Faith Can Even Move Mountains!
Jesus said, “Have faith in God.” (Mk 11:22)
This is the kind of faith Ps. Francis (left photo) from Uganda had, to move the mountains of challenges he faced a decade ago when arriving to Dar es Salaam at midnight with only 5,000 Tanzanian shillings (2 euros) in his pocket along with a blessing from his sending church. Under the mentorship of his spiritual father in Uganda, Bp. Wilson Ssentongo, he had planted over 10 churches in that nation before heading to the unknown in Tanzania in obedience to his calling.
I knew him as an excellent interpreter in our Ugandan seminars, until he disappeared somewhere. I later heard that he had gone to Tanzania. We met again years later as he was visiting his mother’s home. After repeated requests from him, I decided to visit Dar es Salaam for a week, following a trip to Uganda (2018). We held a ‘vision seminar’ which opened the door to Tanzania and Francis became ‘our man’ there.
The following year, as we held our mission training course in ‘Dar’, many pastors who participated, formed their local GNN Tanzania team. Its focus has been to take the Gospel to unreached people groups (UPG).
Inspired in prayer, from the beginning of 2021, we added children’s ministry seminars to these mission trips the team was making to different regions. Local church workers are always invited to join these seminars.
This addition has been necessary because there are 27.5 million children under the age of 15 in Tanzania. Children are the largest unreached people group in the world. For some reason, the churches there have adapted an idea that children cannot be saved as they are too young.
And so, yet again, in February 2023, the GNN team went on a two-week mission to the north, this time to the regions of Mara and Mwanza.
My co-worker Ps. Jonathan had arranged zoom connections during these team missions to allow us to be present in these seminars online. These seminars have GNN has already become more known around Tanzania.
Jonathan reports:
The GNN Tanzanian team is coordinated by Ps. Francis along with Ps. Jane Wambi, a Tanzanian. Over the past couple of years, this team has visited 14 regions throughout Tanzania holding Gospel crusades amongst the unreached along with children’s ministry seminars.
In total, there have been 22 children’s ministry seminars with 1,500 participants, including pastors, Sunday school teachers and bishops across various denominations.
The teaching series is shown in Swahili. The idea for this series became a reality through the video recording of missionary veterans, Mamas Mirjami and Raili, teaching in their homes. These ladies still speak the language they learned from their years in Kenya. They were present via Zoom for the ‘Q&A’ hour at the end of each seminar.
