Moody alumni couple courageously shares the gospel in two of the world's most closed countries

* Pseudonyms

Anne* was a 17-year-old missionary kid in the West African nation of Senegal when she sensed God directing her to take the gospel to North Africa, considered one of the most unreached regions in the world.

That same year, William* was attending a Bible school in New Zealand when a guest speaker challenged the teen to serve as a missionary in a country closed to Christianity.

Knowing the risks involved in such potentially dangerous missions, William and Anne each took a giant step of faith and followed God's lead to Moody Bible Institute. For the next three years, they poured their hearts into learning how to introduce the least reached people groups to Jesus Christ.

Then, as seniors at Moody, their lives collided when they met in a class studying the book of Romans. As they got to know each other, William and Anne discovered they shared a deeply held conviction for reaching the seemingly unreachable with the good news of Jesus. Once separated by 10,000 miles, the couple was now united in love and purpose.

“There are no coincidences with God,” William says.

In less than three years, William and Anne graduated from Moody, married, trained for their ministry assignments, and headed first to Southeast Asia and later to North Africa. Over the last 14 years, they have leaned heavily on God while finding ways to courageously proclaim Christ in two countries hostile to the Christian faith.

Shining light in a spiritually dark city

William graduated from Moody with a BA in Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages (TESOL), and Anne earned a BA in Linguistics. After getting married a year later in 2008, William and Anne were hired and trained by a missions organization as English teachers at a university in Southeast Asia. William was already familiar with the region. He taught English there for a year after graduation while Anne was an instructor at an MK academy in Senegal.

The university had hired William and Anne through an organization that partners with foreign governments to recruit, coach, and send qualified candidates to teach in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa. William's and Anne's teaching positions afforded them the opportunity to build relationships on and off campus. This opened doors to engage colleagues and students about their faith in Christ.

William and Anne spent four years teaching English and living in Southeast Asia. Because its government declared the country an official secular state over three decades earlier, it is one of the least reached countries in the world. When William and Anne arrived in 2010, few residents in the city followed Christ. Even today, 86 percent of nationals are considered irreligious.

“It was a spiritually dark city,” William says.

Reaching students through an English club

Two years after William and Anne's teaching assignment began, as she was grading papers Anne noticed the email address for one of her students ended with the suffix @loveforgod.com. She learned that this student was a member of an underground group of Christian students. This spurred an idea: starting an off-campus club that would teach English to students using stories from the Bible.

For the club's curriculum, William and Anne selected a book titled English in Action. It was written by Wally Cirafesi, a TESOL professor who retired from Moody in 2015.

“Each Bible story in the book had 12 sentences you could act out,” Anne says. “The book took students from creation to various parables, and a young leader in an (underground church) would interpret the stories for us. We weren't yet fluent in the country's language.”

Over the next three years the club led dozens of students to trust Christ for salvation. At a Christmas musical hosted by a local underground church, club members were invited to be part of the choir, and 13 of them went forward to accept Christ. Soon the club was discipling new believers and plugging them into the underground church.

Surprising end to their ministry

As William and Anne responded to increasing opportunities to share the gospel with an ever-widening circle of students, the government promptly shut down their club in 2014. Some fringe members of the club alerted the university administration to the club's Bible-based teaching. School administrators investigated, grilling student members about the club's activities.

Eventually the local police called William and Anne in for questioning. After hours of interrogation, the authorities determined the club was operating illegally and made it clear that William and Anne would be prohibited from connecting with students outside of the classroom. At the end of the semester the couple and their infant son had to leave the country and return to the US.

Although their sudden departure from Southeast Asia was disheartening, William and Anne soon received encouraging news.

“We learned that some of the students from the club began reaching people groups who don't (know Christ) yet,” William says.

New mission field

The unexpected end of William and Anne's work in Southeast Asia was devastating to the young couple. In many ways they felt their dream of reaching the unreached had been shattered.

But the couple remained committed to evangelizing unreached people groups. Their steadfast belief in God's calling was confirmed when they discovered their sending organization was enlarging its outreach into North Africa, one of the world's most unreached regions.

“That's what I always felt the Father wanted us to do,” Anne says.

Anne grew up in the Ivory Coast and Senegal and while at Moody served an internship in the Middle East. She was comfortable working with Muslims in a country where more than 99 percent of citizens are considered Islamic.

William and Anne and their now toddler son arrived in their new country in 2015. They were the first members of their sending organization to teach in a Muslim-majority nation in the region. “Teaching was our professional platform into this country,” Anne says. “Almost all workers here have to have a business to get a visa. We got an education visa.”

