Mission News: Living for God on the Way to Heaven

Erik Mirandette and his brother, Alex, 22 and 18, decided to ride motorcycles the 8,000 miles from the tip of South Africa to Egypt. A time for them to share God's love with the poorest of the poor! Motoring through 11 countries, many with unstable governments, these young men from Michigan encountered two civil wars and 5 groups of rebels. They slept in mud-and-thatch huts, eating what little was available, identifying with the people.

Their trip of mercy took four months. Reaching Egypt, they visited an open marketplace in Cairo, wanting to continue taking in the sites and sounds of the people and their culture. A terrorist bomb, filled with nails, exploded. The blast was so strong it blew both young men across the street. Both were taken to a hospital, where later that day, Alex died. Since then, Erik has endured more than 30 surgeries to remove, reconstruct and repair seriously injured limbs.

In spite of the anguish and the loss of his brother, Erik has chosen the path of forgiveness. Forgiveness is foreign to the non-Christian majority of the Middle East, as foreign as the experience of two Michigan boys reaching out to the poor as they did.

The story of the two brothers' journey and its sad conclusion has been broadcast to the people of the Middle East. Instead of crying out for the customary revenge (eye-for-an-eye mentality), Erik is saying publicly with genuine love, "I forgive those who did this harm to me."

For the people of the area, such a statement is utterly astonishing. Erik's broadcasted interview touches the heart deeply. He talks about how his God-empowered forgiveness, though far from easy, has given him personal freedom to move forward.

Reaching millions of viewers, several broadcasts on forgiveness are planned, in connection with the one featuring Erik. An opportunity to create an understanding of what Christians are really like - people who forgive, because Christ has forgiven them!

Information for this article is taken from a publication of SAT-7, an agency broadcasting Christian satellite television by and for the people of the Middle East and North Africa. www.sat7.org