800 Baptisms at Age 32
KENYA | October 12
Francis Ndacha, 32
Francis Ndacha has led more than 800 people to baptism in Kenya. Yet he is only 32 and not employed by the Seventh-day Adventist Church.
How is that possible?
Francis didn’t attend church growing up in Nyeri, a city in central Kenya. His father, a sheep herder, belonged to one Christian denomination, and his mother belonged to another. He had no desire to go to either church.
As a young man, he opened a second-hand shoe business in another city, Kitale, and befriended several preachers from a non-Christian world religion. He resolved to join their religion, but he couldn’t figure out how to convert.
One day, he attended a public meeting between three preachers from the world religion and five Christian preachers. The meeting — which organizers called a “dialogue” and had arranged with the permission of local authorities — saw the speakers take turns discussing their beliefs on a city street. Francis was shocked to hear the non-Christian preachers speak about good genies and bad genies. They said genies who joined their non-Christian world religion were good, but those who didn’t join were bad. Francis resolved at the moment not to convert. Even though he lacked an understanding of religious matters, he felt confident that all genies were actually fallen angels, or demons. He refused to believe in the existence of good demons.
When the dialogue ended, Francis asked the Christian preachers which church they represented.
“Seventh-day Adventist,” one replied.
Francis had never heard of Adventists.
Back at his shoe stand, he asked an elderly man selling shoes nearby about the Adventist Church.
“That’s a satanic church,” the old man said. “It teaches people about beasts with horns on their heads.”
Francis decided not to become an Adventist.
Eight months passed, and Francis attended another public dialogue. He went every day for a week. The Adventist preachers incorporated Bible studies into their presentations, and Francis was convinced that they were speaking the truth. He and three others were baptized.
Francis, who was 20, immediately wanted to proclaim Jesus. He bought books and DVDs to learn how to preach. After a year, he sold his shoe business and began to travel from town to town, preaching on the streets and participating in dialogues with preachers from the non-Christian world religion. When people asked for baptism, he directed them to the Adventist Church.
“As we preach, we see many miracles that Christ does through us,” Francis said. “Fifty people have asked for baptism in the past month alone.”
At one place, local non-Christian clergy begged for preachers to come from Kenya’s capital, Nairobi, to counter Francis’ preaching at a public dialogue. The preachers arrived, and Francis dialogued with them for four days. On the fifth day, the local clergy forbade their members from attending any more dialogues. Then the police asked Francis to leave town.
“We didn’t baptize anyone, but the local Seventh-day Adventist church was very appreciative of our efforts and presented us with a new public address system for our street meetings,” Francis said.
In July 2018, he participated in a dialogue in a town where many people had converted to the non-Christian world religion. As townspeople listened to Francis compare the teachings of their holy book with the Bible, many decided to return to Jesus. This angered an official, who wasn’t a Christian, and he ordered Francis’ arrest.
As Francis sat at the police station, a crowd formed outside, demanding his release. “Let him continue preaching,” the people chanted. “Now we have come to know the truth.”
After five hours, Francis was released on a bond of 10,000 shillings (U.S.$100), and the crowd dispersed.
Back on the street, Francis shifted the focus of his presentations to Bible prophecy. Twenty-seven people were baptized, and a man raised in a non-Christian family is completing Bible studies in preparation for baptism. He said Francis’ troubles with the police attracted him to Christ.
“I saw how the non-Christians acted, and I saw that they weren’t sincere,” he said. “How could they use force and arrest him? They aren’t sincere.”
Francis travels nonstop with his wife, 4-year-old daughter, 3-week-old son, and several Adventist friends, who help him preach. He said no one has to be a pastor to proclaim Jesus’ soon coming.
“You don’t have to even work for the church to preach,” he said. “Everyone can share the good news that Jesus is coming soon!”
Story Tips
Watch a YouTube video of Francis: bit.ly/Francis-Ndacha.
Download medium-resolution photos for this story from our Facebook page: bit.ly/fb-mq. Photos are uploaded on Sundays, six days before the mission story is to be presented.
Download high-resolution photos and more from the ADAMS databank: bit.ly/800-Baptisms-at-Age-32
Download high-resolution photos of Thirteenth Sabbath projects from ADAMS: bit.ly/ECD-projects-2019
Fast Facts
Kenya has the highest number of Quakers in the world, with about 133,000 members.
