Missionary profile – JFK Mensah

By Mercy Kambura

JFK Mensah

Mobilizer/ Discipler/ Missionary from Ghana to Mauritania

On my first day as a missionary in Mauritania, North Africa, I was arrested at the airport because my passport read, ‘Minister of Religion.’ The guy who was to meet me at the airport also didn’t show up. It was enough to dampen anyone’s spirit, but not mine. It had taken me 25 years since I first heard God’s call to go to Mauritania as a missionary. I was ready for anything – even death – to take the gospel to Mauritania.

I was a university student when I got the call to be a missionary. The Mercy Ship, a ministry of the mission organization, Operation Mobilization (OM), had docked in Tema, Ghana, and I went on board together with my fellow university executive board.

The ship crew presented 52 countries in dire need of the gospel, and I was touched. When they mentioned that Mauritania only had a handful of Christians, I wept. God was tagging at my heart to go to Mauritania.

At that time in Ghana, sending missionaries was practically unheard of. Neither churches nor Christian organizations were in to sending missionaries. I searched everywhere for a sending organization but to no avail.

Twenty-five years later, I met a Ghanaian couple, Dr. Solomon and Letitia Aite. They, too, had received the call, and had been sent by Pioneers International. I shared my frustration and as it turned out, they had come back home to start Pioneers Africa. They were ready to send me. Within a year, I was on a survey trip to Mauritania.

Now here I was, at the airport, having been arrested. I was finally released and we entered Mauritania with my wife, Georginah, and my sister, a medical doctor.

I was in Mauritania for four years and two months as a missionary. I taught computing skills while my wife taught English. That’s how the Lord opened the doors for ministry. Our first convert was my wife’s student.

Today, we’re serving back home in Ghana with JFK Ministries. We’re discipling Christians, and training and sending missionaries.

The burden of the Church in Africa should be to transform nominal Christians into committed Christians through discipleship, so they can go out as missionaries.

We also disciple people from least-reached people groups and send them as missionaries among their own people. The world needs to be evangelized urgently and by all available means, so that every person will have the opportunity to hear, understand, and receive the good news.

How can the Church achieve this?

Watch my interview with AfriGO Conversations to answer this question here: https://youtu.be/UTmB8w8RysI?feature=shared