Success Stories
Lives have been restored, enabling our partners to disciple and give hope to their communities.
zambia
Thomas Simubali
Thomas has dedicated his life to teaching Zambians the art of survival gardening and drip irrigation to help grow healthy communities. He is known throughout Africa for his charitable work and widespread seed distribution.
We were immediately touched by Thomas’s heart and passion for his people, his country, and his Savior. His humble spirit to continue to learn and to be mentored is inspiring to witness. His passion to educate men, women, and children on how to sustain a thriving garden is life-giving to them. Thomas truly feeds his people, and then he feeds them God’s Word.
Thomas’s work includes holding seminars all over the country of Zambia to teach drip irrigation. After teaching in the classroom, he spends days with students digging, building, and planting a community garden to care for and to grow food for their families.
The gardens are lined with yellow drip buckets, and Zambians have come to know these yellow buckets as a billboard for Thomas’s mark. They know and trust he will return to teach and equip more students to continue his work.
His passion is working with churches to build community gardens on their church property. Members work together to dig, build, and plant these gardens. The locals see the green gardens among the dry parched land and they come for help. Feeding and caring for their communities have grown their churches and saved their families during severe drought.
Thomas and his family are dedicated to educating the people of Zambia to build stronger, healthier families and communities. Through God, Thomas’s influence and imprint on the people of Africa has truly made a Kingdom difference.
afghanistan
Masoud Koushani
Masoud was 14 years old when he left Afghanistan because of the war, and ended up going west to seek asylum. In 2014, he arrived in Greece, and it was there that somebody shared the Gospel with him for the first time.
He had heard about Christianity before, but at home it was taught that Christianity was a false religion—that its people were infidels—because they called Jesus Christ the son of God. They saw Jesus, whom Muslims saw as a great prophet, as a god and honor him as Lord.
But when he heard the Gospel in Athens, it was preached that Jesus was the son of God and he died for our sins. He was sure they were corrupting the Gospel and changing the scripture. They couldn’t be right. The interpretation was all wrong, because the Bible doesn’t say that Jesus is the son of God.
Because he saw other people were coming to Christianity, he felt the need to protect his people from becoming Christians. If not, they would surely go to Hell.
However—together with other refugees—they studied the book of Genesis, then the book of John, and then the book of Romans. Masoud was faced with the truth and saw the God Himself who became flesh, became man. He realized that Jesus was not just a great prophet.
He couldn’t forget the scripture John 14:6 where Jesus says, “I am the truth, I am the Life, I am the way.” He also remembered the verse in Romans that says “When we are enemies of God, he sent his son and Jesus died for our sin.” He couldn’t put it aside, and finally in August of 2014 he accepted Jesus.
Masoud has said, “Jesus has changed my life. He healed my relationship with my wife. I wasn’t a happy person, but God healed me. He showed me how much He loved me and how much He loved my wife. After that, I felt like I could love her for the first time in my life because of the love of Christ. And then everything changed in my life. I promised the Lord that I would serve Him for the rest of my life.”
COLOMBIA
Freddy Medina
Besides preaching the Gospel and engaging the community in Bucaramanga, our partner and World Radio speaker Ricardo Martinez is also looking to identify future leaders to carry on the work and to replicate his efforts in spreading hope across his nation. We saw this recently play out in Ricardo’s discipleship efforts with his long-time radio partner Freddy Medina.
Freddy Medina is from Neiva—a rural area of Colombia in the department of Huila. Freddy had been working for almost 10 years with Ricardo on the World Radio broadcast “Con la Biblia Abierta” (which means “With the Bible Open”). Ricardo saw in Freddy a work ethic and leadership capabilities that continued to develop into preaching skills via radio.
Freddy always had a desire to go back home and minister to his home community in Neiva. When the time was right, Ricardo worked with Freddy to help him start a new radio broadcast that would reach Neiva and the surrounding rural communities.
With your help, One Kingdom raised enough support to get this program going, and now Freddy is taking what he’s learned and ministering to this region.
Freddy and his friend Humberto have now started a small church in Neiva to go along with the radio broadcast. Now their evangelistic efforts can be matched by their discipleship. Freddy and Humberto are looking for new leaders to continue spreading hope throughout the nation of Colombia.
This is the Great Commission being played out: making disciples who make disciples. Replicate yourself and seek to raise up new leaders that will take this Gospel message of hope to new heights.
