Will Jones leads Awakening Ministries International. He invited me to go with him to Sierra Leone. We did a pastor’s conference, evangelism training, and village ministry. We baptized 152 people. In today’s Evangelism Podcast you will hear the stories about what God did in West Africa.
Website: https://www.awakeningmintl.org
Transcript:
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (00:00):
Well, Jones leads, awakening, ministries, international. He invited me to go with him to Sierra Leone. We did a pastors conference, evangelism training and village ministry. We baptized 152 people who decided to become believers in today’s evangelism podcast. You’ll hear the stories and the miracles that God did in West Africa,
Evangelism Podcast Host (00:24):
Jesus said go into all the world and preach the gospel. Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord shall be say, welcome to the evangelism podcast with Dr. Daniel King, where Daniel interviews, full-time evangelists, pastors, missionaries, and normal everyday Christians to discover how they share their faith, their powerful testimonies, and amazing stories that will inspire you to reach people with the good news. And now here’s your host, missionary and evangelist Daniel King. Welcome to
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:01):
The evangelism podcast. I’m Daniel King and I am with will Jones. Once again. Thank you so much for being on the evangelism podcast.
Will Jones (01:10):
It’s always a privilege, my friend.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (01:12):
So we are here in the nation of Sierra Leone and you invited me to come along with you on one of your missions here. And we have had an absolutely tremendous week of ministry here. God has moved in, in great ways. What are some of the tremendous successes that you feel that we’ve seen this week?
Will Jones (01:34):
Yeah. You know, due to just the whole COVID thing, we had to restrategize this particular festival, because we weren’t able to do a large gathering, which is typical of our model, but we actually had enhanced some of the outreach methodologies to kind of accompany the festival anyway. And so we basically did mobile festivals with probably just over a hundred locals together that partner with us. And so we kind of had a blitz team of going to all these different areas and throughout, you know, what God did here. We saw that we hadn’t been able to reach just over 5,000 people. Personally, you know, we did a radio conversation, which went out to several hundreds of thousand over this whole district and beyond so 152 people that we were able to personally baptize during this time, five new churches were getting started with some church organizations that had put people in place this past week Sunday they met. And so, yeah, God has did great things goes to 40. I want to say recorded miracles and the Lord did and healings, and it was just a great trip. And obviously it’s always great to have the master evangelist. Yeah, no King with me.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (02:54):
Well, we had a wonderful time. It’s always good to minister together with friends. You know, the Bible says that one will put a thousand to flight, but two will put 10,000. And so I always find that when I’m around other evangelists, we’re able to accomplish more for God. And really what we saw here is just like a week before we were supposed to come the government of Sierra Leone and nouns that no mass gatherings would be allowed because of COVID. And so we had to switch it up a little bit and rather than having everybody come to the festival, we basically went to them. And so we went out into a bunch of villages and towns and, you know, in each village there were where people, especially a lot of Muslims, I thought it was really cool. And every service I think that we did during our time here, we have had Muslims that have been there even at the pastor’s conference.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (03:51):
We didn’t know that there were Muslims there, but there was an easy mom who was the leader of a local mosque who came to the pastor’s conference and sat there through two days, just listening. And I remember in one village, there were two moms, Muslim leaders that came and they were sitting right in the front row, on the bench. They had the little Muslim caps on and they listened to the entire gospel presentation. And I said, how many of you want Jesus to forgive your sins? And both of them raised their hands. And then I let everyone in a prayer. And I kind of peeked out of the corner when I looked over at them. And both those guys were saying the prayer with us and for a country here that is a very high percentage Muslim. I read on one website it’s like 78% Muslim in Sierra Leone. That is a tremendous victory to be able to share Jesus with, with so many Muslims. What are some of the, the stories or highlights that really will stand out to you from the strip that you’ll take back with you?
