Lottie Moon Week of Prayer: London

Though she has always lived in London, Fatimah grew up observing her family’s Islamic rituals, just as if she were living in her father’s homeland of Iraq. And she has faithfully passed these traditions on to her own children. Fatimah’s parents make the hajj to Mecca every year, and she has been five times herself, she says.

“We don’t drink alcohol or smoke, so we save that money to use to go to Mecca,” she explains. “It’s really lovely there, like a festival, with everyone there for the same purpose,” she says, her eyes shining as brightly as the tiny diamond piercing her nose.

Fatimah lives in an area of west London teeming with ethnic restaurants, clothing shops, mosques, and Sikh temples. To walk the streets of Southall is to encounter a very different London from what most tourists to Britain experience.

“London is an amazing place to get to relate to people from all over the world,” says Patrick Sims*, IMB missionary. This multicultural aspect of London brought Sims, strategy leader for the London team, to work here nearly a decade ago.

The world has indeed come to London: schoolchildren here speak more than 200 languages, and more than 40 percent of London schoolchildren speak a language other than English at home. As in urban settings everywhere, building relationships is a challenge for missionaries serving here.

Pray for missionaries in London to develop deep, cross-cultural relationships in this urban environment.

London is the focus of International Mission Study 2011 by Woman’s Missionary Union. Visit www.wmu.com/london.

*Name changed