Fleeing for their faith

For 90 days last fall, Makset Djabbarbergenov lived in a prison cell, under threat of spending years behind bars. His crime? Back in his native Uzbekistan, the Muslim convert to Christianity had established house churches through the country. His preaching had led hundreds of Uzbeks to accept Jesus. This made Pastor Makset a wanted criminal. Things got so bad that he, his pregnant wife and four small sons fled across the border into nearby Kazakhstan -- where he was arrested at the request of Uzbekistan officials who demanded his extradition.

Fleeing for their faith

When Kazakhstan did not immediately return him, Uzbek officials claimed he was an escaped terrorist. The charge was absurd. When he had converted from Islam to Christianity, he had been filled with the zeal of a convert, spreading the Gospel and setting up small churches in converts' homes.

Fleeing for their faith

“Ever since I became a Christian nearly 13 years ago, I kept having this dream that I was being chased by people trying to capture me," he recalls, "and every time I would escape.” As he talked with a World Watch Monitor reporter, Makset looked out the frosty apartment window. Fresh snow covered the street outside. The dream was always the same, he said ... until his family sought refuge in Kazakhstan. “This time I got caught.”

Fleeing for their faith

He was tricked by Kazakh officials, summoned to the police station by a phone call that his sister, who had also fled to Kazakhstan, was in trouble. But something wasn't right about the call. The caller was unfamiliar. His sister was accused of using a stolen mobile phone. Indeed, it was a trap. Pastor Makset was arrested. His pregnant wife, Aygul, and their four young sons would not see him for days. All they could do was pray.

Fleeing for their faith

Through tears, Aygul started calling everywhere for help: local officials, national officials, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees, members of their churches, and Christian friends all around central Asia. Within two days, the UN confirmed to her that the Republic of Uzbekistan was insisting Makset be extradited for trial. As a result, a Kazakh court ordered him to prison for 40 days while Uzbekistan's accusations were investigated.

Fleeing for their faith

“The first day they wanted to beat me and the police were very rude to me,” Makset recalls. “Those first days were the hardest. It was an emotional time and everything hit into my heart. I was thinking about my family: What will happen to our children if I’m sent to Uzbekistan?” And in answer, he said, he heard God in his prayers: I will not send you back to Uzbekistan.

Fleeing for their faith

Weeks went by, turning into months, Makset found it hard to keep up his hopes, he told World Watch Monitor. A Bible was smuggled in to him. As he began to pore over it, God showed him there was a reason he was in prison. “It was me He wanted to show His face to," remembers Makset. "He was telling me that He could trust me, like Job, to go through this persecution. It was not just for the people around me, the authorities or the other prisoners in my cell. God wanted me to see His power.”

Fleeing for their faith

Even so, “It seemed like my time in prison would never end,” Makset said. “I doubted God’s promise almost every day, all those weeks.” But he always heard God speaking to him, he recalls, “answering my doubts with promise after promise.” Then, he got word. Sweden had offered him political asylum – if he could get there. If he could get out of prison. Makset and his family began praying – fervently. His oldest son, little Murat, particularly sought the Lord, asking the Almighty to free his daddy.

Fleeing for their faith

On the morning of December 4, the police clerk walked up to Makset's cell and had incredible news. “Give me a celebration gift!” he demanded. Waving a paper, he asked Makset, “Do you know what your news is?” After reading silently from it, he looked up and announced solemnly, “You can go.”

Fleeing for their faith

Like Peter or Paul in the book of Acts, Makset was miraculously released. It was like a dream. When his wife received the news, she knew the family had to flee before officials changed their minds. She hurriedly packed, then began gathering as much paperwork as she could to allow her family to leave the country. “Our two-year-old son Arman was sound asleep," when she and her husband were reunited. “When he woke up at the airport and saw me," recalls Makset, "he was confused and not sure that I was really his daddy.”

Fleeing for their faith

Aygul knelt with little Murat. “God has delivered your father from prison!” she told him. The grade schooler nodded and replied matter-of-factly, “Of course, because we prayed for him every night.”

Fleeing for their faith

At the airport, the family was unsure what would happen. Would officials take him back into custody? Would he be deported back to Uzbekistan? Would he be allowed to leave Kazakhstan without a passport or exit visa – just the written offer of asylum in Sweden? They decided that Aygul and the boys should go first through Passport Control first, since they had valid passports.

Fleeing for their faith

Pastor Makset waited until they were cleared to leave Kazakhstan. Quietly, he prayed. Then, he stepped up to the desk. Officials asked for his passport. “I don’t have one,” he told them. “I just got out of jail.” Startled, they asked him to wait and called their supervisors. "I watched my family walk out of sight to board the plane," says Makset. He swallowed hard, wondering what would happen. “How did you come into Kazakhstan?” the immigration officials asked. “I came in illegally,” he replied. Then they called over someone else, started searching on the computers and talked among themselves.

Fleeing for their faith

“Finally, they came back and stamped my papers,” Makset said. But just as he started to walk on, they stopped him. “You are banned from returning to Kazakhstan for five years, until 2017,” they told him. He took the news happily – and hurried toward the plane.

Fleeing for their faith

But as he settled onto the plane with his family, “we knew the plane would stop over in Astana (the capital of Kazakhstan) before flying on." There was a possibility authorities would realize their mistake and take him back into custody. "But," he remembers, "no one came aboard."

Fleeing for their faith

“Lord, where are You taking us?” his wife remembers praying as they changed planes in Germany, then landed in Sweden. The whole trip seemed a dream. God's intervention was evident at every turn. In the cold darkness on Wednesday morning, December 5, Aygul herded their four sleepy children up a stairs into a small, furnished apartment in Sweden provided by new friends. “We still don’t know why we are here," she says. "But now we must learn the language, adapt to this climate and culture, and get our health strong again.” She is expecting their fifth child in April. How did it happen? Why is he free? How did they get asylum in Sweden? They say the only answer is God's mercy, according to World Watch Monitor.

 

And now they are waiting to see what God has planned for them next.