An Inspirational History of the Mission — Denny Kenaston

Missionary Worship and the Call to World Missions

Hello, this is Brother Denny. Welcome to Charity Ministries. Our desire is that your life would be blessed and changed by this message. This message is not copyrighted and is not to be bought or sold.

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These messages are offered to all without charge by the freewill offerings of God's people. A special thank you to all who support this ministry. Did you see that missionary song that we just sang? Did you know that was a missionary song?

That is a missionary song, if ever I saw one. Inter incarnate God, no feet but thine have trod the serpent down. Blow the full trumpets, blow wider yon portals throw. Savior triumphant, go and take thy crown.

That's a missionary song, isn't it? Lion of Judah, hail! Let thy name prevail from age to age. Lord of the rolling years, claim for thine own the spheres bought with thy blood and tears, thy heritage.

And we get a part in that, brothers and sisters. We get a part in that. What a privilege! I couldn't help myself. Well, greetings this morning in Jesus Christ's holy name to this first day session of the missions conference.

I get the wonderful privilege of giving an inspirational history of charity African missions. I didn't know what a privilege it was when the assignment was given to me. You know how life is, it just kind of runs by and you take it as it comes.

But the last two or three days, I've spent hours looking at pictures and meditating my way over the last 19 years of charity African missions. Oh my! I thank God for the privilege that I have this morning.

All right, so we're doing a lot of experimenting in this missions conference. And this is sort of one also trying to show slides and preach and teach at the same time. So you bear with me as we get into this.

We do want to show a few slides, but this is not a slide presentation. This is a presentation of the history of the missions with a few slides here and there. Just so that your expectations are clear on that.

So, can we have the lights, I guess? Okay, good. That worked. An inspirational history of charity African missions. The book of Proverbs reminds us, brothers and sisters, which we know the verses very well, that without a vision, the people perish.

This is true in many applications, but it is most true with the lost in heathen lands, where there is more hardships, there are more obstacles, and there are more disappointments than in any other work of God upon the earth.

And therefore, because of that, we can all say, yeah, it is true. Without a vision, the people perish. And without a vision for God's work in heathen lands, those people will perish. And that is one of the burdens for even sharing this work here, this history of the work this morning.

That our hearts might be renewed and inflamed with a vision for God's heart, and a vision of what God can do upon the earth with human beings who put their trust in Him. My heart was overwhelmed last evening as I sat here in the midst of this crowd that was gathered together, and with all the reflecting of the day, and then to see the group in the evening, I thought, oh my, all this has happened over the last nineteen years.

The last time that I was over in Africa, which was just in January, I counted fifty-six people in the missionary family over there. We gathered for the retreat, and there were fifty-six souls sitting there in the missionary family.

I thought about it as I was there. We have a whole church full of missionaries that are over in Africa, but it all traces back to a time when there was none. I thought about it as I was reflecting, and I don't know if you realize it, but I believe I'm right in making this statement that since the beginning of the mission nineteen years ago, over three hundred people have gone over to Africa.

That's a lot of our people. I'm telling you this morning, Africa has put its stamp upon us. We will never be the same because of it. The history of the mission. The mission began with a vision. With a vision.

Whenever God wants to do something, He always begins that way. He puts a vision in the hearts of men. And nineteen years ago, the vision was simply this. The command of Christ, Jesus said, If you will follow Me, I will make you fishers of men.

This was the burden on our hearts nineteen years ago. Early in 1986, I believe, is when we first sat down in a brother's meeting, in the regular old way that we always do in all of our brother's meetings.

And there was a burden on my heart that we as a church, if we're going to be a New Testament church, we should be involved in world missions. Now, we were very grateful for the opportunities to win souls in the area where we lived.

But we felt like that is not enough. A healthy New Testament church should be involved in world missions. So, I remember that evening. We presented the burden just like we do many, many times over all these years.

Sitting down in a brother's meeting and the elder leads out and says, Here's something that I want to put before the brotherhood. We did that nineteen years ago. We discussed it. We saw that it's in the Bible.

We all agreed. There were nine of us, I believe. Nine of us in that meeting, who sat there and discussed this whole subject. What about us? What about all the lost souls? What about all the fish who haven't been caught yet?