Will Jones (04:59):
Yeah, I would say one of our camera guys that joined the media team is from Sierra Leone. His name was darkish and he’s Muslim really traditional and his practices. But for the most part, his family’s Muslim, he’s eight or non-family members. And on the second to last day of our our week of festivities he communicated to one of our team leaders that he wanted to convert. And we were all like, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, what do you mean? Explain that. And on the baptism day on the different villages and people were coming, he said, I want to be baptized today. He says, I believe, believe in Jesus, I’m converting. So we had, one of our interpreters was very astute in the Koran is African, but he speaks Arabic. He knows Koran. He was a former Muslim. We had him walk him through the gospel to make sure he understood it and that he was wanting to come to Christ and he did. And we baptized him that day. He’s a, he’s a big strong man, but he came to Jesus Christ and you can see the genuine conversion of the Holy spirit making him a new person. And now he’s ready to go back to share the gospel with all eight or nine of his family members in hopes that they would receive Christ as well. Wonderful stories like that happened on this trip. And he was just one of the mini
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (06:33):
He’s, one of 152 people that we have the privilege to baptize. And then of course, in all the services, if you add it up together with about 1,740, that made an indication that they had decided to follow Jesus, which is a huge victory, especially for the size city that we were in. It wasn’t a very big city. How many people did they say were in there? Yeah,
Will Jones (06:59):
It was just about 25,000 of in that particular city Penn, Denver, Sierra Leone.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:05):
So we had over just over 5,000 people that we minister to face-to-face, which is about 20% of the population there. So if you can minister 20% of any population center, I, I consider that a huge win as an evangelist. So we also saw some great miracles. We were in one village on Friday night and there was a, a mother who brought her son. He looked like he was about seven years old and he was deaf in one ear. And I preached on healing. Actually, you preached on Zack Kias that night, and then you invited me up after you’re done giving the alter call and you invited me to, to pray for the sick. And so I was praying for the sick and I told the people, I said, you know, take your hand and place it on the part of your body where there’s pain.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (07:55):
And so this mama, she put her hand on the ear that was death on her little boy. And she said, he’d been deaf for two years. And as we were praying, she said that a black rock or a growth, something fell out of his ear into her hand. And she looked at it and it was all gross and she threw it on the ground. And then she tested her boys here and, and he was able to hear. And so she came up and testified. We tested the boys healing I clapped and he was able to clap and the boy was a little scared, but the moms, she was super excited that her, her boy had been healed. And so that was tremendous. One of the great things that happened here was the opportunity to train eight evangelists and put sound systems in their hands that they’re going to be able to use to go out and to preach the gospel. And so this is part of a new initiative that your ministry is launching out, into train national evangelists. Tell me a little bit about what you see God doing with that program.
Will Jones (09:06):
Yeah. You know, it’s something that we pondered really for the last year and there’s to some prayer and seeking counsel from other orgs that, you know, are doing things maybe in a fashion that we would want it to maybe adopt, or God was putting on our heart. We kind of built this structure for raising up national evangelist and really deploying them to the unreached people group areas. And so there’s a variety of nuances that we’ll go through in that, you know, from the aspect of discovering them in the country, working with church partnerships and organizations, to developing them through, you know, training throughout the year, through deploying them and assignments through what we would call preaching points and unreached areas. And this really came out of an aspect of multiplication. And I don’t, I think evangelists often thinking of aspect of addition, do a festival, do a large event, see hundreds or thousands of people come to Christ.
Will Jones (10:16):
That’s really addition, but when you can help one person know how to reach another person that knows how to reach another person that becomes multiplication. And so the evangelists are going to be practicing outreaches each month, several times a month with the sound equipment we’ve given them, there’ll be a, a leadership in place that is already there that will help encourage them. We’ll help track the results that they are getting insane healings, baptisms people entering into discipleship groups that will eventually lead to church planting. You know, the gospel is not just about conversion. It’s about discipleship, which leads to conversion. And so we want to make sure that we’re seeing people come to Christ preaching the gospel making disciples, but we’re also working with indigenous leaders to see believers become disciples through obedience, to God’s word, and reaching other people that are in their people group or outside of it.
