, we walked through the first half of John together. It seemed like Red’s mind and heart were being engaged by the Word, but it was still not clear that he understood the gospel.

After a short period, our video call Bible studies came to an end. I can’t recall exactly why, but it was right around when my family was suddenly plunged into crisis when my daughter got terribly sick from what we soon learned was new-onset diabetes. By God’s grace, her life was spared. But this meant the next six months were spent, first, in trying to get out of the country at a time when international air travel was almost completely shut down, and then, trying to figure out in the US if we could stabilize enough to come back.

When we finally did return in the fall of 2020, Red had a unique proposition for me. What if we started an English-language radio station together? Red’s father was the owner of dozens of radio towers in our region. Because of this, he had a good relationship with one of the major media networks here. His son had inherited his father’s knack for all things radio, and so with a few good words from Dad, Red had been invited to pitch a new English-language radio station, focused on the youth of our region.

The pitch had gone well, in part due to the executives’ surprise at this cocky 20-year-old who didn’t seem fazed at all to be interviewing with some of the more powerful media men in the country – including the network CEO, the president’s cousin. Red was very confident in his vision for this new English radio station and in his own abilities to form a solid team. In this, he was not wrong. He was extremely smart, a visionary, and able to form a great team. But Red had no idea how to manage his team or how to break down his vision into a practical plan. As a fellow visionary-type myself (at the time trying to lead my own deeply divided team), I could relate. Unfortunately, this weakness as a manager would ultimately spell the doom of Red’s grand radio plans.

I was brought onto the team to do short, engaging content on the history of our region. Because our locals really value concrete, visual proof of competence, I showed up to the next interview in my nicest teacher jacket, carrying a huge stack of history books. When the president’s cousin and the other radio executives asked me what I was doing with all these books, I was able to tell them that they were full of fascinating stories about their past that none of them had ever heard before. Holding up my chai cup as an example, I shared with them how the American revolutionaries’ boycott of British tea eventually led to tea becoming the reigning hot beverage in our region, replacing coffee. The British needed a market for all their excess tea now that the American market was closed, so they pivoted hard to Central Asia. “And that’s why you drink chai so much,” I concluded. Apparently, my little demonstration had the intended effect and I was officially dubbed a history expert fit for national radio.

In the following weeks, we made it as far as visiting a fancy new tower under construction to give our input on the blueprints for our new studio. This step made it seem like it was really going to happen.

There were six of us on the team: Red, myself, a local who had grown up in Canada and was now a gifted trilingual DJ, and several other young men and women who were in charge of running other fun or educational shows. Since I was in my early 30s, I was the old experienced guy among this crew of 20-somethings. I was hoping to leverage my ‘old man’ status to help hold the team together since serious signs of dysfunction were already showing.

Good questions about timing, expectations, and compensation were dismissed by Red as people not being optimistic enough or not truly understanding the vision. Consistently, Red was able to describe the end goal, but not what we needed to do to practically get there. And though he was brilliant in some ways, he was also very young and often unreliable. He might go dark for days at a time, leaving the rest of us to text each other to figure out what was actually happening. When the team found out he had merely been preoccupied with a new girlfriend, for example, tempers flared.

In the end, the new radio station never came to fruition. There was no clear announcement, just longer and longer periods of silence from Red until eventually the rest of us concluded that the thing must have been killed for some reason behind the scenes. The others moved on to other projects. My family found ourselves suddenly asked to move back to Poet City. And the whole radio thing became a strange unfinished story that only came out unexpectedly with friends. “Weren’t you supposed to be doing history stuff on the radio? Whatever happened to that?”

That was the last I heard of Red – until this month, that is. Upon our return to Caravan City, I learned that not only had Red been around, but he was now a beloved new believer. He had recently moved back to Poet City and everyone in the church here seemed to miss his presence. Could this be the same Red that I knew? This past week he visited Caravan City again and shared with me what happened.

Last year, Red had traveled to another country in our region. There, for some reason, he took a selfie in front of the Mexican embassy. Apparently, this is a big no-no. Red was arrested and ended up in prison for two whole months before being extradited back to his home country. While this all sounds like overkill to me, it must have been some kind of providential overkill. This is because while in prison, Red came to the end of himself. For the first time, he knew himself to be a sinner. He came under conviction for his different addictions, for his womanizing, for his pride. His Bible came alive to him as he read it for hours every day in his cell. And for the first time, he experienced the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit.

“The Bible is so clear and rich to me now,” he told me. “I could never understand it when we would read it before. But now I feel like I can finally understand it and like I could study it forever.”

Red’s physical demeanor even seemed different to me. True, he had aged a bit. There were now hints of grey showing up in his beard and hair. But he also seemed more at peace than he had before, humble even. He told me excitedly about how he’s hoping to get baptized soon and trying to figure all that out now that he’s going to be joining the international church in Poet City. Because he’s been discipled as a new believer here in Caravan City, the two churches may end up doing a baptism picnic together to celebrate.

Red and I hugged as we said goodbye and laughed about all the ways we keep running into one another over the years, from the bookshop to our season as prospective radio hosts, to the brotherhood we now finally share together. If our future paths are anything like what our past paths have been, then I’m sure I’ll see him again soon.

I now see that same fancy tower where our radio studio was supposed to be every time I look out my bedroom window. It’s a good reminder to pray for Red. In years past, we had prayed a lot for Red to be set free. For that to happen, God had to first send him to prison. An unexpected means of answering prayer? Yes. But Red, for his part, doesn’t seem to mind at all.

If you would like to help us purchase a vehicle for our family as we serve in Central Asia (only 3k currently needed), you can reach out here.

Our kids’ Christian school here in Central Asia has an immediate need for a teacher for the combined 2nd and 3rd grade class. An education degree and some experience is required, but the position is salaried, not requiring support raising. If interested, reach out here!

For my list of recommended books and travel gear, click here.

*Names of locals and cities changed for security

Photos are from Unsplash.com