Missionary profile – Emmanuel Boubakar

By Mercy Kambura

Missionary in one of the Sahel nations

I’m from a Muslim background. My dad was a polygamist; I didn’t enjoy parental love, and my childhood wasn’t enjoyable. I grew up disliking children, especially delinquent ones. Imagine my horror, when our ministry as missionaries saw our house filled with children—primarily delinquent ones. I thank God for giving me a wife who loves children, as this has been a major part of our ministry. We’re missionaries in the Sahel region.

I struggled with expressing love, even for my wife and children. I didn’t know how to offer parental love. I had grown up under a stepmother, a neglected child who stole food from people’s houses. I didn’t have any love to give. I carried this character into marriage and ministry, and only with God’s help could I experience and give love.

When I was 7 or 8, I started going to church. We were friends with a pastor’s child. He told me that Jesus was coming back the following day, and his dad told him we must sing for Him. I didn’t know any song I could sing to Jesus, and it was 10 AM. I was running out of time, so I ran to church to learn a song to sing to Jesus when he arrived the following day. That’s how I received Christ.

I was in Primary Two and was greatly persecuted for following Jesus. I started loving missions when I was a small boy. A returning missionary once showed me pictures of people on the Adamawa plateau. He told me, “God is looking for people who will go and share the Gospel with these people.”

The love of missions became very intense in my heart. I promised myself that I would become a missionary when I grew up. However, I went to Ivory Coast after secondary school to look for money. I said I was looking for money to support missionaries. But I returned home poorer than I had left.

I immediately got a scholarship to go to a mission school. I met my wife in the mission school, and today, we’re working in the Sahel region. I’ve been a missionary for 18 years now. Our neighbours’ kids are always in our house. God has taken me from someone who doesn’t know how to love to a man who is parenting even strangers’ children.

If God calls you to go as a missionary, you will never regret it. Nothing is more joyful than spending your life to see souls saved. Never give up on anybody as long he is alive. God can still call them to Christ.

Missions is the heartbeat of God. Without missions, there’s no Church. Without missions, how will the Kingdom of God be expanded?

#Pray:

For the seed of the Gospel in the heart of men to germinate.
For the children’s ministry we’re involved in.
For God to help us keep going.