Maryam Rostampour and Marziyeh Amirizadeh, two Iranian women who were imprisoned for their faith, spoke to Middle and Upper School students at chapel on Thursday, March 20. The women were imprisoned for 259 days in the notorious Evin Prison in Tehran, 38 of which were in solitary confinement. Their crime was evangelizing friends, family, and strangers in Iran after their conversion to Christianity.
Each woman shared her journey of faith, testifying how she became a Christian in the midst of a Muslim nation.
“I believed in God even as a child, but nothing brought me closer to him,” said Maryam, “Everything I
did as a Muslim felt like rote action, not a real relationship.” A friend of Maryam’s shared about her own conversion to Christianity which led Maryam to explore the faith, beginning by reading the Bible. She read the stories of the Bible, encountered the love of God through several circumstances, and finally came to believe in Jesus as her Savior.
“God removed the curtain from my eyes and let me meet Him,” she said.
Marziyeh also began searching for God in her youth, and knew that there was something more to faith than what she had been taught. After receiving and reading a copy of the gospel of Luke, she trusted Jesus as her Savior.
The two met after their conversions, while studying theology in Turkey. They returned to Iran determined to share the good news of the gospel in their homeland. Though Islamic laws forbade them from sharing their Christian beliefs, they ignored those laws and talked to as many people as possible about their faith; they also covertly distributed over 20,000 New Testaments across Iran. The two started two house churches, including one for women who had been abandoned by their husbands.
“God protected us in several dangerous situations,” said Marziyeh, sharing about one time that authorities were searching automobiles, but missed searching theirs. “The authorities thought there was a big ring of people sharing Christianity and subverting the government,” said Maryam, “but really it was just two girls with backpacks.”
The Iranian government eventually discovered their activities and arrested them both for spreading their faith. During the chapel, the women shared about the scary and deplorable conditions in prison and how God strengthened them to bear up under the suffering.
“We began to see that God wanted to use that time to share with all the other prisoners and bring them the truth of the gospel,” said Maryam.
After nearly a year, they were released from prison due to outside pressure from supporters around the world; the women now live in Georgia but travel the world telling their story in order to alert others to the plight of the imprisoned and persecuted.
“We promised the women of Evin prison that we would fight for them and not forget them,” they said.
The ladies have written a book called Captive In Iran about their experience.