Where are we going to cast our nets? These discussions took place nineteen years ago. And with an earnest prayer, nine men fell on their knees nineteen years ago and said, Okay God, we don't know how all this gets worked out, but we feel like you are leading us to do something, but we don't know what it is.

Maybe it's Africa. We talked a little bit about Africa in that meeting, but we were not specific about any place. We just said, Lord, maybe it's Africa. And we dropped on our knees there and we committed to God and said, God, if this is of you, then make it plain to us.

And we laid it at the Lord's feet. I'm not sure if it was the next day or if it was two or three days after, but it wasn't but a couple of days. In such quick response that it caused all of us to take note.

Brother Luke Zimmerman received a letter in the mail. It was a Macedonian call from a group of people in Ghana, West Africa, saying, come over unto us and help us. There was a certain group of people.

You may know them. They print the tracts, Bible helps, over a little bit south of Harrisburg. They received this letter in the mail and they deliberated, what should we do with it? Should we go ourselves?

We don't feel like we can go. We don't feel the leading to go. And there, unknown to us days before, somebody said, you know, there's a church over there in Lancaster County, you know, charity Christian fellowship.

It's very old. Maybe they would be interested in it. And they stuck it in the mail and sent it to Brother Luke Zimmerman, who has been and still is in charge of keeping tracts available for the church and all kinds of other places.

So this letter came in the mail and arrived at Brother Luke Zimmerman's house. We were in awe. We were in awe. We felt it was the Lord. We felt it was God saying, come. We felt it was God saying, I want you to go to Africa.

See if I can make this thing work here. And specifically to Ghana, West Africa, which is right there, that yellow, that long country that's in the yellow. Doesn't have a name on it, but there's Ivory Coast next to it.

Ghana, West Africa. We didn't know a thing about Africa. We didn't know a thing about Ghana. But we felt like it was God confirming our way. And so we sent a letter to the man who wrote us the letter and notified him that we were coming and when we were coming and what our flight schedule was and what time we would arrive.

And after that sometime, Brother Luke Zimmerman and I, we left and went to Ghana on a ten day trip. Now, our first visit in Ghana was unusual. It was full of uncertainties. It was full of unknowns. Those of you that have been to Africa, you know what it's like the first time you get there.

There are so many things that are different. But when we arrived in Ghana 19 years ago, the country of Ghana was about half communist. You see communist posters on the wall there. They weren't very kind to us.

The customs treated us very unkindly. In those days you had to record how much money you had on you because of the black market. And the customs people took us into an office and went through our things and looked into our billfolds to see if we had as much money as what we had said on the thing.

And I believe probably sometime in there they took some of our money out of our pocket. They were mean to us. They were unkind to us. They were gruff to us. And we were a bit afraid because we had never been to a place like that.

After we went through and got our bags, we walked through the doors out into the open air in Ghana. And those of you that have been there, you know what was waiting for us. But no one warned us of what we were going to face.

And we faced a wall of black people. And someone grabbed our bags right out of our hand as soon as we came out into the open and put them up on their head and took off. We didn't know what they were doing.

Hey, where are you going? We took out after them and got the bags back, you know. We thought they were stealing them. Nobody told us that's how they do it. Well, we stood there and we waited to see if the man who wrote us the letter was going to arrive and pick us up.

And no one came. We found out later that communications were so bad there that he probably didn't even know that we were coming. So we waited and we waited and then pretty well everybody was gone. It was an hour later.

And finally a taxi cab driver convinced us to get into a taxi that he would take us to a hotel. We put our bags in the back. We got in the taxi and he started driving. He drove a little ways and turned down a dark alley and turned off the car.

And both men got out of the car and went and got into the trunk of the car. And we sat there in that dark alley. And I thought, oh, something is not right here. We sensed, you know how you can sense things.

We sense something is not right. We're sitting in a dark alley. These guys just got out of the car. We didn't know what they were going to get back into the car with. But they got back into the car. And as soon as they got in, I sensed it right away.

Something was wrong. The spirit was wrong. There was deceit. There was evil in the car. And finally they turned around and looked at us and they said, we're going to change your money. Give us your American money.

We're going to change your money for CDs. Well, they had instructed us on the plane, you do not change your money out on the streets because of the black market. And we told them, we are not changing money.

