Missionary to high-caste Hindus – Elizabeth Kachala

Elizabeth Kachala, from Malawi, grew up in a nominal Christian family with nine siblings. After she received Christ in high school in 1993, she had to leave her mainline denominational church because they could not tolerate born-again believers. Soon after, she got the call to ministry and was unsure where she should go, but she had a passion to go where the Gospel had not been preached.

God brought her a husband, Reuben, who helped her understand what God was asking: “He made me know that what I felt to do is called ‘missions.’ It was beautiful to know that we both share the same vision. We got married and we began to grow together in that passion,” she recalls.

After marriage, they started praying together for unreached people, and their first step toward fulfilling the purpose of God for their lives was to start a church in a remote village of Malawi where there was an unreached people group. Reuben also was teaching at the Bible College, but after a few years he began to feel the urge to do cross-cultural missions. In 2010 they moved to the South of Asia with their two children, ages 12 and 10.

Elizabeth remembers how they went out: “We were sent by WEC (World Evangelism Commission) a mission agency; this was because initially, we did not receive a response to our application to our church, Assemblies of God, to send us. We had to raise our own support from friends and the other churches. Thankfully, along the way our church also started supporting us.” Her family supported their passion for the mission, though she was the major financial support for them. She had to leave behind her almost 70-year-old mother.

There were so many challenges on the field: one of them was the extreme weather. When they landed, it was 50 degrees! Elizabeth really struggled with the heat and also with learning the language. She says: “I interpreted the challenges as ‘light afflictions.’ The challenges became insignificant when I compared them to the lostness of those people. Furthermore, we had waited for 15 years to go as missionaries. We had prayed for unreached peoples for a long time and we were longing to reach them with the Gospel. So, the passion was stronger than these challenges.” They served among the high-caste Hindus, known as the Brahman, who are very dedicated to their Hindu gods and not receptive to the Gospel at all. Their evangelism had to be completely different than it was in Malawi: cultivating friendships with people and with families. You could go many months and even years without a convert.

There was one man they befriended, who eventually began to trust them as their families got to know each other. He began to share his problems, which gave them the opportunity to start praying for him, and eventually his wife and son. Elizabeth recalls: “One day he came to our house and we were speaking and encouraging him; afterwards, the way we prayed with him so touched him. He said ‘I’ve been walking with you. I think today I’ve seen God; I will surrender my life to Him.’ Up to now we are in touch with him, he is still walking with God. We must have stayed there two years before we had this convert. This man together with his family all surrendered their lives to Christ.”

After staying in South Asia for four years, the Kachalas handed their few converts over to teammates and returned to Malawi in 2014, where the Lord laid it on their hearts to start a mission agency. The aim was to mobilize the church in Malawi for missions, train cross-cultural missionaries, and send them.

Elizabeth says: “My passionate advice to the Body of Christ is that it is time for us to rise up to the fulfillment of the Great Commission. Jesus said we should ‘go’ and make disciples of all nations, in Matthew 28:18-20. God did not send us to only our own people, nation, or country. He called us to go globally, to think globally. God called us to take the Gospel to those who have never heard. I am speaking with passion because I know the lostness of the unreached peoples of the world. On this side, we may see that the Gospel is available everywhere, but on their side the direct opposite is the case. I want to challenge more women, both young and old, to get directly involved in frontier missions: the work is for all of us.”

Taken from an interview by Rhoda Oluwakemi Appiah. She is married with three children. She is a pioneering missionary of Fullstature Missions International together with her husband, Rev. Daniel Hyde Appiah. She is a lover of God and His word, with an overwhelming desire to see God’s kingdom advance in every sphere of society. Contact her at kemiappiah@gmail.com.