Years before they were freed from an Afghan prison, the call of God rescued Heather Mercer and Dayna Curry from the turmoil of their teenage years.
At 17, Curry recalled, she was experimenting with drugs, on the road to alcoholism and entangled in unhealthy relationships -- secrets she kept from her parents, who had divorced. Mercer struggled to deal with her own parents' divorce and was deeply scarred by the unexplained death of her sister.
Both remember weeping uncontrollably for joy when they heard God's voice at college church services, gently forgiving their mistakes and healing their emotional wounds. "When God speaks to you, there's no doubting it. It changes you," Mercer said. "I know Jesus can heal hearts, because He healed mine."
That call superseded all other voices. It led them to Afghanistan to build homes and distribute food among refugees, despite their parents' fears for their safety. And it drove them to break the Taliban's laws against preaching Christianity when they showed a film about Jesus to an Afghan family, the offense that landed them in prison.
Now, college evangelical ministries believe that the two women's dramatic escape from the Taliban's clutches will inspire many young Christians to evangelize overseas.
"Their story is extremely inspiring, and Christian college students will look to their experience as something to follow," said Nathan Dunn, director of communications at the Orlando-based Campus Crusade for Christ, one of the largest youth ministries in the country, with 40,000 members in colleges and 250,000 in high schools.
But some missionaries say the two women's celebrity could create problems for the hundreds of Christian aid workers living in Muslim countries and trying to strike a balance between what their religion dictates and what their hosts will allow.
Most Muslim countries do not offer visas to people who identify themselves as missionaries. But they grant work visas to urban planners, builders, nurses, doctors, engineers and other specialists who are affiliated with Christian mission groups.
Officials in these countries often are willing to look the other way when the relief workers violate laws against praying or discussing religion in Muslims' homes, because the technical assistance the workers provide is paramount, mission groups say.
"The truth is, they know who we are. We're not fooling anybody," said Avery Willis, senior vice president of the Southern Baptist Convention's International Mission Board, the largest Protestant mission organization. "We're Christians who have come here to do a job that needs doing. And they allow us to do it. 'Just do it quietly.' "
The episode involving Mercer and Curry, however, will cause Muslim governments to be more cautious in granting visas to Christian aid workers, said J. Dudley Woodberry, a professor at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif., who has lived and taught in numerous Muslim countries.
Christian aid workers should be respectful of local laws and abide by agreements they have made to enter the country, Woodberry said.
"Our integrity is part of God's law," he said. "A lot rides on what we agreed to do or not to do."
Among the major religions, Christianity and Islam actively seek converts. Christians believe that Jesus mandated evangelization in a New Testament address to his disciples: "Go ye into all the world, and preach the Gospel to every creature." They believe that only people who accept Jesus as Savior will be saved and go to heaven.
Christians are more likely than Muslim groups to dispatch missionaries to foreign lands. Estimating the number of Christian relief workers in Muslim countries is difficult because sponsoring organizations, for security reasons, do not publicize the numbers, names or locations of their members.
Although some Christian missionaries agree with Woodberry that it would be unethical for them to break laws against evangelism, others said that humanitarian and evangelical work cannot be separated.
The Christian compulsion to evangelize and to express Christian love by serving others are "inextricably linked," said Jon Hardin, vice president of the Caleb Project, a Colorado-based nondenominational group that provides mission resource information and assistance to college students, adults and independent churches.
Mercer and Curry, interviewed in New York yesterday, said that their aim was to share the Christian message by example only and that showing the Jesus film may have been a mistake. They said they went to Afghanistan not to force the Gospel on anyone but because they cared about the Afghan people's plight.
"God weeps every day for the broken of the Earth," said Mercer, 24, of Vienna. "And so when He spoke to me about the Afghan people, I cried and cried. It was uncontrollable. It was like they were God's tears and He was communicating how broken He was that the Afghan people didn't know His love."
They remember dressing the wounds of dozens of despairing women who had tried to commit suicide by burning themselves; the street children who mobbed their door every morning, begging for food and clothing; an emaciated 4-year-old girl, mostly skeleton and skin, lying among hundreds of dying children in a refugee camp for lack of food and medicine.
The faces and images still haunt them.
"Once I saw the need, I said to myself, how could I live some prosperous life in America?" asked Curry, 30, of Thompsons Station, Tenn.
After they arrived in Afghanistan in March, Mercer and Curry spent most of their time in Kabul with 22 other humanitarian workers -- four Germans, two Australians and 16 Afghans. Their financial donors, a network of churches, relatives and friends, sent Mercer and Curry just under $1,000 a month each, some of which they gave to the poor.
The team set up a shop in Kabul where impoverished children ages 5 to 15 could produce cloth prints and then sell the products. The youngest children, Curry said, learned how to sew floral patterns, while the older ones worked machines. Each was paid a small salary from the sales. The Taliban initially gave the team permission to include young girls but then allowed only boys to participate, Curry said.
Gradually, the Taliban grew suspicious of their activities. Mercer and Curry believe that the Taliban's religion police -- a squad that watched foreign aid workers to see if they were evangelizing secretly -- were scrutinizing their activities more closely than they had initially thought.
After the 24 team members were arrested, the Taliban accused them of trying to convert Muslim youth through the printing shop -- a charge Mercer and Curry deny.
"We never once preached to them or tried to convert them. But the Taliban was really sensitive about its young boys and thought we were trying to subvert them or something," Curry said.
Their days in a Kabul jail passed slowly. They played cards and sang hymns. They picked flies out of their food and lice out of their hair. Sometimes they despaired -- especially when the United States began bombing Kabul -- but kept up hope through fellowship and prayer. Still, Mercer said she spent many nights under her bed when the U.S. bombs began landing in Kabul.
By far, their darkest day was just before their release. When the Taliban began evacuating the capital, it shoved the foreign prisoners into a frigid metal container and began driving toward its stronghold in the south. The 16 Afghans were left behind and eventually freed by opposition soldiers.
Somewhere along the way, the Taliban abandoned the foreign aid workers, much to the team's surprise. On Nov. 14, an opposition soldier freed them, though it took them another day to negotiate their release.
Villagers led them to an open field, where Mercer thought of lighting the team members' head scarves on fire to signal U.S. Special Forces helicopters. Finally, on Nov. 15, Mercer and Curry landed in Pakistan, where they gave long, tearful hugs to their parents.
Mercer called it an ending even Hollywood couldn't come up with.
None of their parents had supported their decision to go to Afghanistan. Today, they all say they are proud of the way their daughters maintained their faith through the ordeal. At the same time, they say they hope the two women will choose to live out their lives in the United States.
"It's just a natural thing for parents not to want their children in harm's way. But Heather is her own person. I recognize she will do what she wants," said Mercer's father, John.
Despite the horror and worry their loved ones endured, Mercer and Curry said they are committed to devoting the rest of their lives to Afghanistan's future. They said they hope to return there soon -- even if it is against their parents' wishes.
The call is too great to ignore.
"It's a really hard position to be in, especially when you love your parents with your whole heart and want to honor them and want to please them," Mercer said. "But in the end, when Christ touches your life and you experience His life and love, you can't turn back from it. You can't give it up."