And they argued with us. And we said, we are not changing money. And they got angry at us. But finally, we convinced them that we are not going to budge on this. And in their frustration, they took us to the hotel room.

That was our arrival. We finally got a room and laid down upon our bed about two o 'clock in the morning. I couldn't sleep. I laid there in that bed and expected anything to happen any time. I was very insecure.

Finally, the next morning, we went down to the hotel manager and we told him, we had a telephone number. This is a joke, but we had a telephone number that was on the letter. And we said, we want to call this number.

So he dialed, you know, there were phones in Accra. And he dialed and nothing. And dialed and nothing. And he told us, he said, they had a storm, a real bad storm about three months ago. And all the telephone wires have been down ever since.

Three months ago. So now what are we going to do? How do we get to this place? Where is this place? We don't know this country at all. But we convinced the taxi driver to take us there. He said, I know where it is and I'll take you there.

And so we loaded our things up in a taxi and headed down the Cape Coast road out of Accra. And just outside of Cape Coast, there's a little village called Yamaransa. And that's where this man lived. And this taxi driver took us there.

And we got out of the car and he started asking questions. And people pointed up to the top of the hill and said, the man lives up there on the top of that hill. Was he one surprised man when he saw two white men walking up the hill up to his house?

And we showed him the letter. And I mean, he probably thought, my day has arrived. What did we find there? In our first visit, we found all kinds of things. We found idolatrous shrines like this one that you see up here.

This picture was taken 19 years ago. Idolatrous shrines. We didn't understand what was going on in Africa. We know very well now what goes on in Africa. We know how much demon worship and how much juju and all those things there are in the country of Ghana.

But this was our first sight. And when we saw it, it was a bit frightful. We found out that communications was not very good there. But we thought now we need to let our families know that we arrived here safely.

So we sent them a telegraph. Just a simple little telegraph. Let's see if I can read it here. Dear loved ones, we are fine. No phones, no mail, all is well. Pray for us, Luke and Denny. That telegram got home two weeks after we got back home.

Our wives and families were very glad to see us when we did get home because they didn't hear from us for two weeks. What did we find there on that first trip? We found lots of people burdened down with sin.

Everywhere. Just like this picture of this dear lady portrays to us. Loaded down like Pilgrim in Pilgrim's Progress. Loaded down with sin and no one to guide them and show them the right way. That's what we found there.

Our first contact, I think his name was John. I don't remember his last name. We had a few disappointments with this man, but he nevertheless, he took us on our first missionary journey. His church, if you want to call it that, was a mixture of Christianity and animism.

As you can see, it's got a bit of Catholicism in it. Over there on the left is an altar with holy water in it. Things were a bit confusing there. We didn't understand all of this the first time we went there.

He presented himself to be a dedicated Christian and was willing to lead us wherever we wanted to go. And he took us to villages all along the coast, there around the Cape Coast area. And we found lots of hungry people.

I remember the first time we were there as we started passing out tracks. Of course, we'd never been there before. We realized right away, if we're not careful, we'll have a mob of people mobbing us for a track.

Now, this was a totally new experience. We'd been out on the streets many times. We'd been to New York City. We were on the streets of Lancaster. We'd been to Green Dragon many times, passing out tracks.

We were never mobbed with people who wanted to get one of our tracks. But we realized once we started out on the streets, we better be careful or they will mob us and knock us over to get the tracks. And I think I'm telling the little children there, you're too small for a track.

You've got to be bigger in order to get a track. But that's what we found. We found hungry people. We had open air meetings almost every evening. He took us to different places along the coast there in villages.

And people gathered. I mean, we preached sometimes to five and six hundred people. And they sat in rapt attention and listened as we preached. It was a joy and a thrill to our hearts. That was our first trip there.

That was a homecoming. The family was very happy to see us. And safe, at home, at last. That was the first of 23 homecomings that I've had in the last 19 years. I figured it on my last trip, I've been to Africa 23 times.

And I started calculating it up. Brother Wes, I think I've been to Africa, I think I've spent almost a year and a half in Africa. So, it's interesting how three weeks add up. Three weeks and three weeks and three weeks over the last 19 years.