Developing a team to serve university campuses

As they learned the Arabic language, adjusted to living in a radically different culture, and helped expand the size of their team to seven members, William and Anne searched for full-time English teaching positions on university campuses. In 2018 a university hired William to teach English. A year later William and Anne shared a full-time university teaching position, and eventually both found full-time professorships.

With the team's size continuing to grow, William and Anne were appointed country directors for the organization. William teaches full time and Anne handles the team's day-to-day administrative duties.

“There are now 15 adults on the team,” William says. “This is the most teachers we've ever had here. We're teaching on two university campuses in the country.”

New audience to reach

In Southeast Asia their evangelistic efforts focused primarily on their students. In North Africa they also share their faith with university colleagues.

“Our purposes here are to reach out to coworkers and find avenues to connect with students, whether through extracurricular events or campus clubs, game nights, or Christmas parties,” William says. “I'm starting a book club in hopes of seeing where that could go and hoping more community can develop because what we're doing here is a cultivating and seed-planting work.”

Whether seeking pathways for spiritual dialogue with colleagues, parents, or students, the evangelism tool that William, Anne, and their teammates depend on most is prayer.

“So many people here are unreached,” William says. “The gravity of it is overwhelming. We are constantly (praying) about who to be concentrating on in our sharing.”

Relational evangelism

Since Christian proselytizing, outreach, and churches to nationals are illegal in the country, William, Anne, and the other members of their team use one-on-one conversations to witness to unbelievers. William and Anne look for ways to share Christ with friends, neighbors, and anyone else in their daily sphere of influence.

These discussions can arise in all kinds of situations and from even the most unexpected of topics. Whether on campus, in a taxi, at a store, or on the phone, William, Anne, and their teammates strive to practice 1 Peter 3:15—"Always be prepared to give an answer to everyone who asks you to give the reason for the hope that you have. But do this with gentleness and respect.”

William shared a recent example: “A colleague approached me wanting to practice English. He has an interest in talking about faith. There are many opportunities to share the good news with him in a variety of ways. He'll ask, 'What is Easter?' That's an opportunity to share about our faith. Opportunities come up throughout the day that you just need to be prepared for.”

Wise as serpents, innocent as doves

Because Christian evangelism is banned in the country, William and Anne have to exercise discernment in when and how they should share biblical truth. One faith-based conversation reported to governmental authorities could lead to deportation for them and their teammates, or worse.

“There's a really tough balance for us being here in a closed and unreached country,” William says. “We want to keep our jobs and we want to be salt and light. That's hard. We have to be very wise.”

So far William and Anne's team has seen a modest number of Muslims surrender their lives to Christ—“it's barely 100 within the city,” William says. But eight years inside the country have revealed to them a profound hunger in nationals' hearts that only the Bread of Life can satisfy.

“When you scratch beneath the surface of the culture here, I see a lack of hope and deep discontentment,” William says. “A lot of students here are dealing with depression. Our heart is to bring light and hope that they've tried to find elsewhere and have not found in (Islam).”

Moody alumnus serves as pastor with church's evangelism ministry to Mormons in Utah

When Bradley Campbell '17 discusses Utah County in the state of Utah, it sounds like he's describing a nation in the Middle East.

“Utah would be considered an unreached people group if it were overseas,” Bradley says. “Utah is the only state in the entire country that has never been predominantly Christian. The only one. Utah has the lowest percentage of Christians in the country by far, yet it is the most religious state in the country by far.”

With a population of 700,000, Utah County is 15 minutes south of The Mission Church in South Jordan, Utah, where Bradley serves on the pastoral team. “I think Utah County is just 0 .4-percent evangelical,” Bradley says. “That's how few Christians there are.”

When Bradley came to Moody in 2013 as an Intercultural Ministries major, he had no clue about statistics like that. Mormons and Mormonism weren't on his radar for a field of study.

“I started off with the hope of heading overseas to do missions,” Bradley says. “I remember a conversation with my roommate freshman year and saying, 'I''d love to do missions, but the one thing that I don't want to do is pastoral ministry.' So, it's kind of funny how that worked out.”

Go west, young man

While at Moody, Bradley often attended The Compass Church, his home church in Naperville, Illinois, a suburb of Chicago. One Sunday during his sophomore year, his former youth leader, Ritch Sandford, was the featured speaker. He had moved to Utah to plant a church.

