Called by God, Questioned by Family
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And Jesus came and said to them, “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, to the close of the age.”
- Matthew 28:18-20
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The Church - the body of Christ - is where the mission of obedience to the Great Commission receives its support and personnel. When the body is strong, it can reach out. Visit our church resources page to find tips to help your church fulfill the Great Commission, whether it be through Prayer, studies about your part in the mission, or videos to inspire.
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Missionary profile – Estevâo Gomes
My pastor saw the vision for me to be a missionary before I did. He was the Director for Operation Mobilization, and he could sense the call of God in my life. He asked if he could take me to a mission school since I had finished secondary school. I flatly refused. I hadn’t heard from God; besides, I wanted to further my education and be something else, not a pastor or a missionary.
He gave me a few days to pray about it. I told him I didn’t need to pray; I knew I didn’t want to be a missionary. But in those three days, my heart was so restless that I couldn’t sleep, thinking about missions and the lost. At the end of the three days, I accepted to train as a missionary with Operation Mobilization. Many years before this, I had become a Christian. I grew up in a fragmented family.
Missionary profile – Omphemetse Kepuyamore
I didn’t know my father; I was told he rejected me before my birth. But now I’m a missionary among the Khoisan in Botswana, telling them about the good Father in Heaven who sent His Son to save them. I’m the least likely candidate for such a hefty assignment.
I grew up in a single-parent family in my grandparent’s house with about 16 people in one homestead. The whole family was deep in a cult, belonging to a ‘church’ that claimed to believe in the Lord, but did not use the Bible.
When I was seven, my cousin failed in her junior school and was treated meanly. Frustrated, she went to speak to a pastor. He prayed for her and she became the first true Christian in the family. She took me with her to church. I loved the transformation in her, so I, too, became a Christian.
Missionary profile – Lenny Karanja
’m a missionary in Mozambique working with an organisation called Operation Mobilization (OM). I am also a youth patron at my local church Missão Mundial in Mocuba, Mozambique (it means World Mission in English). We are reaching out to the Mozambican youth.
I had settled in my heart that I’d be in missions for some time after graduating from college,. I didn’t know how and where, until the day I made a Mozambican friend.
Here’s how it happened.
I was involved in the university evangelistic teams and that inspired me to be involved in missions. We did short-term mission trips to Kargi and Olturot in Kenya.
When I finished my graduate studies, I joined Life Changers, a ministry of African Christian Mission International (AMCI).
Missionary profile – Daphne Kabeberi
Towards the end of my studies at Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology in Kenya, I did the Kairos missions mobilization course (www.kairoscourse.org). For the first time in my life, I realized that missions is for every believer, myself included. I saw that the Bible is one book of redemption, not random, unrelated stories.
In 2017, I left East Africa for the first time to serve in the UK, the land of the missionaries who first brought the gospel to Kenya! I served with the ’20schemes’ ministry, which seeks to plant churches in the hardest areas of Scotland.
I assisted with immigrant outreach, youth and children’s work, befriending unbelieving women in the community and doing general jobs around the church.
Missionary profile – Gewa
I was a missionary in South Sudan, preaching the Word of God and planting churches in the locations of Abowg, Atar and Yabus. One night, our station was attacked and burned down. No one died, but we escaped with only the clothes on our back. We were evacuated to Nairobi, where we debriefed and underwent trauma healing counseling. Four months later, motivated by the Holy Spirit and urged on by my nine-year-old daughter, we packed our bags and went back. Persecution wasn’t new to me.
I was born in an Ethiopian Orthodox family, and I got saved as a teenager after my teacher shared the gospel with me. After accepting Christ, I faced difficulties and alienation. Even my father tried to kill me when I was sleeping. In school, I was being starved for confessing my faith. I left home and began to live with Christians. The nasty experience in South Sudan was not too hard to overcome because of these occurrences.
