Pastor Michael Fre was one of the participants in the World Summit in Defense of Persecuted Christians May 10-13 in Washington, D.C. 

I was born in a small village in Eritrea, a northeast African nation that borders two larger nations—Ethiopia to the south and Sudan to the west. As I grew up, we were under the rule of Ethiopia’s monarchy. Twenty years later—in 1971 as an Eritrean university student and a communist—the unexpected happened: I was born a second time.

My walk with Jesus Christ has rarely been easy. After my conversion, my communist friends were suspicious of me, as were some of my new Christian friends because of my communist ties. My mother, who did not understand what I had done and had wanted me to become a Catholic, wasn’t happy either.

Since 2007 I have been living in the city of Khartoum, Sudan—forced from my home country because of persecution—serving the Lord in ministry at a Bible college where we have Eritrea and its people on our hearts.

Eritrea has a long history of being controlled by other nations, and there is ongoing tension between Eritrea and Ethiopia. Even though the Eritrean government is suspicious of religion in general, Islam and Christianity have a long history there. Many of the Christians have fled, and many others are imprisoned because of their Christian faith.

In fact, Eritrea is listed as one of the 10 worst countries in the world for Christians, according to Open Doors, which advocates for persecuted Christians worldwide. The authoritarian government rules the country through one political party and is driven by paranoia to oppose religion. Besides that, there is oppression of Christians by Islamists in places, and also persecution of those who leave the Eritrean Orthodox Church to become evangelicals.

I was educated largely by Protestant missionaries. When I was 2 years old, my father left, supposedly to find work, and never returned. We moved to the city of Dekemhare, Eritrea, and this is where I grew up. Dekemhare has many factories that were started back when the country was an Italian colony. Because of the European influence, Christian missionaries had started many schools, and I studied at several of them as a boy.

Through my schooling, I was exposed to the Bible and the teachings of Jesus, but I was not a Christian. I began reading communist books when I was a teenager. When I left my hometown to attend the university in the city of Addis Ababa in 1969, I was a communist and not a Christian.

Late that year, when students disrupted classes with protests against the government, the school was shut down and I sought refuge at a youth center owned by Sudan Interior Mission (SIM, which now stands for Serving In Mission), a Christian ministry that had run a school I had attended in first grade and again in eighth grade.

On Dec. 29, 1971, the youth center was showing a Christian film that clearly presented the Gospel. That morning, at about 10:30, I received Christ as my Lord and Savior.

Before my conversion, communism gave me a way to direct my anger at the monarchy I was living under in Eritrea. Ethiopia, our larger neighbor to the south, controlled us as one of its provinces, and as college students we were eager to have our independence.

Our nation’s leader at the time, Haile Selassie, was supported by what we considered to be imperialist governments, and so claiming communism was a way of opposing the monarchy.

But as I grew in my newfound faith, I realized that communism and Biblical Christianity could not go together. My politics were also a barrier to convincing fellow believers that I had trusted Christ as my Savior. My friends could see the changes in me, but my life was changing so quickly that it was hard for them to accept it. They were perplexed.

God was working powerfully to alter the direction of my life. Soon, He called me, the former communist, to ministry. As I mentioned, my mother was not happy about my conversion and subsequent surrender to the ministry—until she realized I would no longer be in danger fighting for Eritrean independence.

In September 1972, I returned to the SIM school in my hometown of Dekemhare, where I taught our students and God began preparing me for the pastorate. From 1979 to 1987, I served as pastor of a church in Dekemhare, then led our denomination as president for two years, and then went back to pastoring.

In 1993, after Eritrea won its independence from Ethiopia, we opened a Bible school to train pastors. We had our fair share of troubles, but in 2002 there was a major shift toward stern persecution of Christians. The government forced almost all of the evangelical churches to close, and our school was warned that we must shut our doors. Yet we continued to function under the radar of the government.

Then in 2005, the government learned we were still operating. Our students were arrested and the school was closed.

Soon after, I was invited by two of my Eritrean students to come work at the Bible school they opened in Khartoum. The Lord is blessing our work there and protecting us inside an Islamic country.

It is ironic that we have more leeway to practice our faith in Sudan under Islam than under the government in Eritrea. In the meantime, we are working and praying for Eritrea.

I am director at the Bible school in Khartoum, and I have written much of the curriculum. We have diplomas in the Tigrigna language, spoken in Eritrea, and we hope to encourage the Christians who remain there and build up their faith. Our prayer is for trained men and women who will lead the church in the future in Eritrea.

It is not safe to be a Christian in Eritrea, and there are thousands of prisoners for the Lord there. But it is due to Him that any of us is ever safe. He is our protector and sustainer.