In His Service: Autobiography of Faiza Ibrahim and Her Husband, the Reverend Hanna Ibrahim

By Samy Ibrahim

Dr. Mufeed Ibrahim Said's words: This is a small book of significant value, written by a woman of great humility. It is rich in its contents, and it enriches those who are fortunate to study it. Faiza's life was summarized by many callings by the Lord and her obedient response to the Lord's calls. When she was fifteen years old, she attended a revival meeting in Beni Suef, Egypt, during which she heard the invitation of the Lord Jesus to accept His salvation by grace. She accepted immediately and submitted her life at that moment to the Lord as her life was forever changed. Rev. Esper Ajjaj's words: What do we say about someone who devoted his entire life to the service of the Lord Jesus? This is Rev. Hanna Ibrahim who served the Lord in his life and his words and sermons. His family followed his steps in love and in service.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Covenant Books, Inc.
• Release date: Oct 12, 2020
• ISBN: 9781646701674

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In His Service

Autobiography of Faiza Ibrahim and Her Husband, the Reverend Hanna Ibrahim

Samy Ibrahim

Copyright © 2019 Samy Ibrahim

All rights reserved

First Edition

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods without the prior written permission of the publisher. For permission requests, solicit the publisher via the address below.

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Murrells Inlet, SC 29576

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Taste and see the Savior of the world

And tell people about His work

Prologue

This beautiful book carries memories from near and far and speaks of wonderful testimonies of the lives of two servants of God. Filled with the Holy Spirit, they dedicated their lives to serving the Lord without expecting or thinking of any earthly returns or rewards.

The life of Pastor Hanna Ibrahim and his wife, Faiza, is a journey of life planned and prepared for them by the Lord Jesus Christ on three continents: Africa, Asia, and North America—a life of constant prayer, a life of balm to heal the faint, a life of submission to the Savior and the saved, a life of love and respect for others, a life of fellowship with others, and a life of effective and productive service.

How many souls were saved and were strengthened in the Lord because of their effective and fruit-bearing lives? How many souls were encouraged and renewed their covenants to serve and follow the Lord Jesus because of Pastor Hanna and his wife, Faiza?

We thank the Lord for His blessings in their lives and for their productive and fruitful lives which are still influential in each region they served in.

We included with this autobiography the testimonies of their four children: Sinote, Samy, Sonia, and Sylvia, as well as their nine grandchildren, Phillip, Manaal, Marcus, Susan, Bassim, Monica, Mona, Rami, and Renee. The testimonies of the children and grandchildren show how the Lord impacted their lives through the ministry of these two great servants of the Lord. The testimonies also show how the Lord is using their second and third generations to continue the ministry and service they started more than seventy years ago.

We present this book to every faithful believer who was associated with these two servants in the Arabic Evangelical Baptist Church in Boston, the Baptist church in Gaza, and the Baptist church in Beni Suef and Al Wasta, Egypt. We also present it to all the friends and relatives who were connected to these two great servants of the Lord, Pastor Hanna Ibrahim and his wife, Faiza, and to every believer in the Arab world and the diaspora.

—Hana (Tarazi) Ibrahim

Introduction

By Dr. Mufeed Ibrahim Said

I thank my dear friend, the Reverend Samy Hanna Ibrahim, the son of the cherished lady who wrote this great book, because he honored me with a request to write the introduction to this great autobiography. It is a small book of great value written by a great woman with great humility. Rich in content, it enriches those who are fortunate to study it. Her life can be summarized by many callings of the Lord and by her obedient response to them.

While still fifteen years old, she attended a revival meeting in Beni Suef, Egypt led by the Reverend Markos Abdul Messieh, a Muslim convert, during which she heard the invitation of the Lord Jesus to accept His salvation by grace. She accepted immediately and submitted her life at that moment to the Lord and her life was forever changed.

The salvation of the young Faiza confirmed to us a great truth about the love of the Lord Jesus, namely, the Lord loves everyone and accepts all those who ask him for salvation, no matter how old he is, a child or a young person or an old person. He calls out, Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest (Matthew 11:28). Then the Lord called her to ask for the fullness of the Holy Spirit, and she responded with joy; and the Lord filled her with His spirit, and the power of the spirit of God appeared in her life. She spoke with other tongues for a long time in different circumstances, while she was alone in her room, singing and preaching, or learning or praying. Then the Lord started to do many miracles in her and through her and with her. One of the miracles was her marriage to the Reverend Pastor Hanna Ibrahim because her father refused to accept a priest as a husband to his daughter.

