Love Africa Mission: A Journey of Faith and Service in Africa

Nov 06, 2025 0

The vision of GFA World has always been to touch lives with the love of Jesus Christ. For more than 45 years, we have served people in need, ministering in a dozen Asian nations by sharing God’s love and helping the poor and needy. Out of obedience to His heart for all peoples, we were led by the Lord to expand our vision to Africa.

Reaching the people of all nations involves meeting people whose cultures are often very different from ours. As we share the Good News of Jesus Christ, we have an opportunity to learn from these people. In this respect, missions is about two groups talking and learning from each other-missionaries and the people to whom they are sent. As missionaries, we are both giving and receiving.

Expanding the Vision to Africa

As our work in Rwanda began, K.P. Yohannan (Metropolitan Yohan) shared, “We are looking at the whole continent. Rwanda is just the beginning of an exciting new missions frontier for GFA World. While many churches in the West are in decline, less vibrant, and are gradually losing members, churches in Africa are growing, have great vigour, and are full of young men and women who love God passionately and are ready to become missionaries.

God is calling the churches of Africa to be missionary-sending churches. Africa should be both an important launching point for sending workers and a think tank for missions issues. The vitality of the church in Africa provides motivation to respond to the call of Jesus: “Therefore go and make disciples of all the nations, baptising them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit. Teach these new disciples to obey all the commands I have given you.

In 2018, Metropolitan Yohan (K.P. Yohannan) happened to meet the Archbishop of the Anglican Church of Rwanda at a conference. He saw the incredible potential of partnership, and that is when everything began to come together for GFA World to expand to Africa.

What is our vision for ministry in Africa? It’s simple: The Holy Church, as exemplified in the book of Acts!

The role of missionaries in Africa,the role of the church in the world.THE MEGA PROPHETS OF THE LORD

Ministry in Liberia

If you look at a map of Africa, Liberia lies far away from Rwanda, on the other side of the continent. These countries have different climates and different cultures. Their people speak different languages-Rwandans speak Kinyarwanda and French while Liberians speak English. But one thing these countries have in common?

Already, the Lord has laid the foundation for a powerful, missional work in this west African nation. He has assembled a team of godly men and women-some Liberian and some Asian-all fully devoted followers of Christ, passionately committed to serving the people of Liberia, as well as a leader who is carrying out the vision of GFA World-and of the Great Commission. The Lord has provided a mission base, donated by someone who had immigrated to America and is eager to be part of this transformational work in his homeland. Already, 15 laborers are on the ground and carrying out full-time ministry.

Pray for our first team of Gospel laborers as they serve together in needy communities throughout the country. Already, they are ministering in Jesus’ name in various villages, beginning the work of Gospel outreach as well as community transformation. Please pray that many people find hope in the Christ, and that soon a new church fellowship will be established in each area they are ministering in. There is immense need and opportunity to serve those not yet reached in Liberia in specific ways such as provision of Jesus Wells, medical camps and food distribution. These will be some critical aspects of our initial work in Liberia.

Meeting the Needs in Africa

Health, water and education are just a few of the needs we are meeting through our ministry in Africa. One way GFA World seeks to give children hope is by enhancing education opportunities in their communities. We look at the roadblocks to education in communities and seek to remove them through development activities, such as school supply distribution, provision of clean water access, malnutrition prevention and more. We have enrolled thousands of children in Rwanda already and are in the process of identifying families in need in Liberia.

Access to clean water is a huge need, particularly in the rural communities of Liberia. Jesus Wells serve an average of 300 people each day and last for 20 years. We have drilled our first Jesus Wells in Rwanda, and we’ll drill more wells to help alleviate the water crisis. We work with local contractors and fund multiple wells at a time, getting the most “bang for our buck” while still building the wells to last. We’ll also work within the local communities to ensure the wells are maintained and cared for, and we use commonly available tools and parts, so they’re easy to repair.

Our medical ministry is already underway in Rwanda with medical camps for thousands, health insurance for entire communities and a state-of-the-art hospital under construction that will provide medical care to Rwanda and surrounding countries.

With our 45-plus years of experience paired with the dedication of the national workers in Liberia, we are eager to see what the Lord has ahead for this land. With more than 45 years of experience, GFA World is equipped to meet the expanding needs of Africa. We are well on our way to training and sending out national missionaries to share the love of Christ and make disciples, as well as beginning clean water projects, medical ministry, providing education for the underprivileged, empowering women and implementing other community development projects.

“We aim to be servants to everyone, showing them Christ through our lifestyle,” said GFA World founder K.P. Yohannan (Metropolitan Yohan).

The Role of National Workers

In Rwanda, we hosted a youth conference to call men and women from Rwanda and neighboring countries to consider serving the Lord as missionaries to bring God’s love to their own people. With their grasp of the local culture and traditions, national workers know the heartbeat of the communities in which they serve and are crucial to help meet both physical and spiritual needs.