“I was going to my car,” Bradley recalls, “and Ritch stopped me and said, 'I was watching you interact with people, and I think you should consider church planting. There are a lot of areas in the country where there are shockingly few churches. I'm living in one right now.'”

Ritch's idea took Bradley by surprise. Bradley investigated Moody's church-planting degree and discovered it included courses on preaching and pastoral studies. It also covered missions and church-based elements, and that appealed to him. He switched his major. For the last semester of his senior year, he joined Pastor Ritch's church in Utah as a residential intern.

Introduction to Mormonism

Bradley quickly learned that Mormonism is the dominant religion in Utah. Bradley's lack of experience with Mormons was about to change dramatically. One of the elders from The Mission Church had spent decades interacting with Mormons and studying their beliefs.

“One day he took me down to Temple Square in Salt Lake City,” Bradley says. “Almost immediately this couple walks up, and he starts talking with them. And—I'm not exaggerating—it was a five-hour conversation!”

That five-hour conversation awakened something in Bradley. “I realized just how much I didn't know about Mormonism,” he says. “So later on, I started meeting with Mormon missionaries. Meeting with their missionaries to ask questions and then talking with random Mormons off the street taught me about the Mormon church.”

Ritch, pastor of The Mission Church, knows why conversations like that can last so long. “Most Mormons struggle with the concepts of the Trinity, spiritual priesthood authority, the trustworthiness of Scripture, and justification by faith alone,” Ritch says. “In all my dealings with active Latter-day Saints, I have found few meaningful objections to the Christian faith that can't be traced back to one of these categories.”

Preparing for an unexpected mission field

Bradley believes his time at Moody laid the groundwork for those discussions.

“Moody really helped teach me to think,” he says. “At Moody, one of the most valuable things I learned was how to hear, understand, analyze, and critique. That is absolutely essential to interacting with Mormons. I can't just parrot information. They won't care. But grasping their thinking and their arguments and then being able to form a thoughtful and theologically informed response is invaluable.

“Prior to coming to Moody, I had a fairly anemic understanding of theology. The classes and professors at Moody helped train me to better understand the Bible and the Christian theology that stems from a proper reading of Scripture. A proper understanding of the Bible and theology are absolutely integral to any interactions with Mormons. I'm indebted to Moody for giving me that foundation.”

By the end of his spring 2017 semester, Bradley knew that Utah was where the Lord wanted him to serve. He finished his degree in May and returned to Illinois for four months to raise financial support. In 2018, he married his girlfriend, Marisa, and together they returned to Utah as fully supported missionaries. The couple now has two young children.

Deep dive into a false religion

On the surface, Bradley says many Mormon beliefs and terms like “God the Father,” “Heaven,” and “Jesus” seem compatible with biblical truth. But they're not, which is why Mormonism is considered a cult and false religion.

“For instance,” he explains, “in Mormonism God is a man, an exalted man, who by obedience to certain laws and ordinances became a god. God and his wife—or many wives in older forms of Mormonism—gave birth to spiritual children, and that's all of us.

“Every human that's ever lived is a spirit child, in some sense, directly begotten by the heavenly father and heavenly mother. This is actually really critical because it means that we are essentially the same species as God. So the distinction between God and man is collapsed down to almost nothing.”

For Mormons, the identity and essence of Jesus is also not biblically based. Jesus is not a divine member of the triune Godhead. He is a changeable, exalted man with a definite beginning point. Mormonism says Jesus is one of the spirit siblings of mankind, not the eternal Son of God.

Stunning revelation to Mormons

In 2013, the Latter-day Saints (Mormon church) released a series of essays called The Gospel Topics. Bradley says, “Basically they were an admission of several embarrassing historical facts that had previously been denied by the LDS church—things like founder Joseph Smith had many wives. A lot of Mormons prior to that would have denied that he practiced polygamy. They thought that was a slanderous charge.”

With more and more sources available online, Mormons began discovering disturbing historical information about Mormonism that had previously been denied or never released. Learning that key factors behind the origin of the church were untrue was devastating to some LDS members. For many recanting Mormons, the essays not only deconstructed Mormonism.

“Mormons are taught from childhood that if the (LDS) church isn't true, then nothing is true,” Bradley says. “Mormons tie Christianity to the mast of their sinking ship. So when their Mormon faith goes down, they don't even realize that Christianity is distinct.”

Reaching Mormons via YouTube

After the release of The Gospel Topics, confused and disillusioned Mormons were seeking information online. Bradley, a gifted video producer, began creating new content for The Mission Church's YouTube channel, “God Loves Mormons.” While the channel does feature longer, discourse-like features, most videos are four to eight minutes in length. They cover topics like the definition of the gospel, the uncreated Creator, the Book of Mormon vs. the Bible, and marriage in Heaven.

