By Chris Lewis, April 2007

Even in chains, the mission's first ex-Muslim convert made a scene.

Mehdi Ksara lived a scandalous, persecuted life - as the first Muslim-born convert of Avant missionaries in the late 1920s. Just hours before his death last June, Moroccan believers from the underground national church drove a frail Mehdi - worshipping all the way - to the Spanish enclave of Ceuta, where they could safely ensure him a Christian burial.

He was 101 years old.

Known as an ineffable, irascible evangelist, Mehdi has left indelible memories among those avant magazine readers in the North African missions community.

"He did rub some people the wrong way at times because of his bold approach," said Pete Friesen, a retired Avant missionary. "He was willing to talk to the poor as well as the rich. There will be many people in heaven because of his bold witness."

In her 1970 biography "Miss Terri!", Avant missionary Maude Cary recounts how Mehdi was stunned by her pictures of huge churches in the U.S. "How can thousands sit at home and enjoy one another's fellowship," he lamented, "and leave so many here without the gospel?"

At first, however, Mehdi was just another Arab youth throwing rocks at Cary's front door. The single woman from Kansas served 54 years in Morocco - when Avant was known as Gospel Missionary Union (GMU) - starting in Mehdi's hometown of Sefrou.

Mehdi peeked in on Cary's Bible class one day and - after realizing that infidels really didn't kill Muslim children - he kept coming. Because Mehdi was a first-born son from an educated family, such shameful curiosity enraged his father, a Muslim priest. He threw Mehdi out of the house at age 18, and GMU missionaries took him in. When his faith cost him his job, they sent Mehdi to work in a Bible shop in Meknes. It sparked a community scandal; Muslim elders charged Mehdi with blasphemy, and he narrowly averted a trial.

"He took his zeal for being a Muslim and transferred that to his Christianity," said Mehdi's son Edward, 69, a Christian who's living now in Springfield, Mo. "He wasn't shy in his preaching. He didn't shrink back."

Mehdi's quarrelsome concerns about missionary dependency could put off foreigners. "But if it wasn't for GMU missionaries, I wouldn't be a Christian," he said.

When the Moroccan government ordered all foreign missionaries to leave in the late 1960s, Avant relocated its North Africa ministry to Spain, where it launched the Málaga Media Center to aid the underground church.

But the tightening knot on religious freedom only emboldened Mehdi's witness, says "Boaz," a convert who was discipled by Mehdi and Avant missionaries. When Boaz's family disowned him, his only sympathetic visitor was Mehdi - who arrived bearing a New Testament. Years later, the two led a home Bible study in Tangier, before Boaz himself became an Avant missionary.

"If you walked the streets with Si Mehdi, people knew you were a Christian," said Boaz. "He was never ashamed of his faith. He answered people quickly. It was always the right answer." On one occasion, a Muslim heckled that a 500-franc Qur'an was more valuable than the Gospels of John that Mehdi was selling for 10 francs. "Which costs more - cigarettes or bread?" Mehdi responded. "And yet, only one gives life."

Mehdi's evangelistic wit once silenced a Muslim baker, who complained that Mehdi's ham sandwich was haram, or ceremonially unclean. To which Mehdi answered, "Have you ever told a lie?" Yes, the baker admitted. Reasoning that pigs don't lie, Mehdi then mused, "So who's unclean - you or the pig?"

Mehdi caused a stir when, in 1931, he married the daughter of American missionaries in Morocco. The family waited out World War II in the States, where Mehdi became a speaker on the church circuit and recorded Arabic radio programs for the U.S. Office of War Information. But to Mehdi, Morocco was home. When his wife opted to stay in America, where the kids had more freedom, he returned to Tangier and later remarried.

Ten years ago, as a 90-year-old man who'd outlived the French and Islamic revolutions in Morocco, Mehdi's faith and wit were still making a scene. A new Moroccan Christian, cowering before police interrogators, revealed Mehdi as the illegal proselytizer behind his conversion. The officers knocked on Mehdi's door and, as he began witnessing to them, hauled him off to court.

Asked the judge: "Why were you brought here?"

"Because I repented," Mehdi said.

His coy reply landed Mehdi in prison and unleashed a diplomatic scandal - thanks to his dual citizenship. But all the U.S. Consulate could do was dispatch an officer to the jail with a bottle of water and a last-rites sort of question: "What can we tell your loved ones?"

Undaunted, Mehdi found a captive audience in an overcrowded cell of 300 men. His bold preaching divided the cell's radical Sunni contingent, rattled the guards and prompted his release ... three weeks later.

"He was genuine and proud," said John Barcus, a retired Avant missionary to Morocco. "He was known all over northern Morocco as an outstanding Christian who never vacillated from his faith."