Missions are not easy to organize. Apart from the spiritual battles involved, coordinating teams and activities from different partners and stakeholders is often an uphill task. The most important resource in missions is people, but they can also be the weakest link if wrongly motivated.

Theovision International managed to pull one off, a multifaceted mission that happened in eight destinations located in all seven sub counties of Turkana County. They branded it ‘Multi-Destination Mission (MDM) Turkana’ and it truly lived up to the name.

The team of 200 missioners, drawn from different churches and Christian organizations held mission activities in Kapedo, Kalapata, Lodwar, Loima, Lokoyo, Kakuma, Lokitanga and Kibish. For 10 days, teams in different locations reached out to the vulnerable, least reached and unreached people group of Turkana through evangelism, discipleship, compassion and social action.

They had medical camps and peace meetings in Kapedo. They evangelized in towns, schools, manyattas and villages. They had sports ministry in areas like Kakuma and Loima. They shared clothes and foodstuff. They taught discipleship lessons for church leaders. They dug a makeshift baptismal hole in the ground in Loima and baptized 79 people in it. They taught the community matters of community health and sanitation by constructing a latrine and sharing the importance of the same. They planted trees in Lokitaung. They had crusades and church leaders’ conferences in Lodwar and Kakuma.

Many schools were reached across Turkana, in places such as Kalapata, Lodwar and others.

The Heaven’s Gates and Hell’s Flames drama was presented in schools, churches and villages. Over 500 street children were fed and ministered to. They even negotiated with elders to be allocated land for a mission station, a process that’s ongoing and positive.

In total, over 4000 people gave their lives to Christ.

That sounds like a lot of work, right?

We sought to find out how it all came together by asking Rev. Bethuel Koskey who is the Missions and MDM Coordinator at Theovision International. He played a leading role in spearheading the mission in conjunction with partners from different churches and organizations.

“Multi Destination Mission (MDM) was conceptualized as a departmental initiative of the Missions Department at Theovision International but upon involving other partners, the plan grew beyond the department,” he said. “After 4 months of planning, missioners signed up from different churches, including Africa Gospel Church, Parklands Baptist, AIC, Deliverance, KAG, and CITAM. Ministries such as Life Ministry, Kubamba, FOCUS, KSCF, and organizations such as World Vision, Five Star Evangelism, Finishing Well Foundation, Time to Revive and Mercy Foundation took part. Corporates such as Pioneer Insurance also supported.”

“So how do you organize such a big mission?” I asked.

“First you pray. If God says to go, you go. If he says you plan, you plan. You have got to hear God’s voice clearly,” he answered.

The committee started meeting in January. They mobilized heavily; people signed up, and they also created a website to centralize information and mobilize resources.

Pastor Koskey has a personal history with Turkana. He’s been going there for five years. The burden has been increasing, and this was a Macedonian call to go back, so he started inviting people. They prayed, and God guided their planning.

Once destinations across Turkana were identified, destination team leaders were put in place to profile the community and identify host churches. There were also subcommittees to deal with other issues like outreach to institutions, social action, community evangelism, finance and logistics and others.

The team may not have hit its target in terms of missionaries, but those that God sent did tremendously well.

“The churches in the areas we visited experienced an increased number of congregants on Sunday, especially the youth. We contributed to the stronger unity of the churches through the pastors’ conference. They testified of learning new ways of doing missions, and there were commitments for church planting and construction,” Pastor Koskey reported.

“With the help of the Bible Society of Kenya and Deliverance Church Eastleigh, we trained prison staff and wardens on trauma healing for 3 days. They will help inmates when it comes to trauma healing.”

For the team, transformation begins with people being born again. They are content if that’s all they achieved. But they achieved more because it was through the gospel of Jesus Christ that food and other necessities were brought to Turkana.

During the commissioning service at Citam Valley Road on May 14, the Second Lady H.E. Pastor Dorcas Rigathi, who was the chief guest, donated 200 bags of beans and 150 bags of rice. That and much more would not have happened if the team hadn’t been obedient enough to reach out to the people of Turkana.

Some of the partnering organizations, individually or in partnership with others, are rolling out programs in MDM destinations after seeing the need during the mission.

Interventional follow-up will be taking place on 21st to 26th November. The team hopes to go back with solutions to the problems they identified. That includes planting churches, placing resident missionaries in the area, and constructing mission stations, among other interventions.