"ဝိညာဥ္အလံုး၈၀ဝအားအသက္၃၂ႏွစ္အရြယ္မွာေရႏွစ္ျခင္းေပးႏိုင္ျခင္း" ေအာက္တိုဘာလ(၁၂)ရက္၊ ေရးသားသူ-ဖရင့္စီး(စ)ဒါၾကာ-၃၂ႏွစ္၊ ဖရင့္စီး(စ)ဒါၾကာဟာ ကင္ယာႏိုင္ငံမွာဝိညာဥ္အလံုး၈၀ဝအား၊ေရႏွစ္ျခင္းခံယူဖို႔လုပ္ ေဆာင္ႏိုင္ခဲ့သူျဖစ္ပါတယ္။သူဟာေျမာ္လင့္ျခင္းအသင္းေတာ္ကခန္႔အပ္ထားတဲ့အမႈေဆာင္မဟုတ္ တဲ့အျပင္၊အသက္ကလည္း၃၂ႏွစ္သာရွိပါေသးတယ္။ ဖရင့္စီး(စ)ဟာ၊ကင္ယာႏိုင္ငံအလယ္ပိုင္းမွာရွိတဲ့နီေအရီးျမိဳ႔မွာၾကီးျပီးခဲ့သူျဖစ္ပါ တယ္။သူဟာတခါမွဘုရားေက်ာင္းမသြားခဲ့ပါဘူး။ သူ႔အေဖနဲ႔အေမဟာခရစ္ယာန္ေတြျဖစ္ၾကေပမဲ့၊ အသင္းေတာ္မတူၾကပါဘူး။ သူဟာအေဖရဲ႕အသင္းေတာ္မွာေရာ၊အေမရဲ႕အသင္းေတာ္မွာပါမသြား ခ်င္ခဲ့ပါဘူး။ သူဟာ ေကတာလီျမိဳ႕မွာဖိနပ္အေဟာင္းေရာင္းတဲ့ဆိုင္ဖြင့္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ခရစ္ယာန္မဟုတ္တဲ့ အျခားဘာသာေရးတရားေဟာတရာေတြနဲ႔မိတ္ေဆြဖြဲ႕ခဲ့ပါတယ္။သူတို႔ဘာသာထဲမွာဝင္ခ်င္ေပမဲ့အ ေၾကာင္းအမ်ိဳးမ်ိဳးေၾကာင့္မဝင္ျဖစ္ခဲ့ပါဘူး။ တစ္ေန႔က်ေတာ့၊ေလာကဘာသာေရးတရားေဟာဆရာသံုးပါးနဲ႔၊ခရစ္ယာန္ဘာသာ ေရးတရားေဟာဆရာငါးငါးတို႔ရဲ႕အျပန္အလွန္ေဆြးေႏြးပြဲမွာဖရင့္စီး(စ)လည္းတက္ေရာက္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ အဲဒီေဆြးေႏြးပြဲမွာ ေလာကဘာသာေရးတရားေဟာဆရာေတြ႕၊နတ္ေကာင္းေတြနဲ႔နတ္ဆိုးေတြရွိ ေၾကာင္းေဟာၾကားတဲ့အခါမွာ၊ ဖရင့္စီး(စ)အေနနဲ႔၊နတ္ေတြဟာက်ဆံုးခဲ့တဲ့ေကာင္းကင္တမန္ေတြ ျဖစ္တဲ့အတြက္နတ္ေကာင္းေတြရွိတယ္ဆိုတာကိုလံုးဝမယံုႏိုင္ခဲ့ပါ..။ ေဆြးေႏြးပြဲျပီးတဲ့အခါခရစ္ယာန္တရားေဟာဆရာေတြို႕၊ဖရင့္စီး(စ)က ဘယ္အသင္းေတာ္ ကေနလာၾကသလဲလို႔ေမးျမန္းခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ခရစ္ယာန္တရားေဟာဆရာတစ္ပါးက၊ေျမာ္လင့္ျခင္းအ သင္းေတာ္မွျဖစ္ေၾကာင္းျပန္ေျဖတဲ့အခါ၊သူတခါမွမၾကားဖူးတဲ့အသင္းေတာ္ျဖစ္လို႔၊အံ့ဩခဲ့မိပါတယ္။ သူတို႔နဲ႔အတူရပ္ေနတဲ့အဖိုးၾကီးတစ္ဦးက၊"ဒီအသင္းေတာ္ဟာ၊သားရဲကေခါင္းေပၚမွာခ်ိဳ၁၀ေခ်ာင္းရွိ တယ္လို႔ေဟာၾကားတယ္။စာတန္ရဲ႕အသင္းေတာ္ျဖစ္တယ္"လို႔ ေျပာခဲ့ပါတယ္။ဖရင့္စီး(စ)ကေျမာ္ လင့္ျခင္းအသင္းေတာ္ထဲကိုမဝင္ဖို႔ဆံုးျဖတ္ခဲ့ျပန္ပါတယ္။ အသက္(၂၀)သာရွိေသးတဲ႔၊ဖရင့္စီး(စ)ဟာသခင္ေယ႐ႈအေၾကာင္းကိုလူသိရွင္ၾကား သိပ္ေျပာခ်င္ေနသူျဖစ္တယ္။ သူဟာတရားေဟာဖို႔စာအုပ္နဲ႔ဒီဗီဒီအေခြေတြကိုဝယ္ယူျပီးေလ့လာခဲ့ ပါတယ္။ တစ္ႏွစ္ၾကာတဲ့အခါ၊သူ႔ရဲ႕ဖိနပ္ဆိုင္ကိုေရာင္းျပီးေတာ့၊တစ္ျမိဳ႕ျပီးတစ္ျမိဳ႕လမ္းမၾကီး ေတြေပၚမွာလိုက္လံတရားေဟာခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ေလာကဘာသာေရးတရားေဟာဆရာေတြနဲ႔ဘုရားတရား ကိုအျပန္အလွန္ေဆြးေႏြးၾကျပီး၊ေရႏွစ္ျခင္းခံခ်င္သူရွိလာတဲ့အခါမွာ ေျမာ္လင့္ျခင္းအသင္းေတာ္သို႔ ပို႔ေဆာင္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ "ဘုရားတရားအေၾကာင္းေဟာတဲ့အခါမွာ၊ခရစ္ေတာ္ရဲ႕ထူးဆန္းတဲ့အရာေတြ ကိုေတြ႕ျမင္ခဲ့ရပါတယ္။ လြန္ခဲ့တဲ့လမွာဘဲလူအေယာက္(၅၀)ႏွစ္ျခင္းယူဖို႔ေတာင္းဆိုခဲ့ပါတယ္" လို႔ဖရင့္စီး(စ)ကေျပာခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ခရစ္ယာန္မဟုတ္တဲ့ဘုန္းေတာ္ၾကီးေတြ႕ ဖရင့္စီး(စ)နဲ႔အျပန္အလွန္ေဆြးေႏြးဖို႔ကင္ယာႏိုင္ ငံရဲ႕ျမိဳ႕ေတာ္ ႏို႐ိုဘီးမွာ ေတြ႕ဆံုဖို႔စီစဥ္ခဲ့ၾကပါတယ္။ ဘုန္းေတာ္ၾကီးေတြလည္းေရာက္လာၾကျပီးေလးရက္တိုင္တိုင္၊ဖရင့္စီး(စ)နဲ႔အျပန္အလွန္ ေဆြးေႏြးခဲ့ၾကပါတယ္။ ငါးရက္ေျမာက္ေန႔မွာ၊ျမိဳ႕ထဲကဘုန္းေတာ္ၾကီးေတြကေဆြးေႏြးပြဲကို႐ုပ္သိမ္း ခိုင္းပါေတာ့တယ္။ ရဲေတြကလည္းျမိဳ႕ထဲကေန အျမန္ဆံုးထြက္သြားဖို႔ ဖရင့္စီး(စ)ကိုအမိန္႔ေပးခဲ့ ပါတယ္။ ဖရင့္စီး(စ)က၊"ဝိညာဥ္တစ္မွေရႏွစ္ျခင္းမေပးႏိုင္ခဲ့ေပမယ့္၊ဌာေနေျမာ္လင့္ျခင္းအသင္း ေတာ္ကကြ်န္ေတာ့ရဲ႕ ၾကိဳးစားဆက္ကပ္မႈကိုႏွစ္သက္ျပီး၊လမ္းမၾကီးေပၚမွာလူထုတရားပြဲ ျပဳလုပ္ က်င္းပဖို႔စီစဥ္ေပးခဲ့ပါတယ္"လို႔ အားရပါးရေျပာခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ၂၀၁၈ခုႏွစ္၊ ဇူလိုင္လမွာ ခရစ္ယာန္မရွိတဲ့ျမိဳ႔ငယ္တျမိဳ႕ရဲ႕အျပန္အလွန္ေဆြးေႏြးပြဲမွာ ဖရင့္စီး(စ)လည္းပါဝင္ခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ဖရင့္စီး(စ)အေနနဲ႔ သူတို႔ရဲ႕သန္႔ရွင္းတဲ့စာအုပ္နဲ႔က်မ္းစာအုပ္ကို ႏိႈင္းယွဥ္ျပတဲ့အခါ၊ျမိဳ႕သားေတြအမ်ားၾကီးဟာ ခရစ္ေတာ္ကိုယံုၾကည္လက္ခံခဲ့ၾကပါတယ္။အဲဒါနဲ႔၊ ခရစ္ယာန္မဟုတ္တဲ့ျမိဳ႕ရဲ႕အရာရွိတစ္ဦးဟာစိတ္ဆိုးျပီးဖရင့္စီး(စ)ကို ဖမ္းဖို႔အမိန္႔ေပးခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ဖရင့္စီး(စ)ကိုရဲစခန္းမွာေခၚလာတဲ့အခါ၊ ရဲစခန္းရဲ႕အျပင္မွာျမိဳ႕သားေတြစုလာၾကျပီး၊ "သူ႔ကိုဆက္ျပီးတရားေဟာခိုင္းပါ။ယခုမွပဲစစ္မွန္တဲ့ဘုရားကိုသိရွိလာရတယ္"လို႔ အထပ္ထပ္ေအာ္ ေျပာခဲ့ၾကပါတယ္။ ငါးနာရီၾကာျပီးေနာက္၊ရဲအရာရွိက ဖရင့္စီး(စ)ထံမွဒဏ္ေငြေဒၚလာ(၁၀ဝ)ယူျပီးျပန္လႊတ္ခဲ့ ပါတယ္။လူစုၾကီးလည္းမိမိေနရာအသီးသီးသို႔ျပန္သြားခဲ့ၾကပါတယ္။ လမ္းမၾကီးေပၚမွာပဲ ဖရင့္စီး(စ)ဟာက်မ္းစာမွ အနာဂတ္သတင္းစကားေတြကိုေဟာ ၾကားခဲ့ပါတယ္။အဲဒီေနာက္ဝိညာဥ္၂၇လံုးကိုေရႏွစ္ျခင္းေပးခဲ့ပါတယ္။ခရစ္ယာန္မဟုတ္တဲ့မိသား စုမွ ေရႏွစ္ျခင္းခံဖို႔အဆင္သင့္ရွိေနတဲ့အမ်ိဳးသားတစ္ဦးက၊ "ဖရင့္စီး(စ)ကိုရဲအရာရွိကျပႆနာရွာ လို႔ခရစ္ေတာ္ကိုယံုၾကည္ပါတယ္"လို႔ လာေျပာခဲ့ပါတယ္။ "ခရစ္ယာန္မဟုတ္တဲ့လူေတြမွာ၊ မေကာင္းတဲ့အက်င့္နဲ႔ေျဖာင့္မတ္မႈမရွိေၾကာင္းကြ်န္ ေတာ္ေတြ႕ခဲ့ရပါတယ္။ဘာျဖစ္လို႔ ရဲေတြအာဏာသံုးျပီး သူ႔ကိုဖမ္းဆီးရမွာလဲ"လို႔သူကဆက္ေျပာခဲ့ ပါေသးတယ္။ ဖရင့္စီး(စ)မွာဇနီးနဲ႔ေလးအရြယ္သမီးတစ္ဦးအျပင္၊သံုးပတ္သာရွိေသးတဲ့သားနဲ႔အ တူ၊တရားေဟာရာမွာကူညီခဲ့တဲ့ေျမာ္လင့္ျခင္းအသင္းေတာ္မွ မိတ္ေဆြမ်ားနဲ႔အတူမရပ္မနားခရီးဆက္ ခဲ့ၾကပါတယ္။ သခင္ေယ႐ႈျပန္ျြကဆင္းလာမဲ့အေၾကာင္းကိုေဟာဖို႔အတြက္ပါစတာ ျဖစ္ဖို႔မလိုပါဘူး လို႔ သူကေျပာခဲ့ပါေသးတယ္။ "သခင္ေယ႐ႈ၊မၾကာခင္ျပန္ျြကဆင္းလာမဲ့အေၾကာင္းေဟာဖို႔အတြက္ အသင္းေတာ္မွာအ ခ်ိန္ျပည့္အမႈေတာ္ေဆာင္ျဖစ္ဖို႔မလိုပါဘူး..။ယံုၾကည္သူတိုင္းေဟာလို႔ရပါတယ္"လို႔ သူကဆက္ ေျပာခဲ့ပါတယ္။ ဒီတပတ္ရဲ႕သက္ေသခံခ်က္ေလးကေတာ့ဒီေလာက္ပါဘဲ..။ -ဝ-