Missionary profile – Wondimu Woldeyohannes
I left my job at the Wushwush coffee plantation and became a missionary. The Lord is using me to reach out to people who are under the fear of witchdoctors in the Kafa Region. I’m one of the third batch of graduates of Bonga HubSchool, a missionary training school of the Ethiopian Kele Heywet Church (EKHC).
As I was thinking and praying about how I could win the people of the village, a widow and her children came to my mind. Her family’s life was plagued by problems after her husband was killed by the people of the village. She couldn’t benefit from the land she has and there were no relatives to help her fix her dilapidated house. I decided to support this widow and use her as the door to the village. I took the evangelism group and built her house in three days. After a little while, seeing how the Lord had helped build her life back, she and her children received Jesus.
Missionary profile – Swahib Fathi
I was restless. In my heart, I knew I lacked peace and I set out to find it in every nook and cranny. I was Catholic, and I wasn’t feeling the peace there. My mom was previously a Muslim before she joined my dad in Catholicism, so I went to her religion to see if my heart would find rest. It didn’t.
I quit that faith and joined the Jehovah’s Witnesses, and then quit. I joined Eastern Mysticism which promised me the peace I craved. My heart was still disturbed even after learning all the yoga tricks. So, I quit. I later became a legalist and tried to do good all by myself. I was still sad and empty. I quit.
I was introduced to the church of science, and despite all the ‘facts’, I was still a shell inside. That’s when I decided it wasn’t worth it at all. To me, God wasn’t real. So I became an atheist.
Missionary profile – Deborah Sekyi
As a child, I enjoyed missionary movies and storybooks. The stories mostly featured an evil force, fetish priests in a community, and sometimes people in a community who spiritually attack the work of missionaries who have traveled far to share the gospel of Jesus Christ with them.
These missionaries faced hostility and attacks from the people; they had to suffer a great deal even after leaving their cherished possessions and coming to a people they did not know. However, in the end, the power of the Holy Spirit moved mightily in the whole community and everyone, including the main enemy of the gospel, most often a fetish priest comes to the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.
Missionary profile – Olivia Acheampong
Missionary profile – Gideon Mashauri
In 2005, I was a refugee from Democratic Republic of the Congo living in a camp in Nampula, Mozambique. I began sharing the gospel with my fellow refugees and with the Makua people outside the camp.
While there, a missionary loaned me Adoniram Judson’s biography, and I spent hours praying and reading in the bush nearby. The committed prayer life of this man stood out to me. He fully trusted the Lord to provide his needs. This inspired me to spend extravagant time in prayer and fasting.
When I went to this bush area, I constantly prayed God would perform a miracle — grant me leave from the refugee camp to serve Him anywhere. Eventually, a missionary blessed me with money to attend Scott Theological College in Kenya; I studied Theology and Intercultural Studies.
Missionary profile – Jared Oginga
I’m among the very few people who were paid to hear the gospel. I was a language instructor, teaching adults, mainly expatriates such as missionaries, to speak Swahili. I wasn’t a Christian, and I thought this was an easy way to make money.
I taught the missionaries daily for two hours. As the translating and teaching continued, I developed a deep interest in the things I was hearing. One day, I went home and told my wife, “I think I will become a Christian!”
Even after the missionaries had learned the language, they continued inviting me to ‘teach’ them and translate. They had noticed I wasn’t a believer, and they used this time to reach out to my heart. I was more than happy to go to these ‘classes,’ since they still paid me as long as I showed up.
Missionary profile – Chris and Nancy Maphosa
I felt God’s call upon my life to do Christian ministry full time in 1988. I joined the Pentecostal Bible College in Zimbabwe and graduated in 1993. I became a pastor in 1994 and served in several churches. In 2001, I decided to further my education and enrolled for a bachelor’s degree in counselling, specialising in children’s behaviour. I felt a huge gap between churches, parents and children, and my need to concentrate more on preaching to children to children grew.
In 2003, I volunteered with a missionary working with children, and the passion for reaching children grew. My wife, Nancy, and I worked under Hope for AIDS (Widows of Hope). We worked with a cross-cultural missionary until he left us in charge and returned to his country.