That would be considered a disgrace to the family because pastors in Egypt were known not to have enough money to support their families due to limited incomes. But she and the Reverend Hanna Ibrahim remained praying for two years, and the Lord responded with the miracle. Their marriage took place on July 22, 1940, and they began to serve the Lord together; and the miracle was significant in that her father loved her husband very much even though initially he refused him. Also, all her family began to like and respect her husband.

Faiza and her husband were united in prayer and had one goal: the glory of the Lord. Her husband traveled to Upper Egypt to serve in churches and conferences there, and she served in the church in her city for a week or more according to the period of her husband’s travel.

A year after their marriage, the Lord gave her a child, but the child died a year later after birth. After three years, the Lord gave them healthy offspring as they had two sons and two daughters, and they all loved the Lord and served Him. The Lord saved their younger daughter, Sylvia, from death during her birth by a miracle. When Sylvia grew up, she enrolled at the Schmidt German College for Girls in Jerusalem and then received a scholarship from Barrington College in Rhode Island, in the United States.

In 1962, Faiza and her husband, the Reverend Hanna Ibrahim, were invited to travel to Gaza to hold revival services at the Baptist church located inside the Baptist hospital in Gaza. They went, and it was a blessed revival time. At the end of the revival meetings, the church held a meeting and decided to ask Rev. Hanna Ibrahim and his wife to serve in their midst at the Gaza Baptist church. After many prayers by Sister Faiza and her husband, they were assured that it was God’s will for them to serve in Gaza.

On Monday, June 5, 1967, the war between Israel and Egypt began; bombs fell on them, but the Lord saved them from all.

In another time, Sonia, their older daughter was playing with some American girls at a conference, and Sonia’s foot was severely injured, but the Lord helped her recover fully at a hospital in Israel.

In 1974, Faiza and her husband attended the World Baptist Congress in Stockholm, Sweden. Then they went to the U.S. to visit their elder son, Sinote, in Boston, Massachusetts. The Arabic Baptist church in that city invited her husband, the Reverend Hanna Ibrahim, to serve as pastor of their congregation. Leaving Gaza and that church was very difficult for them because they had dear and beloved people there. However, they felt that serving the church in Boston was the Lord’s will for them and they began in June, 1976.

The Arabic Baptist church in Boston consisted of a few families who worshipped in a small room in the basement of an Episcopal church. When their ministry grew too large for the space, they asked the Episcopal priest to let them use the larger church sanctuary after his congregation finished their weekly worship, sharing the monthly building cost.

The Lord blessed and increased the ministry, and He was glorified in the salvation of many souls. They fellowshipped and lived with the members of the church as brothers who associated themselves with the love of the Lord Jesus, and all served for the growth of the church. Thanks to the Lord.

In Boston, God’s miraculous dealings with Sister Faiza continued in her service. Almost every year she experienced a miracle. In 1977, her right hand was unable to move and very painful. A woman called Vicki, filled with the Holy Spirit, prayed for her; and she was healed. In 1980, the Lord saved her from a collision between her car and another car in which her car’s windshield was completely shattered. And in the year 1991, the Lord saved her from a serious operation in the colon, and it turned out that she had a benign tumor. In 1993, the Lord blotted out redness and swelling in her left eye. In 1995, the Lord cured her of pneumonia that continued until 1996 with shortness of breath. While she was in the hospital, a patient came to her room crying from the pain of her foot due to diabetes. Sister Faiza used the opportunity to tell her about and lead her to the Lord Jesus, who saved her and healed her feet.

Their ministry was extended. From the first service in the church of Beni Suef, they started a service at the Al Wasta church located between Beni Suef and Giza. They then moved to the Gaza church and served in the city of Al Arish and the occupied territories. Their ministry was extended to the Boston church in Massachusetts, United States, and then spread to churches around Boston. The Lord used them to shepherd and visit the members as well as to communicate with them by telephone and constant spiritual care.

At the end, we saw Sister Faiza; her husband, the Reverend Hanna Ibrahim; and the entire family serve in the Boston church and hold a spiritual conference each year, one of the most successful spiritual conferences in America.