Learning From Early Missionary Setbacks

We found, from that first trip that we made there and the contacts that we made, we found many open doors of opportunity. And we saw potential everywhere. And we began to make trips to Africa. Bringing brothers and sisters along with us.

We had a few heavy setbacks. The man, the picture you saw there, the first contact that we had on our second trip there. Much to our disappointment. We were sitting on the front porch of his house and a question came to my mind to ask him.

And I, on my own, walked around to the back of the house to ask the question. And caught him there with a bottle of Johnny Walker Red in his hand. He had it up like this, drinking it. That's whiskey, by the way.

Johnny Walker Red whiskey. He had bought it with the money that we gave him to prepare food for us. Needless to say, that was the last contact that we had with him. We left there that day and we did not spend any more time with him.

Even though we were warned by other people. Be careful. They will only be looking for money. They will trick you. They will only be using you to get money. We were warned those things and though we were warned and though we were careful.

We found it to be exactly that way. Some very hard, disappointing setbacks. But the Lord was teaching us all the way. You know, as I thought about it, meditating upon it now, these last couple of days.

You know, we could have easily quit. Because of some of the setbacks, we could have easily quit. We could have easily said, this is not for us. They are right. These Africans are the way they are. Let's go home.

Let's go somewhere else. But somehow, God kept us moving forward. And with the spirit of an inventor, we took our mistakes and we looked at them squarely and kept on going. The Lord led us, I believe it was in 1989, the Lord led us to Brother Francis.

We had known him before that, but he was just one pastor among many that we had met. The Lord led us to Brother Francis and we began working with him and helping him establish his churches. And spending time training and discipling leaders.

We started the first youth teams. Back then, 1988, 1989, somewhere around there. I don't have all these dates just exactly right, but we saw the potential from the beginning for our youth. And realized that what God did in our hearts, Brother Luke's heart and my heart, in our trip there, God would also do in the hearts of everyone else that we would take over there.

So we began to bring our people over to Africa. And the youth went along. Do you notice some of these faces up here? That's Brother Mel. And that's Christina Lang. She's Christina Whitmer now. She's married.

I think her husband is a deacon. That's Esther Swartzentruber and Carl Swartzentruber. And there's Brother Ross and Brother Jake Troyer. It was interesting to me as I looked at these pictures realizing how many of these pictures, the people that are in these pictures are now servants of God in all kinds of other places.

We saw that potential. So these were the first youth teams and I led the first youth teams. And please don't count my youth team example. It's not a very good one. When the young men took it over, they showed us how to do it.

But anyway, we had the right vision. We knew if we bring our young people over here and they see the hunger and they see the openness, their hearts will be stirred to do God's work. So there were souls to save.

And we wanted as many of our brothers and sisters to experience the joy of leading souls to Christ. We wanted as many of them to experience the joys of preaching, of ministering to people who were so hungry and so open and so longing to hear.

We had open air crusades. I think that's brother Aaron Martin there and I think Ben Stolzfus has him all tied up. There's a sermon going on there. We had open air crusades, village crusades. I wonder if you can tell me who this is.

Can anybody tell me? From all back there where you are? Nobody knows. That's brother David Mast. He's an elder in the Church in Faith Christian Fellowship in Ohio. That's brother David Mast. Look at him.

Isn't that a blessing? Got his hand up there preaching to those people. Just a young man. Just a young man. Maybe 18, 19 years old in that picture. But God was using those trips over there to put a fire in the hearts of many a young man and many a young woman, even back in those days.

Village crusades and open air preaching. We found ourselves many times having baptisms in the ocean. And if you've never baptized in the ocean, you should try it sometime, you ministers. It's quite a bit different.

You have to wait for the waves. And if you don't get them under the water at the right time, the wave disappears on you. But that's where we started having baptisms in the ocean. We lived in the motel rooms back in those days.

We went out passing out tracts every day. We went out in the morning for a couple of hours. We went out in the afternoon for a couple of hours. Just out in the streets passing out tracts. We went to villages in the early evenings and canvassed the whole village and then had open air preaching in those villages in the evening.

Those were the ministry trips, the team trips in the beginning days. We ministered in churches. We ate food that we didn't like. We got sick. We got malaria. I remember brother Aaron Martin got malaria so bad one time we didn't know if we were going to be able to bring him back home.

