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How a Car Bomb and U.S. Soldier Led This Iraqi Translator to Christ

CBN

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To Abbas Hameed, God was an angry being with no love for him or the rest of the world. 

Born in Samarra, Iraq, to a Muslim Mother and a Catholic Father, Hameed had seen his share of war. He worked as a translator for the American military during Operation Iraqi Freedom and was later chosen by US SWAT instructors for special training. 

That's when his life took a deadly turn. 

One day he and his fellow trainees woke up to a massive explosion that shook the entire building. It was a car bomb. 

Later, Hameed was sent out to inspect suspicious vehicles in the surrounding area. Just 15 minutes into his shift,  a vehicle came inching towards his direction.

The car exploded and Hameed was thrown into the air. Death and destruction were all around him.

"I remember seeing body parts and people being burnt and cut to pieces," he told CBN News. Miraculously, there was not a cut on his body.

"Who is this God that's been saving my life?" he says he asked himself in that moment. That was the day he came face to face with death and God Himself. 

"I knew that wasn't the god of Islam because I had seen Muslims dying left and right. Muslims pray five times a day and none of their prayers were ever answered," he said.  "The God who protected my life showed me love."

Hameed searched for two years to find someone who could tell him about the God who saved him. He finally found the right man when he met Scott Young. 

"You could tell he was one of Jesus' disciples," Hameed said. "Scott kept his Bible in his knee pocket and every break we took he would take it out and read it."

Young joined the military with a different mission. Instead of winning wars, he was there to win souls and teach others about Christ. Discipled by Navigator, John Snyder, Scott was trained on how to help others know and grow in Christ. 

After spending some time asking questions and learning how to read the Bible, Hameed reached a breaking point. He hated who he had become. Unforgiveness and anger hardened his heart after he got news that terrorists murdered his father in Iraq

"I told Scott, 'I hate who I am. I don't like who I am. I don't want to be me anymore,'" Hameed said. "He told me, 'Go tell that to Jesus. Tell him you want to be one of his sons and you want to be changed'"

So Hameed did, and his life was never the same. 

"I woke up with a smile on my face and my whole company could see that," he said. 

His friends kept asking him what had changed in him. He said, "I have peace in my heart. I'm one of Jesus' children now."

Hameed moved to the United States, got married, and started his own ministry where he tells others about what God did in him. 

Now, he ministers to his Muslim family in hopes of bringing them to Christ. He says many Muslims know choosing Christ also means choosing death. 

"Their lives are pretty much going to be on the line," Hameed says of Muslim converts. "You're talking about someone who rejects Islam but still lives in a Muslim nation."

In the meantime, Hameed will continue telling others about the God he met years ago in desert of Iraq. 

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