Every Missionary Needs a Pastor
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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
What's new this week
The life of a cross-cultural missionary is full of challenges. At AfriGO we want to encourage you in your ministry and in your spiritual life.
Visit our Missionary Resources page to help with some practical issues, as well as give you food for thought.
new for you
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 – Kirubel Girma
Kirubel Girma, missions mobilizer with SIM’s East Africa Sending Office in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, says, “I am finally embarking on my long-awaited dream to serve as a full-time missionary, focusing on mobilising, facilitating and sending missionaries from East Africa to the global mission field.”
Despite setbacks due to Covid-19, he is amazed at the unwavering commitment and passion of local churches and candidates. He adds, “We have been working to send eight couples and five singles from Ethiopia, Kenya, Eretria, Rwanda, Uganda and Tanzania. Our focus is least-reached communities.”
His first five-year goal is to see at least one church from 11 East African countries mobilised.
Missionary profile –Titus Oludotun Kumapayi
Architect Titus Oludotun Kumapayi is the Director for Mission and Evangelism for the Church of Nigeria Society, Anglican Communion. He has an architectural firm in Ibadan, where he lives with his wife, Margaret.
In 1991, during a training session at Haggai Institute in Singapore, I had the conviction not to take church ordination but to sit at my architectural table and use my training for evangelism, soul winning and discipleship.
So in my office each day began with 30 minutes of prayer and Bible exposition. As the fellowship grew, some of the staff members came to me seeking counsel about their choice of career and spouse.
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 – Gusty and Elena Makhutcha
While training to be a pastor at the Evangelical Bible College of Malawi (EBCoM), I had many classmates from Mozambique. They always told me, “There are many pastors in Malawi, but in Mozambique, there are few, yet we have many unreached people. So why don’t you come and work with us in Mozambique?”
I thought and prayed about it for a long time, and as they kept asking, my interest grew. But when I finished Bible school and explained my vision to my seniors, it turned out that I couldn’t go.
I worked as a pastor, and the call to be a missionary stayed with me for nine years. One day, I met a mission mobiliser, Watson Rajaratnam. He asked me about my call and vision.
Missionary profile – Mustafa Abubakar
As a Muslim, the message of Christ crucified for the sin of His people did not make sense to me (and it was foolishness) until the day I heard and by God’s grace truly understood the Holiness and Justice of God and His Law.
It is a waste of time witnessing about Christ crucified without pressing the above to their sin-sick souls at the very beginning.
You don’t begin with, “Jesus loves you and has a wonderful plan for you.”
You begin with, “God is holy and Just. You have broken all His Laws and you will certainly go to hell if you die today!”
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.
Missionary profile – Rev. Edwin B. Fussi
Rev. Edwin B. Fussi is a Tanzanian full-time missionary, with a business background. Before going to missionary training school and starting work among an unreached group in Tanzania, he owned a small shop.
“When my family arrived in the community where we serve it was 99.9 per cent Muslim. There were many barriers to the gospel: we experienced rejection, insults and ridicule.
Our strategy was door-to-door evangelism, but the community rejected us. The youth ran when they saw us, afraid we were government spies. The mosque leaders warned others to avoid us because we would convert them to Christianity. Some people said, “You have your religion, and we have ours.”
Missionary profile – Tariku Gebre
At 8 years old, I was invited by a friend to come to their Sunday school. My friend’s family were evangelicals and thus regarded by both the government and the Orthodox church as heretics and followers of “imported religion.”
Despite repeated warnings from my traditional Orthodox family, I attended the Sunday school for more than two years without their knowledge. I needed something to fill my time, which was a common problem for the children of families of our class. This childhood experience left within me a conviction of the existence of God, counting Him as the Creator.