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Two Iranians meet God in Australia

1:00am Saturday, 27th February 2010

Majid sits quietly on the couch, musing on how Jesus has changed his life and that of his wife Mahsa.
“I used to be an aggressive person, now I’m calm,” he says. “I’m trusting and seeing that God is working in my life—changing my heart. And I’m loving [Mahsa] and feeling responsible for her, and not fighting. We used to fight all the time.”
It is a major change for the couple, both in their 20s, who arrived in Sydney from Iran in early 2007. Both were Muslim but not devout; both came from Tehran and studied at the prestigious Azad University, but they did not meet until they came to Australia.
Majid, unable to get work as a civil engin-eer, had fallen back on another talent: singing. He entertained diners at a local Persian restaurant, while Mahsa—studying business management in the city—was a staff manager.
Both were lonely as neither had friends or family nearby, so they gravitated towards each other. When Mahsa began to have trouble with an Australian man, who was pressuring her into a relationship by threatening trouble with the authorities, she moved in with Majid for safety.
And Majid wasn’t too happy about it. “I was single and people were interested in me, so I was thinking, ‘I can be with everyone’ — but now I had responsibility that I didn’t want,” he recalls.
Life was about to get a lot more complicated: Mahsa fell pregnant. The couple was unaware until it became a life-threatening ectopic pregnancy, requiring emergency surgery and the removal of one of her fallopian tubes.
“We were stressed,” Majid says. “In Iran you can’t talk to your parents about your problems. I couldn’t go to them and say, “I’ve got a girlfriend and I’ve had this [pregnancy] problem. And for girls, if you say that, you’re gonna be dead … and she couldn’t get married now because anyone would understand from what happened [that she had been pregnant]. So she was asking me to get married and I was refusing … there were bad fights.”
Mahsa returned to Iran for a month to clear her head. One of her friends was a member of the country’s ethnic Armenian minority, which is permitted to attend church in Iran because of its Christian heritage. Mahsa—looking for answers—convinced her friend to risk taking her along.
She says security guards patrol the church’s entrance, checking that those walking through the door can speak Armenian.
“I said, ‘I can’t speak Armenian, how can I come to church?’” Mahsa says. “But she taught me what they ask you … and they let me in. And it was so good. I felt so different when I went to the church— so relaxed, so relieved. I just prayed and I said to God, ‘I want my life changed’.”
While at the church, Mahsa remembered a dream she had had several years before. In a “terrible” place crowded with people, all of whom were sick or crying, a voice had asked her, “What is your religion?” and to her surprise she had replied she was a Christian.
“I thought, ‘What is going on in my life?” she recalls. “I’m a Muslim, my background is Muslim, I had that dream and I’m in a church now.”
When Mahsa came back to Australia she moved out of Majid’s flat to make a new start.
But Majid was hospitalised shortly afterwards with a rare umbilical problem, and—knowing few people—he put Mahsa’s contact details on the admission form. She visited him in hospital, moved in again afterwards to take care of him despite his bad tempers, then one day announced she was going to go to church.
“I just laughed,” he says, “because I could not believe any religion would have something for me.”
He tagged along anyway, and the pair visited the Farsi congregation at St Mary’s Anglican Church in Guildford. In the Bible study before the service, Majid was surprised nobody asked them their religion, and that they were allowed to ask questions.
St Mary’s minister, Tim Booker, gave the sermon that night. Majid watched him carefully afterwards and was impressed, because he saw Tim was practising what he preached.
The couple began to read the Farsi Bible, and over the next six months, Majid says, “I could see my life was changing … I wanted to help people, not make business of people or make money from them. I wanted to be responsible. And I didn’t want to fight.”
In another big change, Majid asked Mahsa to marry him in front of the congregation after they were baptised in March 2008. They lived separately until their wedding day in April last year, but Majid says it was no hardship because ‘When you believe in something—you’re granted to go to heaven and you’re granted eternal life—[living apart until marriage] is a very small thing.
“Now, sometimes, we have zero balance in our bank account, but we’re not scared,” he says. “If anything happens we are not worried. We have a good future now.”