Paul is from Ghana and has been serving in North Africa with his wife, Juliet, for the last 20 years. They have recently become AIM members and will continue to serve in this challenging and sensitive location with our support.
Paul, how were you and Juliet called to North Africa?
Our call to North Africa was divinely orchestrated by God. After my conversion, I was immediately enrolled into a discipleship class. After a long period of waiting upon God to know his will, he gave me a deep conviction for mission work. I attended seminars, conventions, training and Bible studies at the International Bible Training Centre (IBTC) in Lagos, Nigeria. The leadership of the church noticed the grace of God in my life and I was called to serve in the local church. A further call came when I was asked to assist a mission pastor in North Africa a few years later and I took over from him as the mission pastor.
How have you been supported in your role?
My church was involved in every aspect: in training, preparing, and financial and spiritual support. Most of my friends are are brethren from the church who gave me moral and spiritual support, and my family were happy for me.
What difference does that kind of support make?
Prayer and financial support are a big deal, especially serving in North Africa. It helps you as a Christian worker to focus on making ministry the main thing and means that we can take care of the physical and material needs of our family.
How has your support changed over the years?
Our church supports us in prayer and through leadership training. However, our denomination brought in a policy which means that financial support for missionaries ends after 15 years on the field. So the finances we relied on, which contributed to the kingdom advances we were a part of, were withdrawn several years ago. Given the peculiarities of our mission field, this has been a real challenge. Many sending churches in Africa seem to underestimate the impact that a lack of financial support has on missionary morale – indeed upon the progress of the work itself.
How do you see God at work?
The truth is that we experience God’s protection every day. One example is when the police were given details of a network of house churches in our city. The secret service had discovered five locations, one of which was where I taught every Sunday morning. So, one Sunday during Ramadan, the police went from one house church to another arresting everyone: men, women, and children. On that day we had four local believers among us. If they had been found it would’ve been extremely serious, but God was so good to us. Without knowing what was going on, we closed our meeting earlier than usual, so that when the police arrived, everyone had gone home. There was no one in the building, so they left. The Lord miraculously delivered us!
How has God opened doors?
In a country like this one it is extremely difficult to reach out, except when the Lord opens doors. You can labour for a long time but not see any genuine fruit. It was only when we began seriously seeking God through prayer and fasting that he began to open doors. It was during this time that I received a call from an unknown local lady asking me for a French Bible. She became the first genuine convert we had in the country and through her the Lord opened other doors, enabling us to reach many other people.
What other fruit have you seen?
We saw real fruit when the Lord opened a woman’s heart; she had a powerful experience of the Holy Spirit. Her conversion was so sound and genuine that she became an example among the expatriate and the local believers. It wasn’t long before her two children, a boy of 18 and a girl of 16, accepted the Lord and were saved. Her children were students but after finishing their studies, they have gone on to be instrumental in reaching out to many other local people.
What are your hopes for the future?
Our hopes are to reach out to as many souls as the Lord enables us, training them to be well established in the faith, helping them to become leaders and soul winners themselves.
