In the autumn, Jaleh, a quiet, rather sullen woman, arrived at an Elam conference. Nobody knew that when she was fourteen she had been raped as a punishment for joining a school protest; that when she told the authorities they had whipped her for immorality; that her father had then repeatedly abused her; as did other relatives. Nobody knew shame had driven Jaleh to the streets to work as a prostitute, nor of all the babies aborted from her womb. All that was known was that she had recently become a Christian through a house church and had a husband who was scornful towards her new faith. At the end of the conference, apart from one leader, this woman’s past was still private. But what everyone knew, just from her face, was that she had had an encounter with Jesus Christ. Here Jaleh tells her story:

A few months after I became a Christian I went to a conference just for women....