She Was Looking for Truth and Truth Found Her
Kaina grew up in a village nestled between two worlds, one Druze, one Muslim, in the Syrian countryside. Her family belonged fiercely to their Druze community, and her father was a man of principle: He taught his children to listen politely to their Muslim neighbors but never to follow where they led spiritually. The boundaries were clear. The rules were unspoken but absolute.
And yet, from a young age, something in Kaina refused to stop asking questions.
A Soul That Would Not Be Satisfied
She studied the “Book of Wisdom” that forms the spiritual core of Druze belief, as all in her community did. But the more she read, the emptier she felt. Rooted in the writings of Ancient Greek philosophers and marked by a bitterness toward other religions, it offered her no spiritual nourishment, no sense of a God who was truly near.
Through school and through her neighbors, she also heard much about Islam. She considered it carefully and set it aside. The treatment of women, the history of conquest, the character of its prophet: none of it drew her heart. But she was not finished searching.
Soon, Kaina began reading the Old Testament, and found in the Law of Moses something she had never encountered in her own tradition: a moral beauty, a sense of holiness, a God who cared how people lived. She began trying to observe the commandments. It was demanding, often impossible, but it was alive in a way the Book of Wisdom never had been. She kept reading.
A Dream, a Voice, and a Sister’s Healing
That same year, her sister Rose fell gravely ill, which left the whole family shaken. A Christian friend suggested something that sounded almost too simple: tune into a Christian radio program, pray in the name of Christ, and trust that He would answer.
The night before Kaina passed her friend’s suggestion along to her sister, she had a dream that shook her to her core. In it, she saw her entire life, and her every wrongdoing passing before her eyes like a film. She woke deeply troubled, overwhelmed by a guilt she could not explain, especially for someone who had been trying so hard to follow the commandments.
She prayed from the depths of her heart: "I repent from every sin that displeases You, even the ones I don't understand that I've committed." Then she heard a voice, clear and unmistakable: "You are made holy in the name of the Lord." For the first time in her life, Kaina felt genuine peace.
She and Rose began following the radio broadcasts faithfully. They wrote to the pastor who made them. Two months later, a handwritten letter arrived, pages filled with the essentials of the Christian faith and how it speaks to suffering and fear. Something in those words set both of their hearts on fire. Rose prayed and received Christ. Almost immediately, she began to experience healing.
Kaina watched and understood what she was seeing.
Not Because of a Miracle, But Because of a Savior
At first, Kaina thought she might follow Christ simply because He had healed her sister. But she could not stop reading the New Testament. Over months of listening to Christian radio and working through the Gospels and Epistles, something shifted deeper than gratitude.
A few months later, Kaina surrendered her life to Jesus not because of what He had done for Rose, but because of what she now understood He had done for her! He was not just a healer. He was her Savior, the one who had taken the weight of sin she had seen in that dream and carried it Himself.
She began attending the church once a week, quietly, telling her father she was going to work at the hospital. She studied. She grew. Years later, she was baptized!
The Cost of Following Christ
The road was not easy. When her father discovered her listening to Christian radio, he broke the radio and confiscated her books. He was not a cruel man, but he was a frightened one. The village would talk. The family would suffer. Kaina bought another radio and listened at night after everyone had gone to sleep.
When he eventually found out she had been attending church instead of working, he pulled her from her job and confined her to the house to care for her ailing mother. When financial pressure forced him to relent, he sent her to Lebanon far from the church and community that had nurtured her faith, and far from any neighbors who might gossip about a Druze woman going to a Christian congregation.
But the Lord was already in Lebanon! Kaina found a church there and continued growing in her faith, returning to Syria every six months to check on her family.
Then ISIS came. Her family's home was destroyed. The farm her father had tended all his life was turned to ash. Kaina returned to Syria to care for her father through his final illness. He passed away a few months later. That same year, one of her brothers died too. In the space of a single year, she lost her father, her brother, the family home, and everything they had built.
Love in the Ruins
It was in Lebanon, amid all of this loss, that Kaina had met and became engaged to an Iraqi believer, Ahmed, from a devout Muslim background. He had come to faith at the same church, drawn in by the fear of death after a close friend died suddenly.
Her other brother was furious. He demanded she return to Syria to end the relationship. But after years of persecution, including separation, arduous paperwork, and the long road through multiple countries, a road that would have broken most people, Kaina and Ahmed were finally married.
Two people, each displaced from everything they had known. Each having paid an enormous price for their faith. Each carrying wounds that only Christ could have sustained them through and now building something new together.
A Small Beginning
In their new home, Kaina and Ahmed started their own business. They began with wooden stands and sunlight. Kaina and Ahmed laid out fruit to dry in the open air and sold it in small quantities wherever they could. It was not an ideal setup, but it was theirs. It asked for patience more than capital, and it let them start with exactly what they had in their hands.
The work was slow. Producing only a few kilograms each week, the business brought in a modest income and could not stretch much further. And yet it gave them something far more valuable than profit. It gave them a place to begin.
It revealed something else, too. People wanted what they were making. Customers came back. Relationships formed. The work wove itself naturally into the life they already knew, through their church, through ministry, through the neighbors and contacts they had gathered over years of faithfulness. What looked like a small effort was quietly showing every sign that it could become something more.
However, drying fruit by sunlight alone capped how much they could make. The demand was there. The customers were there. The method simply could not keep pace with the life they were trying to build.
And then, because of your support for Help The Persecuted, we came alongside them through our Enduring Livelihood ministry. Our team worked with Kaina and Ahmed to help them create a business plan. Soon, we helped provide seed funding, and they purchased an industrial dryer. Soon, everything changed at once. What had taken days could now be done in hours. A few kilograms a week became more than a hundred kilograms a month! The quality rose. The supply steadied. With a small storefront where they could produce and sell under one roof, the work that had once felt like scraping by began, at last, to feel like growth.
What Has Changed
Today, the business is no longer bound by the limits that once defined it. The pressure that once shadowed every morning has begun to lift, and for the first time in years there is room to think past the next immediate need.
That stability has opened a door to something Kaina and Ahmed have long carried in their hearts. They are now able to bring others into the work. Two believers they have been discipling are stepping into the business, one over production and one over marketing. What was once a way to make ends meet is becoming something larger, a place where work and ministry move together, where the labor of the day and the discipleship of a soul are no longer separate things.
After losing so much in Syria, Kaina is rebuilding now, one harvest at a time. What was fragile is becoming stable. What was limited is becoming a sustainable path forward.
Because of people like you, Kaina is given a foundation to stand on. She is free, and she is using that freedom to serve, to give, and to stand beside others who are still searching, still suffering, still finding their way. Every bag of dried fruit she packages is an act of faith helping to rebuild the life of other believers. Every day she wakes up and continues is a testament to the God who pursued her across decades, across borders, and across every page of every book she ever opened looking for Him.
To help minister to more persecuted Christians, you can give here today!