Posted: 6/11/04
Student missionaries return from Kenya
By John Hall
Texas Baptist Communications
While most student summer missionaries are traveling to their ministry locations, several groups already have returned and are praising God for the fruit he produced during their trips.
Ten Wayland Baptist University students and the campus' Baptist Student Ministry director, Donnie Brown, used storytelling to share the gospel in Kenya May 2-21. Storytelling is an evangelistic technique for reaching illiterate people.
| Joseph Johnson, a Weatherford College student, writes in a prayer journal during a reflection time at an experiential worship service held as part of the commissioning service for Texas Baptist student missionaries. |
Groups of about 60 people in Northern Kenya listened to the missionaries tell biblical stories from creation through Christ for more than an hour and a half, Brown said. In all, the missionaries shared the gospel with more than 2,000 people.
And the people responded. Nearly 200 people professed Christ as Lord.
The response was especially unique because most of the new believers were older men who were resistant to earlier evangelism efforts, Brown said. In Kenyan society, men carry a strong influence over their families. To convert the man is to convert his entire family in many instances.
“For the older men to accept Christ is very significant,” he said.
In Costa Rica, eight University of North Texas students distributed more than 1,300 copies of the Gospel of John during a one-week trip in mid-May as part of Operation Go, an effort to saturate Central America with the gospel in hopes that it will spark a church-starting movement.
During their work, 135 people indicated they wanted to participate in a Bible study, and three people made professions of faith for the first time. Two of those were in the first home Amanda Bell, an intern at the UNT Baptist Student Ministry, visited.
Bell and a missionary found an older man, a younger man and his pregnant girlfriend sitting on the porch of a house. While talking to them, the young man indicated he wanted to become a Christian and prayed that Christ take hold of his life.
Shortly after, the girlfriend indicated she wanted to follow Christ as well. As she prayed, her boyfriend put his hand on her stomach and prayed for the child.
“We were just blown away by what God had done,” Bell said.
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