A young tentmaker couple from the US had recently arrived in a very restricted Muslim country. To their amazement, they were immediately invited to a local wedding of a government official’s daughter. They gladly accepted.

Once the ceremony was over, the dancing began. Now the tentmakers came from a denominational background where dancing is frowned upon and of course they had never danced before.

Their gracious hosts kept asking them to join in on the dance floor and it got increasingly difficult to make them understand that they simply did not know how to dance. Their hosts did not believe that a young American couple would not know how to dance.

After a while, the couple realized that there was a suspicion and mistrust building between them and their hosts. Not a good start to a tentmaking ministry.
Eventually they decided to give it a go, after all how hard could it be, they had seen dancing in movies.

Once they got to the dance floor everyone, about 100 people, gathered around them in a circle and started clapping to the music. The young couple thought they had done a decent job of gyrating to the music and sat down.

Their host came over and apologized. I am so sorry, you really don’t know how to dance!

When the tentmakers came home for a summer vacation, they promptly went and took some dance lessons as they never wanted to go through that scenario again.
What would you have done?

God has a sense of humor, since this wedding opened many doors to new friendships and even offered them some protection as foreigners and gave them access to high government officials.

By Ari Rocklin