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BY MELISSA LAUBER
UMCONNECTION STAFF

Mercedeh Sarrafi has one special gift she's looking forward to this Christmas. She wants to sing in church to welcome in the birth of her new Savior.

Raised a Muslim in Iran, Mercedeh's former faith forbids women to sing in public. But over the past few years she's been exploring Christianity. In March, she came to the United States to visit her sister in Clarksville and she began going to church in April. This summer she started talking with the Rev. Gayle Annis-Forder at Linden-Linthicum UMC.

Last Sept. 11, she was baptized. The date was chosen because it just happened to fit in with the rest of the church calendar. But when Mercedeh realized the significance of taking such a step on the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 bombing of the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, it felt to her like an opportunity to say something about hope.

Annis-Forder agreed. "When I saw the calendar, I thought what a wonderful symbol this is. Instead of remembering how many things divide us, our church could model something else. It was quite the perfect day."

In her conversations with Mercedeh, Annis-Forder took care to make sure the young woman knew the full implications of her conversion. In September, Youcef Nadarkhani, a pastor, was sentenced to death in Iran for refusing to renounce his faith. Iranian authorities charged that Nadarkhani is a Muslim who committed an act of apostasy by converting to Christianity.

According to news sources, a Muslim who converts to Christianity is an apostate or "mortad," one who leaves Islam. By both Shariah law and the Iranian penal code, this offense is punishable by death, torture or lifetime imprisonment.

Mercedeh admitted her fears to Annis-Forder, but she also felt compelled to move forward to what she says she felt God was calling her to do.

Ever since she was a little girl, Mercedeh said, she was someone with questions. The way she saw Islam limiting the potential of females and the sexual apartheid toward women saddened her.

When she went to university, she was going through some difficult times and met a fellow student who was a Christian. One afternoon that friend took Mercedeh to an underground church and lit a candle while praying for her and gave her a Bible, written in Farsi, her native language.

"In that moment, in that place, in the presence of a praying friend, God touched Mercedeh's heart," said Annis-Forder. "We United Methodists might say her heart was strangely warmed. She felt that she was in a holy place. Later on she talked to her parents about it, and her dad said he thought God was speaking to her and she should be attentive."

Mercedeh heeded her father's advice and began discovering the presence of God at different places in the world around her. She attended several services at churches in France, Germany and Holland.

When she came to Clarksville, she checked out the book "Christianity for Dummies" from the library. She also began to read the Bible and took her many questions on the nature of the Trinity and a variety of other subjects to Annis-Forder.

In August, Mercedeh sent her friend and pastor an email. It said, "It is a wonderful and precious gift from God to be baptized. I believe that Jesus is the Son of God and I am ready to receive Jesus as my savior. I am ready to put my life in Jesus' hands."

The day of the baptism was an emotional one, Mercedeh said. Her legs were shaking so badly that she could hardly stand. Annis-Forder invited her sister and friends to stand up with her. She remembers feeling the presence of God in the church. When the water sprinkled on her forehead, Mercedeh said she felt that her soul was joining the body of Jesus Christ.

From the very beginning, the congregation at Linden-Linthicum welcomed Mercedeh with open arms. "When I came here I never received any suspicion," she said. "I received welcome and I built friendship with them."

She is grateful to the church for helping her discover something wonderful. "Jesus Christ is not only my bridge to God. He is everything in my life," she said. "He is my Lord. He is my family. I would tell everyone you have to find your bridge. Find something that leads you to God."