He was so sick. But God was leading. And though we made many mistakes, and I'll quickly say that, this is no great success story. This is a story of a bunch of people who sense their responsibility to do something that God was calling them to do.

And though in our ignorance, though we didn't know very much, we went ahead anyway and God had helped us. Ebenezer! Ebenezer! Hitherto had the Lord helped us. So those were the beginning days. In 1993, after just kind of being short-term missionaries up until that point, we felt it was time for us to put a missionary family over there in Ghana.

And brother Ross Ulrich and his family moved over there. We built a mission house which they lived in and which we also planned to use for the teams that went over there because we were spending a lot of money on motel rooms.

But the vision began to grow. We sent brother Ross over there. Brother Ross would be the coordinator of the work. There were funds being transferred over there. We felt like there needed to be some accountability on those funds.

Brother Ross began helping in the establishing of the churches. The teams kept coming and they stayed at the mission house in those days. This is one of the first churches that we had responsibilities with.

This is brother Francis and his church at Elmina. We helped them build this extravagant church building and found ourselves gathering in that place many times with sweet, sweet times. For the next four years, they were learning years.

Before this, we were kind of like short-term missionaries, you know. You drop in for a couple of weeks. You walk through a few experiences. You learn a few things. You get excited about the opportunities that were at your hands.

And then you go back home. There are missionaries. But the next four years, when brother Ross was there, were learning years. Now some of us were there all the time. Relationships were built with local churches and they began to grow.

We began to learn more about these people. We began to realize there is a difference between our culture and their culture. And I guess we knew that all along, but we didn't realize how much our culture was overstepping their culture and how much their culture hindered them from understanding our culture.

And all these things were learning experiences that we never touched when we were short-term missionaries. They just put up with us for two weeks or three weeks at a time and we just put up with them.

But now, we began to learn. Ross continued to work with the churches over there. We had our first ordination. Brother Francis was ordained. I don't know the exact date of this, but this is one precious picture to me.

Dear brother Francis and his wife, Rebecca. What a joy it was to ordain this brother. We found the churches over there very responsive. In those days, they simply told us, You tell us what to do. You give us direction.

You give us input. You teach us what the Bible says. We want a holy church. And I must say they responded very well. At the time that we started over there, they played drums in their services. We encouraged them to put that away.

They were dancing in their worship services. We encouraged them to put those things away. And many of the sisters were not very modestly dressed. But as you notice, let's see if I can get back there. As you notice from this picture, the sisters in the church took our example and followed and adorned themselves in modest apparel.

We thank God for their openness back in those days. Four churches were planted during this time. And all of our people who traveled over there during this time experienced church life African style. What do I mean by that?

They had the beautiful experience of entering into an African church service. It's very different than ours. They pray different than we do. When they say, let us pray, the whole place starts praying all at once.

When they say, let us rise up and sing, they stand to their feet and start clapping their hands and sing the songs. And all of our visitors that we brought over there, they had the opportunity of experiencing church life in this way.

It was a joy. They stood and spoke through interpreters. They sensed the openness. They found out how easy it was to preach to this open, innocent, hungry group of people. I sat and watched many a young man and many an older man turn into a preacher over there in Africa as they stood before a hungry crowd of people.

And that crowd just drew the things right out of their hearts. Brothers got to know brothers from both sides of the ocean. We spent much time together talking and sharing and discussing the scriptures.

Some of the fruit of the local church in one of the outreaches. I believe we had this baptism after a three week mission outreach. And these were the converts that were led to the Lord and discipled. And therefore we took them to the ocean and had a baptism.

All these were in the early days of the mission. We had a few weddings over there. I don't think this is the first one. This is the second one. Brother Akins and Sister Mary. We had a wedding over there.

And that was a sweet time. And it was different than anything that they'd ever had before. Their wedding was sweet. Their wedding was holy. We made them smile like that. If you know the African people, when you put them before a camera, they don't smile.

They are sober. They're scared. They look like, you know, something bad is going to happen any moment. And we told them, come on, loosen up. Hold her hand. Smile at her. And finally they loosened up and smiled and we got a picture of them.

