A Nigerian Christian girl credits God for allowing her to escape after being kidnapped by the Islamic terrorist group Boko Haram.
The Christian Post (CP) reports Joy Bishara was one of the 276 Nigerian girls who were kidnapped from their school located in Chibok in 2014.
She recounted her ordeal during the International Christian Concern’s press conference announcing the 2021 Persecutor of the Year Awards Tuesday, according to the website.
“We were all sleeping and my friend woke me up,” she said. “I looked at her and I went back to sleep. But she touched me and woke me up a second time so I listened and the ground was shaking and I can hear gunshots outside of the gate. Mind you, you have to walk about six minutes to get to our dormitory where we are sleeping from the campus area and that’s where the gate was.”
Bishara asked her friend what was happening and she replied, “The Boko Haram terrorist people are here.”
While the two girls were praying for God’s protection on their families, a man dressed in a soldier’s uniform came up to them. He told the girls to wake up the rest of the girls.
A group of armed men gathered all of the girls together. Bishara said the men fired their weapons over their heads and saying “they would kill us and nobody would do anything about it.”
After the gunmen pillaged the school’s food supply, they set fire to all of the buildings on the campus.
Bishara said the terrorists told the girls to sit under a tree. Then they told them, they “should all kneel down and say our last prayers.”
Instead, three trucks were driven up and some of the men told the girls, “Whoever wants to live should get into the truck.”
Choosing life, Bishara jumped into one of the trucks. As the truck started to speed away, it was then she “made a deal with God,” according to the CP.
The girl told the press conference she asked God to “please allow me to see my family once more and I promise to follow you for the rest of my life.”
Bishara said God answered her prayer just five minutes later. One of the vehicles a terrorist was driving, broke down and some of them decided to try to fix it. This gave her an opportunity, but she said it was risky.
“So it was just all scary and I was deciding should I jump, should I not and a voice in my head is battling with another voice saying, ‘If you jump, you’re going to die.’ And the other one is saying, ‘Jump,’ so I had to decide should I jump or should I not?” she reasoned.
“I ended up coming to a conclusion that even if I jump and then I get injured or die, at least my parents will find me here or my corpse and bury me knowing I am dead, rather than to go with these people and never be seen ever again,” Bishara said.
So she jumped out of the truck, landing flat on her stomach. She got up and started running and ran for the rest of the night, she said.
“I believed that me praying was the cause of that car not moving,” she told ICC. “I was crying out to God to help, and He actually did help.”
“I believe the voice that was saying, ‘Jump down, you’ll be fine,’ was God’s voice,” she recalled.
Bishara ran all the way to a village where she found a couple of her schoolmates. They had also jumped out of the truck. She said they asked a farmer to help them and he drove them back to Chibok.
The Nigerian girl came to the U.S. following her escape from the Boko Haram. According to Newsweek, Bishara graduated from Canyonville Christian Academy in Oregon and also attended Southeastern University in Florida. She even met with then-President Donald Trump at the White House in 2017.
BELOW: See Joy Tell Her Whole Story
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