FARGO – Growing up in Jordan, Maha Fiskness, née Shawareb, fondly recalls holidays like Palm Sunday, when her parish would process through the streets, waving palms branches and singing to commemorate Jesus’ journey toward his redemptive death.
She’s shared about her childhood extensively with her husband, Rhet, an American from the Midwest, who is struck by some of the differences.
During those religious processions, “They are protected by armed guards,” he says, noting one stark contrast. “In Jordan, Christians have the right to worship…but because it’s a Muslim country, they need police protection.”
Jordanian Christians comprise only about 3% of the population. “On my I.D., it’s written that I’m a Christian,” Maha says. “By birth, we are Christian forever.”
While Easter is the most significant day for Christians there, according to Maha, Christmas is not unlike here. “Even in the Muslim world, you could go to the mall and they’re singing Christmas carols,” Rhet observes. “But for Easter, it’s more polarized. Here in America, we’ve diluted the meaning.”
In Jordan, he adds, it’s noticeable even in dress. “In America, if you work in Silicon Valley, you show up to church in flipflops and Bermuda shorts,” he says, whereas in Jordan, everyone is clothed in their finest.
But for the Fiskness family, Christmas is exceedingly special, too, as they celebrate not just one birthday, Jesus’, but three, since Maha and their son Yohan, almost four, share Christmas Eve birthdays.
That evening, before opening gifts, the oldest person will read the Christmas story in Luke, Rhet says. “Then we’ll have a nice meal and open gifts.” On Christmas morning, they’ll find stockings filled with “a few trinkets hung on the fireplace.”
Despite having grown up some 6,200 miles apart, the couple is fully united in faith. But as in the past six years, since Maha’s move here, something will be missing this Christmas: Maha’s extended family, who live across the ocean.
Growing up in Jordan
Maha grew up as number three of seven children in Amman. Her paternal great-grandfather was a Greek Orthodox priest, but the deep faith of her maternal grandfather, Salameh, especially captivated her.
“Hehad a love for Jesus that I did not see in anyone else,” Maha says. “I used to tell my mom, when I’d go to church on Sundays—in the Greek Orthodox church women and men would be separated—’I want to stay with my grandfather!’”
She recalls his well-worn Bible with “pages separated from one another,” and how, as a little girl, she wondered if he had to keep reading it because he wasn’t getting anything out of it. He told her, “Once you start reading, you will understand, because you cannot get enough.”
Now, she says, she has the same hunger for Scripture. “If my grandfather were still alive, I believe he would be so proud of me, because he tasted that love years and years ago.”
Though Maha loved the Greek Orthodox tradition, she says, she sensed something missing. When her sister, Jumana, and brother-in-law, Sameer, whom she describes as “born-again Christians,” challenged her to read the Bible more sincerely, she eventually agreed, and in 1998, Maha also became born-again.
“I read the whole New Testament within three months. I was like eating the Bible,” she says. “I was weeping and repenting, because though I said I loved Jesus, I felt like I did not know him before. Because he is the Word.”
During a summer vacation at that couple’s home on the beach, Maha was “baptized in water and the Holy Spirit,” and experienced “a joy like never before.” “The love I had for everyone around me was so contagious. Ever since then, my life has not been the same.”
Missionary zeal
But her family wasn’t the only influence. American missionaries who came to Jordan impressed her, too. “I thought, ‘How are they ready to leave everything—their families, jobs—to come and live in Jordan?’”
She found their love authentic and deep, and it moved her. Maha began joining them in worship meetings in private homes—often in poorer neighborhoods—and soon began yearning to introduce Jesus to others. But it’s not as easy as in America, she says, noting that she was arrested twice for simply praying with her neighbors.
“They took my ID and saved my information when they caught me praying with a (Muslim) family,” she says. “I told them, ‘I’m not doing anything wrong. We saw a need, and one of their family members was healed.’”
Despite the risk, Maha says, she could no longer just pray in her closet; her joy couldn’t be contained.
She planned to continue doing this in Jordan, she says, but God had another plan. In 2010, Maha had a vivid vision in which she was standing on a high hill, holding an American flag, and waving it.
“I was in my room praying when I saw this, and I was on my face, asking, ‘Lord, why did you show me this?’ I felt like he was calling me to go to America.’” Maha protested. “I love my family. I don’t want to leave my mom and dad, my country, my siblings,” she said. “Please don’t do that to me.”
But America and its missionaries had transformed her heart. So, when some missionary friends with a connection to the United States approached her about moving here, she prayed about it, and saw another visual: lakes, which she came to believe represented Minnesota.
In January 2017, Maha left everything she’d known with no plans other than to spread Jesus’ love with the country that had brought his love to her. She was introduced to a local architect named Rhet at Burning Hearts Church, and by April, was engaged, and by June, married.
“A lot of times I prayed with tears,” Maha says of her final months in Jordan, unable to see God’s will clearly. “But once I gave the Lord my yes, everything made sense.”
Though the ministry for which she came here never materialized formally, Maha says, both she and Rhet quickly found themselves doing “street ministry,” whether by praying with strangers in the grocery store or in drives around Fargo, blessing neighborhoods along the way.
Hardly a day goes by that they don’t take time to discern the Holy Spirit’s tugs and act on them. “In the summer, we bike from home to where my husband works downtown,” Maha says. “We take a different route every day and pray over the neighborhoods we pass by.”
A ‘chance’ meeting in Chipotle
Several years ago, Dora Obeng was working at Chipotle, silently asking God for direction. She’d moved here not long before from New York with her family and was seeking a church home. “But not just any church,” she says.
That’s when a customer walked in—a woman of Middle Eastern heritage, small in stature but big in spirit, as she’d soon learn. “I always greet customers, and at one point, Maha pulled me to the side and started talking to me. She just held my hand and said, ‘Can I pray for you?’”
A friendship formed, and soon, Obeng was at Burning Hearts Church. “I remember walking in there the first day, and I was like, ‘This is so great! The presence of God was so great.’”
Maha also invited her and her husband and four boys to their home for a meal. “Their hospitality is incredible,” Obeng says. “Maha goes out of her way to make you feel special—the way she cooks and even sets the table with all kinds of desserts. And it’s not just a meal. It’s sharing the Word of God, and whatever is in her heart.”
She’s also been impressed with how Maha and Rhet minister together. “Whatever they go through, they’re honest with each other. They don’t pretend to be perfect, but they work well together. There’s no fakeness, just realness, and that’s what makes it amazing.”
Their ministry is catchy. Recently, in the Costco check-out line, Obeng found herself praying quietly for a stranger, and eventually engaging in conversation with them about God. The person thanked her, saying, “Sometimes you just need someone to remind you who God is.”
We all need the reminder, Maha affirms, now more than ever. “The birth of Jesus is so fascinating,” she says. “When you read Isaiah, it’s amazing how many promises were fulfilled by the birth of Jesus.”
To her, Christmas itself is a promise fulfilled. “You are standing on a rock, waiting on Jesus to fulfill a promise or dream. The promise is himself,” Maha says. “It shows how God is so faithful.”
[For the sake of having a repository for my newspaper columns and articles, I reprint them here, with permission, a week after their run date. The preceding ran in The Forum newspaper on Dec. 22, 2023.]
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