Praise the Lord. As I said, these were learning years. We made mistakes. Yes, we did. We made mistakes. And some of these brothers and sisters that you've seen here on the slides, they bore the burden of some of our mistakes.

But every time we made them, we just kept evaluating. There were temptations to say, what have we got ourselves into? Let's just go home. It's too much for us. But instead, we took the spirit of an inventor, like a Thomas Edison, who at every failure of a lightbulb, instead of being discouraged, he looked at it and said, well, that's one more way that I know it won't work.

And he kept on going until he had a lightbulb. That's the way we approached the mission in those days. We were becoming missionaries. Little by little, we were learning. You know, at first, we just kind of went there, and we gave some teaching to those men.

But as far as moving around the country, and knowing how to get around in the country, we depended mostly upon Brother Francis and the others that were there. But as time went on, we were becoming missionaries with dreams of other places.

And we began to believe God that He could help us to do it, to start churches in other places. At that time, Brother Ross moved to Owosi. He moved his family, I think it was in 1995, inland, one hour to a village called Owosi.

There was no electricity there. This picture that you see is not the beginning picture of that church, but I believe this is like a Christmas retreat or an Easter retreat, the people that are gathered together there.

But Brother Ross felt it was time for him to branch out on his own and start a church. Before that, we had been working with them, helping them with their churches, teaching their leaders. But now, Brother Ross went into this village and started a church.

But even while Brother Ross was there, our thoughts kept going to the regions beyond. It was a growing experience. This is just a picture of one of the baptisms that they had at Owosi. This is down the road, just a little ways from where that church building was that you saw.

A baptism. These are probably two years after the church was started there at Owosi. As you can see, a nice group of people were gathering together there in the name of the Lord Jesus. Here's a picture of Cynthia having a ladies' meeting.

There's several sisters there from Owosi church. And they're having a ladies' meeting there at the mission house in Owosi. And here we have a picture. I've titled this one, The Church Plants a Church.

This is a church that was started in the village of Atravanda, which is, oh, maybe a couple of miles away from where Owosi was. For the most part, the local brothers there started this congregation. And this is their church building.

I'm not sure if it has walls on it yet, but this is how they began. God was beginning to teach us, don't do everything for them. Don't build them a building. You let them do it. And this is the building that they came up with at Atravanda.

Reaching Unreached People Groups in Northern Ghana

In 1996, God was preparing to expand the mission. Several of us were receiving a growing vision from the Lord for the unreached people groups of the world. We saw, the more we were over there in Ghana, we saw that there were many paths that led to thousands of villages who had never heard the gospel.

Now, up until that time, we were starting churches with church people. Probably not so in that village that we just saw, but for the most part, we were starting churches with church people. And there's a big difference between starting a church with church people and starting a church where there was no church, where no one has ever heard before.

But God began to move upon our hearts in this way. There are many, many paths just like that. They lead to many, many villages, thousands of villages who have never heard one time. We became aware that there were unreached tribes in the north of Ghana.

I remember the Sunday that I presented to the congregation the whole subject of adopting a people group as our own. We talked about these unreached people groups. We talked about them. They're there. Nobody has told them.

They're waiting for a missionary to come. Nobody is praying for them. And we laid it out before the congregation. Would God have us adopt a people and say these are our people and we're going to pray for them and see what God will do through us to put a church in their area.

We started to pray. We started to own a people as our own responsibility. A people where Christ was never named. During that time, Brother Emmanuel led a team into the north. It was an exploring, a surveying trip.

It was a 14-hour drive from where we were at down there in the Wawasi in the Elmina area. Brother Daryl was on that survey team. My son Daniel, I think, was also on that survey team. They went up into the north, I think, for about 10 days and just moved around and visited.

They went to White Cliff. They had an organization up there in the Tamale area. They asked questions. Where are the lost people groups? Which way shall we go? They got a bunch of counsel and they went and traveled all around and they found two tribes up in the north who had not heard the gospel.

That was the Dagombas and the Konkomba tribes. They discovered that the Bible translations for these two tribes was almost finished. They discovered that there had been recently a war between these two tribes.

The Konkombas fighting against the Dagombas and the Dagombas protecting themselves but fighting back. And they discovered that the Dagombas won the war and many, many hundreds and hundreds of people died in those wars.