The Story

My name is Zarina Agnis and I am the wife of Pastor Aslam. First of all I want to give you a little intro so that you'll know more about me. I was born in Multan city of Pakistan. I learned everything from Nuns. I was Catholic and I also went with the nuns outside to help teach others kids, and some nuns were from the USA. Sister Margent Rose was my best friend at that time, but then I got married and moved to another city. I lived a few years in a village around there and then I eventually came to Lahore in the backward area. I was the only educated person there that time, and that is when I truly heared my calling from Heaven to serve these little poor kids. I started to visit them and pleaeded with their parents to send their kids to my home where I can teach them. Some kids started to came but some did not. The uneducated children played in the dirty water ponds, and those chilren called tadpoles of the frogs fish. I felt so bad for them so I also went to water pond to clean the children and to educate them. This was the calling God gave me. The parents work hard, about 12 hours a day, and the children live in really bad conditions. This moved me to have compassion on them, and to begin this whole journey.

When I started this ministry, my husband was not competelely on board with me, since the bills kept coming in and there was a lot of other struggles, but I never quit. I kept praying to God and God answered me by providing for me some local supporters. With that we acquired a new building and even were able to pay the rent and bills to keep it going. The number of children were increasing and I was seeing great success with everything. They really helped us, but when they saw how much we were growing, they began to say that we should charge the parents a fee. I declined this idea. It is my vision to teach these children free of charge and I was teaching them free before the supporters came and I am still and will always teach for free. With that, of course, I lost that initial support.

However, that was not the end. God had a bigger plans. He changed my husband's heart and he began to help me, at first we had no teachers, only me and my husband the kids. Teachers were available to teach the kids but they need a salary to live on and we couldn't pay them. So I and my husband took it upon ourselves to teach. In the morning he came to school to teach kids and then left for work. And this is how we managed it for some time.

A few years later, one time I saw two children who were mostly hungry. I asked all the kids they had anything to eat. Some kids said yes, but two of them said they did not have food. I felt so grieved for them and my heart cried out for them. I knew what I had to do. I went to my home and began to cook food for them and bring it to school. Daily I asked them, and everytime I asked they answer that they had no food, so I started to cook extra food for them. Then later some more kids came without food, which led me to start visiting the homes of those children. What I found saddned me, I told these children to pray for a way to be made that we could bring them all here where they would have food always.

The dads of these children were drug addicts, and their behavior in front of these kids was extremely poor. The wives had already left because they couldn't feed the kids, pay bills and overcome life's other hurdles alone. Some little girls were sexual abused. I sorely wanted to save them from that environment. I started to pray about it and my husband also. Then later, God provided us a couple of supporters. They provided us some of the things for starting an orphanage home. They supported us monthly for some time, but they could not continue to do so. But God never left us. He is using people like you to help us. When I see children going the wrong way in life I cry for them, because I know they are brought by the blood of Jesus. But they dont know about Jesus. It is on my heart to teach my school about our Savior Jesus and daily do so in the school assembly, though I constantly face opposed by many peoples for all of it. Please pray for them and us.

THE VISION: There was a night I was doing the laundary. We did not have electric washing and drying machines at that time, so I had to pin the clothes on a wire/rope to dry. Looking at the sky, it was all beautiful and clear of clouds. However, while my husband and I were sleeping, I heard a large amount of thunder, so I woke my husband and asked him to check outside. So he woke up and went to check and it there was nothing outside. Then I heard again the thunder, and thinking of the clothes of course I did not want them to get rained on. He woke up again and checked and it was nothing, and came back to tell me its all clear. And then a third time I heard thunder, when I asked my husbend to check, he told me to get up and check for myself. So I did and when I checked it was all clear, but as I did I heard a voice say, "Shepherd My Sheep." I was very troubled by hearing this voice. I did not know what it meant at first. Laer I shared with few pastors and they told me to educated His children. It was after this I knew I needed to carry on the work of running the free school for these children.