I also thank my dear friend, the The Reverend Samy Hanna Ibrahim, for honoring me by asking me to write an introduction to what he wrote about his memories as an engineer and of the miracles of the Lord with him during the 1973 war crossing the Suez Canal at crossing point No. 33.

—Dr. Mufeed Ibrahim Said

(Dr. Mufeed Ibrahim Said, MD PhD (general surgery), was professor of surgery and former chairman of the surgery department at Cairo University, Egypt. He practiced surgery in Egypt and taught and trained surgeons through the years. He is the senior elder at Kasr El Dobara Evangelical Presbyterian Church, Cairo, Egypt. Dr. Said is an evangelist who has preached regularly at Kasr El Dobara Evangelical Presbyterian Church for over half a century. He continues to be a guest speaker at most of the evangelical churches in Cairo and in other cities across Egypt. He has been a guest speaker at the annual conference of the Arabic Baptist Church of Boston and many other church conferences in the United States and Canada for the past thirty-five years.)

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Introduction

By Lydia Shadeed

It is my honor to share a witness about the amazing life and ministry of two rare people who lived such a godly life that it still lives in the people they impacted during their ministry and conduct. Pastor Hanna and his wife were a living witness of what the Holy Spirit can do through a consecrated couple. For years, my brother Bishara and I had the honor to minister to and come into close contact with the Arabic Baptist Church of Boston, where Pastor and Mrs. Hanna Ibrahim pastored. Their effective prayers and love to God’s people, which I personally experienced, were amazing.

During one of my trips to Boston, I had a very bad flu, and my voice was not fit for singing. I remember Pastor Hanna and his wife telling me that they would pray and God would be glorified. I thought, Ya sure, but can’t you hear my voice is gone? They made me a cup of tea with lemon and honey and prayed over me. I still didn’t believe it would work. As I started singing, my voice was so clear—I rarely heard it as clear—and I didn’t even cough once! The whole weekend I still had my flu, but my voice was okay! I learned the meaning of the prayer of the righteous avails much. They were such an encouragement to me and my brother in our ministry. We were still in the beginnings of our ministry. Oh, how loving and encouraging they were to us all along, and I must say that this lives in their children, who have done so much in the field of ministry and for God’s people. At their funerals, there were many people who witnessed how welcoming they were to them when they first came to the United States and how they opened their home and prayed daily for each of their church members by name, using a list. Praise God for two godly lives well lived in the service of the Lord. I loved these two saints.

—Lydia Shadeed

The well-known international evangelist

Singer and minister for the Lord Jesus Christ

*****

Introduction

By Rev. Esper Ajjaj

What shall we say about a person who dedicated his life completely for the service of the Lord Jesus? This is the Reverend and Pastor Hanna Ibrahim who served the Lord with his messages and his life example.

I met him first at the conference of the Arabic Baptist Church of Washington when he came with his family who followed his steps in love and ministry. I was honored once to visit with him in his home in Boston and stay overnight. In the morning, I was going down the stairs and heard him praying while sitting on the floor and leaning on the wall. I heard him praying and speaking as if the Lord was with him in the living room. He was pounding on the wall and speaking to the Lord, Please visit brother so and so and sister so and so. These words that were anointed with the Holy Spirit impacted my soul greatly, and I loved him with love that I will never forget.

—Rev. Esper Ajjaj

Pastor of the Arabic Baptist Church in Washington, DC

*****

Introduction

By Nassef Sobhy Nassif

Few people have been gifted with a heart full of friendly human feelings by God. Even fewer people has God given a heart like His, which is compassionate and kind and feels with others, loving to give first and not caring about receiving. In my first visit to America, these hearts received me presented in the family of the Reverend Hanna Ibrahim, Mother Faiza, and their children. Here started the journey of the glorious ministry fellowship with this authentic family who always welcomed me as part of their own. Father and Pastor Hanna Ibrahim used to say to me, You are our younger son. Mother Faiza, the praying woman, was the source of blessing for this family. She was always concerned with the details of my ministry and how each of my children was doing, and she prayed for my family and my ministry. I shall not ever forget them.

Yes, God gave them hearts like His heart to serve His people. Even as they progressed in years, they never