An outreach in a popular holiday destination impacts not only tourists but participants as well.
Over the past decade, Interlaken in the Swiss Alps has seen visitors from Gulf countries increase by more than 2,000 per cent.*
Hotel and restaurant staff have been encouraged to learn Arabic, and prayer mats and halal menus are available on request in this beautiful town, sandwiched between mountains and lakes in the Bernese Alps.
The OM team in Switzerland has also responded to this increase by running Salamu Aleikum Project (SAP) with local partners in Interlaken and Zell am See, over the border in Austria, which is another popular Arab holiday destination.
SAP is run by Hermann (Switzerland), who lived in the Arabian Peninsula with his wife Beatrice and their family for several years before moving to Switzerland. They continued their work among Gulf Arabs living in the Montreux region from the summer of 2006 until 2018 when Hermann got a phone call from a friend in Interlaken.
“She said: ‘Hermann, we're overflowing with Arabs in Interlaken.’” Hermann shared. “Interlaken in the Berner Oberland is my favourite place, where I spent summer months as a teenager, so I said: 'okay, I will come with a team.' We had a team of eight and we had two teams there for three days, like Joshua and Caleb finding out about the place.”
Mission in the mountains
After the initial visit, the outreach started in 2009 and has been very successful, with 75 people from 12 nations taking part in Interlaken in 2024.
Days during the outreach are split into three sessions. During the mornings there is a time of worship and prayer, and the team shares stories from the Arabian Peninsula. Participants then learn methods to help start conversations and talk about Jesus. The rest of the day is dedicated to meeting people and sharing the gospel.
Participants, who in previous outreaches have been aged from 18 to 90, stay in a Christian hostel and have either the afternoon or evening to themselves each day to enjoy the mountains.
No previous experience of sharing the good news is needed, and the outreach operates in English.
“Ever since I started, God has given me a specific plan how to do this. It’s always a team of four people; two praying and the other two are engaging, and that team changes the next day,” Herman explained. “There are people who say we don't want to engage, we are too afraid, we are just praying, but they will be in an engaging team sooner or later because they see what God is doing.”
As well as having conversations, a book table provides free Christian literature in Arabic. The team also has permission to show The Jesus Film in Arabic in the open air four times during the outreach. The film showings always starts with a group of up to six Swiss men and women blowing an alphorn, a traditional Swiss instrument. The noise attracts tourists to come and see what’s happening, and then the team ‘pray and play’.
The team works with five churches in Interlaken and the team visits those churches during the second week to share testimonies of their experiences.
From hate to love
Feedback from participants is almost entirely positive, with many people amazed at how they shared their faith in Christ with people so openly and often. Others are surprised that they were able to pray for long periods. One shared, “Wow, I'm actually not afraid to share the gospel with Muslims!”
One participant that Hermann remembers well, was an Egyptian married to a Canadian.
“He was always telling me: 'put me in prayer’, so I went to him. I said ‘brother, you're Arab, why are you not out speaking to people?’ He said he could not, so I put him in The Jesus Film project because they are not engaging; he was only sitting and watching the film,” shared Hermann.
"A man from Saudi Arabia was sitting beside him with two children, a three-year-old daughter and a six-year-old son. The son was asking his dad all these questions about the crucifixion, saying, ‘Look, they did crucify Jesus’. But the girl was getting afraid, so my dear Egyptian brother comforted her. When he did that, something came over him — a kind of love that he never felt before — because he had always hated Muslims.
“Can you believe that? He comes to a project with Muslim outreach and he hated them. But I understand because of his experience of how Egyptian Christians are being treated, and that was why he fled Egypt for good. But he was transformed in this project and now he loves Arabs.”
For more information about joining future outreaches email salamualeikum@swissmail.org
*https://worldcrunch.com/culture-society/interlaken-the-new-swiss-mecca-…