By an SIM mission worker
Samuel* is a pastor, a husband, and a father of three—living and ministering in North Africa, far from the Ethiopian home where his journey began. Nearly 15 years with SIM have shaped a life devoted to guiding others in faith, wherever he is planted.
It all started when Samuel was just a teenager who signed up for a trip through his church to the southwestern part of Ethiopia.
“The church wanted to expose us to life and missions,” Samuel shared, “I was in grade eleven, and we spent one month with workers in that community… in the bush.”
For many Western readers, the outline of Samuel’s trip will feel familiar: a short-term team, a vacation Bible school, small construction projects, shared worship with a local church.
But unlike the stories we often hear, Samuel was not crossing an ocean or hemisphere. He was a young Ethiopian believer stepping into a neighboring context — close in proximity, yet strikingly different in language, lifestyle, and spiritual landscape.
“As a teenager, that was life-changing for me,” Samuel shared, “It exposed me to people who don’t worry about what they eat or what they wear, but they are very thankful. This was a turning point in my Christianity.”
When Samuel returned to the city, he felt out of place and misunderstood. Few believed what he had been witness to in the bush, but the experience stayed with him, quietly reshaping the direction of his life.
In the years that followed, Samuel completed his education and accepted a teaching assignment in southeastern Ethiopia. There, he met his wife. From the beginning, they shared a growing burden for unreached people groups.
Three months after their wedding, they were invited back to the bush for what was framed as a “second honeymoon.”
“We didn’t know they were recruiting us,” Samuel laughed.
They accepted the invitation and visited missionaries serving among the Mursi people.
It was hardly a honeymoon. Flooded rivers, ramshackle huts, and the constant discomfort of life in the bush quickly stripped away any illusion of ease. They were city people, and nothing about it fit.
But, again, the experience lingered, and then came into focus six months later in their home church in the capital.
“Our church pastor started a series called ‘Leaving Your Comfort Zone,’” Samuel recalled, “that Sunday he was talking about how Christ left his comfort zone to come to earth and die for sinners. And that was the stamp for us.”
By faith, Samuel and Eden* went to serve with the Mursi people. For more than five years they learned the ropes, bells, whistles, struggles, and blessings of ministry in the Ethiopian bush. In those years, they had two children, faithfully raised in the word and in ministry.
Later, the family moved Northeastern to serve among the Afar people. Over the next three years, they helped mobilize more than 1,500 believers in the region—equipping church leaders, pastors, and local ministers.
Then, it was time for a sabbatical. Or rather, in Samuel’s case, he decided to pursue a master’s degree in Christian-Muslim relations.
This redirection in study unfolded alongside a series of unexpected moments. Eden traveled to Kenya and met missionaries serving in North Africa. Samel attended a friend’s church Their church in Addis Ababa welcomed an Egyptian pastor. Shortly after Eden’s grandfather (who was Muslim) passed away.
What seemed like separate events were, in time, revealed as part of God’s quiet work—guiding their family toward the Arab world.
“You Ethiopians, you are sleeping!” Samuel recalled the impassioned speech of the visiting Egyptian pastor, “People are dying, they are waiting for you. You, Ethiopians, need to send [missionaries].”
And as the call became clear, Samuel, Eden, and their children said yes.
Samuel completed his degree on June 18, 2022. By July 10, the family had arrived in North Africa—pastor’s visa in hand.
“Me and my family have a very unique visa — a religious visa to work with Sub-Saharan African university students,” Samuel explained. “This means we have the freedom to meet in a church building, to worship and do any kind of work inside [that] building.”
This ministry is not without limits. They are not free to engage in street evangelism, lead tent revivals, or proselytize their neighbors. Those types of activities are still outlawed by the constitution. But their status does open unique doors for ministry and fellowship with students as well as local believers. So long as those activities remain inside the walls of their white church building.
“[One] role that we play is to organize local believers, to equip them and encourage them to stand firm in their faith and be a faithful witness to their own communities,” Samuel continued, “And we also are trying to mobilize the Sub Saharan students who are learning on campus to reach the next generation of young men and women on [North African] campuses.”
From a distance, stories like Samuel’s are often misread.
The presence of Sub-Saharan Africans in North Africa is often reduced to a single narrative. That of migration, hardship, and displacement. But that telling, while not untrue, is far from complete.
“We have students who have a passion to become long-term [ministers] here,” Samuel explained.
Through the discipleship program in the church, through bible studies and campus ministries, Sub-Saharan students are developing a heart for service and ministry. Despite the difficulty, prejudice, and ongoing political tension, some are hoping to stay, reorienting their lives around a calling to serve the Lord in North Africa and beyond.
“The greatest joy I have seen is a student from the Congo who is very passionate and keeps asking us how he can be a [minister],” Samuel shared, “who knows? Maybe he’s going to be the next leader in a church [like ours].”
The tapestry of ministry in North Africa is incredibly diverse. There are Westerners starting businesses and teaching in schools; Sub-Saharans are engaging in the shepherding work of discipleship and teaching, and there is the local body fighting for unity and multiplication in their own land. Good partnership and collaboration are key in this critical work for the Kingdom.
“We Africans are just beginning to contribute to the global missions,” Samuel explained, “There are difficult places for Westerners and Europeans to go, but that are very easy for Africans to go. If we contribute the human capital, [and] if funding and knowledge are coming from the West and Europe…we are bringing it all together for God’s kingdom.”
The path is neither easy nor linear, but there is much to learn from this small, multilingual, multicultural church—set amid a sea of mosques.
“We come from different backgrounds, and so we have different mindsets…and it takes time to learn,” Samuel reflected with a smile, “But there is one thing that is in common for all of us: love.”
Love expressed through communion, shared meals, time in worship, study, and service – the Lord is doing something new in the scarce white church buildings of North Africa.
Samuel is one testimony and minister among a great cloud of witnesses in the region: “from whom the whole body, joined and held together by every join with which it is equipped, when each part is working properly, makes the body grow so that it builds itself up in love.” (Ephesians 4:16)
*Names changed.