“Some of the videos were birthed out of conversations we were having with former Mormons,” Bradley says. “For example, we talk about why Christians don't have a modern prophet or a group of apostles like the Mormon church does or why Christians don't believe in the Book of Mormon or things like that. We take a particular topic, and we investigate what Bible verses address that issue.”

For leaders of The Mission Church, the YouTube channel opens a pathway that could persuade Mormons to reconsider the teachings of their church and to investigate the teachings of Christ. But that's neither an easy nor a short journey.

“Many Christians assume that if only Mormons could see how illogical LDS truth claims are, they would leave their faith for one that can bear the weight of skepticism,” Pastor Ritch says. “Often, Christians are surprised by just how deeply loyal the LDS people are to their religion, even after it is proven wrong.”

Heart for Mormons

Bradley, who once had no interest in Mormons, Mormonism, or even the state of Utah, has become a man with a heart for Latter-day Saints.

“One thing that really turned my heart was realizing they're genuine, sincere people. They really believe,” he says. “They'll talk to you about (their faith), and they will well up with tears. It's hard to feel hard-hearted with that kind of person. Your heart breaks because they're just deceived. They've been caught up in this cosmic war. They're casualties of lies and false prophets.

“The Lord just gave me a love for the people I'm surrounded by. They should know the truth. I keep thinking of Jesus when He says, 'Pray for more laborers.' And you know, I'm here to labor. I'm here to sow seed.”

After discovering the gospel when his life hit rock bottom, Adam Waters is reaching the lost as a church pastor after training at Moody Bible Institute

Adam Waters' life was playing out like a reality TV show gone horribly wrong.

“You know those TV shows about extreme hoarders or about severe interventions? It was like that,” he says.

Adam's drug use began in his teen years, but it wasn't controlling his life—yet. “In high school, I was what I would call a social drug user. Maybe around 15, I started experimenting with marijuana and then eventually other things like mushrooms and alcohol.”

In his senior year of high school, Adam's girlfriend told him she was pregnant. The two married in 1997 when both he and his new wife were 18 years old. As Adam puts it, “It was obligatory.”

Addiction to alcohol

Adam still felt a strong sense of responsibility to provide for his family. He decided to enter the military, signing up to join the Navy. The Navy assigned him to an extensive corpsman training program. He was later told that he would be assigned to a Marine unit.

While the Marines treated him like family, there was one downside. “A lot of partying goes on. You work hard, you play hard in the Marines,” Adam says. “My addiction moved to alcohol at that point in the Marine Corps.”

Divorce and drug use

Long deployments and a shaky foundation took their toll on Adam's marriage. Six years after their child was born, the couple divorced.

Not long after the divorce, Adam reconnected with a woman from his past. Though she had previous drug issues, she had stopped using. The two married in 2004, and it didn't take long for old habits to overtake them both. Adam's role as an independent duty corpsman (comparable to a physician's assistant) gave him access to medications. That access led to Adam stealing and using the sick bay's drugs.

“We were off the coast of Cuba, and in my addict's mind, I convinced myself it was a good idea to begin taking the morphine that was on the ship,” he says.

It wasn't long before Adam had used all of the ship's morphine supply. To cover his tracks, he filled empty morphine ampules with saline solution.

“I realized what I had done, and I couldn't live with my wreck of a life,” he says. “I committed at that moment to killing myself.”

At 2:00 one morning in March of 2006, Adam went topside and headed for the back of the ship to jump off. On his way, he passed a new shipmate on night watch. Adam knew that being the last person to see him alive would not go well for the young sailor.

Turning back, he sought out the commanding officer. “I went up to him and said, 'Sir, I've used all the drugs on the ship. I'm an opiate addict, and I've used all the morphine.'”

Hitting rock bottom . . . and looking up

The Navy sent Adam to a 30-day treatment program. Not long after, Adam was discharged and struggled to fit in to civilian life after eight years of service. Within a year of his discharge, both he and his wife were not only actively using, their lives were controlled by the demands of their habit.

“We started committing crimes to generate money in order to use. We were spending about $1,000 a day on heroin,” Adam explains.

Eventually, Adam and his wife were both caught and jailed. She spent 18 months in jail. Adam went to prison for six years. The couple separated. It was the darkest period of Adam's life. But God was about to send Adam a ray of light.

“Early in my incarceration, I needed a phone call, and no one's going to give you anything in jail. But I knew if I asked the chaplain, he was paid to be nice to people,” Adam recalls. The chaplain, Burton Ashland, intervened, and Adam got his phone call.

“After I was done, the chaplain asked, 'You seem to have native intelligence. Would you be interested in some reading material?'”

An unexpected gift

“He came down with a bag of books the next day, and I went to my cell and opened it,” Adam says. “The first book I pulled out was Bondage of the Will by Martin Luther. The second book was Augustine's Confessions, then Institutes of the Christian Religion by John Calvin.”

Adam's parents were people of faith, and as a child he had gone to church regularly with his family. But Adam never believed. “By the time I was in middle school, I thought everything (biblical) was a fairy tale.”

He had no intention of reading the chaplain's books, but as Adam says, “In a jail there's nothing to do, and those books were there. What ended up happening was I realized that Christianity had coherence, that it was not illogical. I didn't believe it yet, but at least it made sense.”

'For the first time I was seeing in color'

After weeks of reading Ashland's books, borrowing a Bible from another inmate to cross check, and reading some more, Adam embraced Christ as his Savior. It happened in the middle of the night on May 1, 2007.

“I got up that day, and it felt like for the first time I was seeing in color,” he says. “There had always been this kind of fog that had been over me. All that was gone. It was like clarity for the first time.”

Adam's faith grew in prison. He attended Bible studies and continued a relationship with Ashland. He was released from prison on March 15, 2013. That same day he learned that his wife had died of cancer the day before his release.

Adam began the hard process of assimilating back into a life of freedom. He started attending Grace Bible Church in Elmhurst, Illinois, with his parents. He had also studied counseling through a distance education program. The church put his intelligence and his talents to work.

Entering biblical education

In 2015, Adam married Elaine Baer, who had been attending Grace Bible Church since she was two years old. Feeling a call to ministry, he began exploring a biblical education. As a kid, Adam had visited Moody a few times with his church youth group. And one Moody grad in particular had made a profound impact on Adam's spiritual life: Chaplain Burt Ashland.

Adam applied to Moody in 2014 and was accepted. Adam completed his Bachelor of Science in Theological Studies and immediately began classes at Moody Theological Seminary. Adam completed both his bachelor's and master's degrees in an astonishing four years.

Dr. Ryan Cook, professor of Bible at Moody, remembers Adam serving as a role model for younger students in the classroom. Dr. Cook also got to know Adam as a member of Adam's ordination board “It was a blessing to see how his church rallied around and supported him in his role as a pastor,” he says. “You can tell that Adam really cares about people and about honoring the Lord in his ministry.”

Adam says his education at Moody fueled his passion for pastoral ministry and provided him with the tools and training he needed to reach, disciple, and shepherd others inside and outside the church walls.

“There was a deep sense within the student body and the faculty at Moody that there was a mission to be had,” he says. “And that mission needs to be done with zeal and that mission has meaning. That was attractive to me. It was not empty academics.”

'The Lord continues to heal me'

Now the lead pastor at the church that welcomed him when he left prison in 2013, Adam is living on mission shepherding the congregation, preaching God's Word from the pulpit, and leading the church's outreach and evangelism efforts to the Elmhurst area. He is also still actively involved in addiction recovery as a mentor and speaker.

“To really deal with addiction is to deal with the 'why.' Now you're starting to get somewhere, and that is the place where the gospel is seeking to work,” he says. “That is the place that Christ wants to address in our lives.”

For Adam, a life that used to feel like a reality show gone wrong now feels like a life of hope.

Drawing others to Christ

God is not only healing Adam, He's using Adam's story to draw others to Christ. “My favorite verse in the Bible is Psalm 119:71: 'It was good for me to be afflicted that I might learn your statutes,'” Adam says. “A large part of my engagement with unbelievers is seeking to establish trusting relationships that allow me to look into their lives and hearts to the point of their need. That's where the gospel speaks the loudest.”

As a pastor, Adam is passionate about reaching others with the gospel, which Moody honed in him during his education and training.

“As a church, Grace Bible believes in the redemptive power of Jesus,” he says. “I mean, they hired an ex-con to lead them. They know what Christ can do in the broken, needy, and willing heart. We're trying to live in a way that puts Christ's redemptive power on full display and showcases the blessings and joy that come from living in accordance with our ultimate design as reflections of a loving, gracious Father.

“I am always surprised at how God uses my story to reach 'respectable' people who would never think of drugs or prison or atheism. I guess we really are all the same.”