Will Jones (11:13):
And so this will be an exponential aspect that we add to our ministry. And, you know, as we were brainstorming, you were throwing out some thoughts too. And we just kind of really formulated the term Phillip project, you know, which models Philip in acts eight and how he went from town to town, preaching the gospel, even Jesus, every town, every city, every village, he tried to go to preach the gospel. And so these evangelists, you know, we started with eight to go by the end of the year is to have 25 that we’ve identified and discovered were developed, and that there’ll be deployed with the resources. They need to preach a number of times a month in those areas that we’ll eventually see new churches started.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (11:58):
And so the ultimate goal is to start churches, especially in the rural areas of Sierra Leone that the Eastern area over towards the border with Liberia has a lot of need for new churches. And even this week, there’s potential that five churches will be planted out of what was accomplished this week. Talk to me a little bit about long-term strategy for Sierra Leone and what you’re hoping to accomplish here in this nation.
Will Jones (12:29):
Yeah. You know, we’ve, we’ve partnered with one of the national church organizations. That’s very strong here. They have good credibility and they’re doing great work and we’ve just come alongside of them. And some others that have wanted to join, you know, the, the, the Jesus film and some of the orgs that we’re just going to use the best strategy and method that the Holy spirit gives us to really reach these Sierra Leoneans with the gospel. As you were saying, it’s, you know, literally over about 70% Muslim and the harvest is plentiful here. It’s open. And so we thank God for that. And so w w what we’re doing is really trying to be a catalyst for church planting. You know, AMI is not a church planning organization, but we partner with church planting orcs to really serve as a catalyst for them.
Will Jones (13:19):
And I would encourage every evangelistic ministry to begin to process that because we don’t want to just have a gain conversions. We want disciples, we want the spread of the gospel. And so many of our organizations may not carry that component, but we can surely partner with people on the ground that will, that I’ve seen fruit in are seeing fruit. So that’s what we’ve decided to do is let’s partner with some key orgs that are going raising up leaders, multiplying the gospel through church planting efforts. And we’re doing our role as an evangelistic org to help catalyze that and accelerate that growth for them so that the nation of Sierra Leone may be reached. So it’s about a two to three-year project. You know, w w our, our vision at AMI is to see the nations awakened, arisen, and active for Jesus. And so we believe that awakening happens through the preaching of the word.
Will Jones (14:12):
You know, the Bible speaks of, he says, awake or asleep, you know, arise. And we want people’s light to shine in them through Christ the light of the gospel. So we want to awaken them to the presence of God’s word. We want them to arise to be all that God has called them to be through training and equipping them in partnership with our national leaders. And we want them to live actively of making disciples, which would involve preaching the gospel and teaching people how to follow Jesus. So that’s what we’re doing. And we’re believing the Lord that we’ll see this country in addition to other people that are partnering in other organizations, awaken, arisen and active for Jesus. Amen. Well, thank you so much for inviting me to come to Sierra Leone with you. It’s wonderful to see what God is doing here, and thanks for being a guest on the evangelism podcast. Thank you Daniel, for coming. You’ve been a joy in my life and you and your wife, Jessica and King ministries have been just a great influence in us as an org still consider really a young org kind of in our midway to 10 year Mark. And you’ve been a very influential voice and advisor and how we can continue to preach the gospel. And so, thanks for having me on and thanks for being a friend, God bless you. Thank you.
Evangelism Coach Daniel King (15:32):
Thanks so much for listening to the evangelism podcast today. I’m excited about telling people about Jesus. And what we found is that as we go to different nations of the world, it takes us an average of about $1 for every person we’re able to reach with the gospel. And so some countries are more expensive. Some countries are a little bit less expensive, but on average, we’ve invested about $1 for every person we’re able to lead to Jesus. So today I’m asking you to go to my website, King ministries.com and give $1, $2, $5, become a monthly partner, help us to lead people to Jesus. Imagine you can start a party in heaven with just $1. Also go to Apple iTunes, leave us a review for the evangelism podcast with Daniel King. So lots of people can find this evangelism podcast. God bless you
Evangelism Podcast Host (16:25):
For more information about how to share your faith or to financially support our worldwide evangelistic outreaches. Visit King ministries.com. Again, that’s King ministries.com.
