Missionary profile – Rev. Dr. Bitrus Audu

Nigerian Missionary and Sender

When God called me to be a missionary, I knew there was no looking back. I left my job, and a year later, my wife also resigned and joined me. As a chemist, my wife held a senior position with the government. She had just been selected to go overseas for further training. Many people who knew us asked me, “How can you leave your career? How will you feed your young family?”

Emissaries were sent to talk some sense into her, but she was as crazy for the Lord as I was. Forty years later, we’re still as crazy for the Lord as we were when we began. The main task is to make disciples; every vocation is needed in missions.

I got to know God in 1975 at only 15 years of age! Before this time, I was in an idol-worshiping family. While staying with an older relative, a neighbor invited me to their church’s youth service.

My eyes were opened to the destructive nature of sin in a young man’s life. One of the gifts I received was a passion to reach other young people just like myself. God baptized my heart with love and compassion to reach out to the unreached. I planted my first church in an unreached area in 1981!

Two years after my conversion, I returned to my home, and guess who was my first convert? My mother! She was deep in sin—brewing local beer and visiting the witch doctors for life solutions. I had found a better way and presented the Gospel to her in the best way I knew. My mother accepted Christ, and even my father attested that something had changed in her!

I put my family on my radar—they were going to heaven with me one way or another. In a short while, the Lord saved my siblings too! I lost one of my siblings a month ago, but he had become a believer through my testimony.

I lost all joy in doing anything apart from taking the Gospel to people that had not heard. My local church wanted me to be a resident pastor, but I declined. I said, “God has called me to frontier missions; being a resident pastor is not God’s calling to us.”

They understood and gave us their blessing to go.

Wherever the will of God leads you, no matter how difficult, the grace of God will keep you. There’s a place for any vocation within the context of missions.

Despite this assurance, many Christians face many questions about going into missions. How do you navigate life’s how’s, primarily concerning family and career?

Watch the AfriGO conversation video with Rev. Dr. Audu on our Youtube channel here: https://bit.ly/3NTS9Ss