Pioneer to the Middle East
Nairy Ohanian's storyby Shannon Whiting
Imagine getting a five-year assignment far from home with no program. This was Nairy Ohanian’s venture into the Middle East to begin student movements.
“There was nothing for me to enter into,” Ohanian, a Washington, DC Armenian American said. “I definitely see myself as a pioneer.”
Ohanian first heard the call at age 16 on her first short term missions trip with Teen Missions International in a small village outside of Paris.
“That’s where I really felt I wanted to spend the rest of my life sharing the Gospel,” she said.
She received clarity and confirmation at West Maryland College where she plugged into InterVarsity—a program which also helped her better understand her identity and ethnicity. In 1984, her sophomore year, Ohanian attended what became her first of many Urbana missions conferences. After receiving her degree in graphic art and business administration, Ohanian moved on to Gordon Conwell Theological Seminary for an MA in world missions and evangelism.
The French-speaking Muslim world attracted Ohanian, and she began entertaining ideas of ministering in Morocco or Belgium. But before she could book a trip, another offer came along.
“InterVarsity came after me and asked if I would stay stateside and pioneer international student ministry in Boston,” Ohanian remembered. She agreed to it “just out of gratitude for what InterVarsity did for me.”
Ohanian committed herself to five years of student ministry in Boston, yet kept Morocco on her agenda. But, as planning missionaries often find, “It didn’t happen like that,” Ohanian said.
In the midst of those five years, Ohanian opened an invitation to join Armenian businessman Steve Lazarian and InterVarsity Missions Director Dan Harrison to begin a chapter of International Fellowship of Evangelical Students (IFES) in Armenia. Until this point, Ohanian hadn’t even considered returning to her homeland, a part of the formerly closed Soviet Union.
“That letter was a real shock for me,” she said. “I didn’t even think InterVarsity knew where Armenia was. I was just so excited, so blessed, because [before] I felt like I lived in two different worlds.”
Those two worlds joined in 1996 when Ohanian and a British co-worker began teaching French and English and initiating Bible studies at an Armenian university. Within four years, she was able to hand her ministry over to the nationals and return home to begin a career in law and social justice. No sooner had she started studying the LSATs than Ohanian received another invitation from InterVarsity, this time to a personally controversial part of the Middle East.
“That was the last thing [on my mind], she said. “I was open to anywhere, but I didn’t even have a category for [that part of the Middle East].”
The place of choice was confirmed for Ohanian in the topic of discussion at Urbana 2000.
“I was kind of set up by God,” she said. “I didn’t even have a choice.” Ohanian explained how, aside from IV’s interest in the country, her co-partnering Presbyterian group had purchased a café in the Middle East without any student workers to run it. “By then, God was like, ‘You’re it,’” she said.
Because her family shared her negative feelings about the country of choice, they were Ohanian’s biggest barrier. Still, without her mother’s blessing, Ohanian endeavored on the trip to run a coffee shop and a language club among Muslim students.
At first she felt at home, but “as soon as the ministry started, within the first six months, it was the constant stress of opposition, being watched, being questioned,” Ohanian said. As a single Christian, Armenian American woman in business, Ohanian’s opposition was doubled.
“I wasn’t aware of it every morning, but when I left my front door, everything that I represented was an offense to them,” she said,in reference to the locals she was trying to reach.
Some of this opposition included a two-year court case over running what the country’s government considered to be an illegal language school. Yet she and her colleagues were inexplicably delivered from the case, even after a witness used the fatal words “missionary subversives.”
“As challenging a time that we’ve had, clearly God was using us,” Ohanian said. This was evident yet again when, through a holiday program, her staff was able to share the gospel message with students who were hearing it for the very first time. Intermittently, the police interrupted under suspicion, yet only at the exact moments when nothing religious was being shared.
Eventually, Ohanian’s coffee shop closed due to the overwhelming number of legal fees and fines the government sent her way.
“That’s how they break you down,” she said. “We just couldn’t keep going any longer.” And yet, Ohanian reported, God is continuing to work there. “Six years ago, I was the only IFES worker in the country,” she said. “And now there are nine full-timers, in two different cities.”
In 2006, the pioneer returned home for various writing projects, including her recent book Now Can You Trust Me? Stories of faith and adventure in Armenia. Thanks to the stories of suffering told in the book, Ohanian is able to encourage other missionaries who are still on the field.
Currently, Ohanian is spending a transition year on recruitment and training for InterVarsity’s Link and IFES departments. She is simultaneously starting a doctor of ministry program in pastoral counseling for missionaries.
“There’s definitely a cost,” Ohanian has told other missionaries. “It’s been the greatest thing I’ve ever done and the most difficult thing I’ve ever done.” Yet looking back on all the Muslim students who heard the gospel, Ohanian would not have changed any of it.
“I think the cost is worth it,” she said.
Unless otherwise noted, all materials on the urbana.org web site are Copyright InterVarsity Christian Fellowship / USA. All rights reserved.
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