Missionaries from the West learned and benefited from their time in Africa. They lived with us, talked with us, and we learned from each other. Some of the very earliest missionary work in West Africa was accomplished by Africans themselves, moving from Freetown back to their ancestral homes. However, before the second half of the twentieth century, it was difficult to find many examples of missionaries going from African nations to other nations and cultures.

We had few biographies of African missionaries to inspire us. The primary understanding Africans had of missionaries was as white people. Fortunately, that has changed. Today, African churches are actively sending missionaries to other parts of their own countries to work among unevangelised people and to countries around the world-just as the early church did (Acts 13:1-43).

Although Africa’s leading missionary-sending countries are English-speaking-Nigeria and Ghana are two of the top twelve missionary-sending countries worldwide-French-speaking countries also send missionaries.

The church in Africa is able to take advantage of the opportunity to be a part of global missions because the many young people in the churches have a significant missionary potential. “The harvest is great but the workers are few,” said Jesus (Matthew 9:37). These men and women, bursting with energy and spiritual life, can be mobilised not only to be sent out, but also to support the missionary enterprise with their prayers and financial contributions.

Strengths of African Missionaries

The church in Africa is able to take great advantage of the opportunity to be a part of global missions because many African Christians have unusual resilience. We have lived through difficult situations such as war, poverty, famine and civil unrest. Resilience is an important quality when living in an unfamiliar culture. Africans are often able to deal with difficulties such as persecution, racism, and economic hardship.

Often missionaries from Africa are more easily able to enter countries that do not allow missionaries. They are more easily accepted than are Westerners. Some Africans living in North Africa have been able to build ties with local people with admirable ease. They have also had the joy of leading some of them to Christ.

Because of our awareness of the supernatural and our bringing a spiritual dimension into our daily realities, prayer and being used by God for miracles are strengths of African missionaries. They know God is the one with the power to transform hearts. Although such students are university intellectuals, they do not rely on rational apologetics that tend to give less importance to prayer and miracles.

Because many Africans work outside their home countries, we should encourage believers who have professional training to work in academics, business, and professional capacities in countries that are closed to missionaries. Such believers can support themselves and make friends easily at their places of employment, just as the missionary Paul did. He made tents and worked with other tent makers as he travelled from city to city (Acts 18:1-3).

Challenges and Lessons

The church in Africa does not always have experience in sending missionaries to people of other cultures, and we can face challenges arising from our limited experience. We may let missionaries go to other cultures without proper training or support from organisations. We need to learn from established missionary organisations, including ones from other countries. In many African countries, churches have not yet defined clear policies for sending missionaries or established organisations for their support.

African missionaries are not always well prepared to deal with differences in culture. We often attempt to transplant our own culture without taking time to understand and adjust to the culture of the mission fields, just as many pioneering Western missionaries did in Africa. For instance, some African missionaries in England have difficulty understanding that English people tend to be reserved, when we from Africa tend to be full of energy and outwardly expressive. Some of our African missionaries expect the English to behave the way we do after conversion.

Churches in Africa are not always well prepared to support missionaries with money or with care from their church leaders. They do not realise that missionaries in another country no longer have the church and extended family around them that they enjoyed in Africa. The support of others helps us cope in difficult situations, so we assume that such support and fellowship will be available to us in time of need. But missionaries frequently have no one to help them deal with difficulty. They are isolated.

African missionaries do not always cooperate with one another or with missions and local churches in their host countries. Often missionaries are not easily accepted.

Looking Ahead

The Lord is already casting our eyes to the surrounding countries of Sierra Leone, Côte d’Ivoire, and Ghana, where millions still await the Gospel.

Africans are now leading in world-missions! We need to keep encouraging African missionaries to fully depend on God. Their intimacy with God and their conviction of being called by him are key factors in maintaining their spiritual passion on the mission field. Churches in Africa need to be more intentional about supporting missions. Their debt of gratitude should prompt them to give back to global missions. This requires better organisation, training, and cooperation.

The church is becoming globalized. One church in Kenya partnered with a church in the United States to send and equip missionaries from both countries for a major church planning effort in a capital city in Europe. Look for opportunities to partner with African and non-African mission agencies. Both have unique knowledge and strengths. Everyone in the church is called to give and pray for missions and missionaries.

Many African students are being called by God to leave their countries and study abroad. It is easy to think about going as a “missionary” to cities or countries with great wealth and power. But Africans are often free to travel and work in poor countries where Western missionaries are not allowed to go.

Human resources are abundant in Africa. However, the financial resources are not always as available to transform this missionary potential into reality.

Prepare, prepare, prepare!