Twenty years can change everything – Or bring you full circle.
I first met Rev. David Parmuat over twenty years ago, when we were both young men, on the plains of Olderkesi. At that time, I was serving at Olderkesi Development Project, and David was preparing to enter Kaboson Bible College after finishing his Form 4 in secondary school. Little did we know then that almost two decades later, we would be working closely together in Northern Kenya.
While I was serving at ODP, I also came to know Dan LeMaison, who was working at the Project at that time as a mechanic and general fixer of all things broken. Dan and I hit it off immediately, becoming as close as brothers. We began spending all our spare time together, either cooking together in the evenings, traveling on foot to neighboring villages, or on one occasion, hitch-hiking all over Northern Kenya together to visit his ancestral homeland. It was Dan who taught me Samburu, helping me to learn a deeper understanding of the culture of many of the tribes in Kenya, and how historically they have influenced one another.
Time passed, I went to University, David graduated Kaboson and went on to study at Kenya Highlands Bible College for undergraduate, and Dan continued to work with World Gospel Mission, at ODP, then in Nakuru Kenya, before moving back to Northern Kenya to work for a water well drilling NGO based out of the Netherlands. For nearly fifteen years we had little to no communication. Then in the winter of 2018, Iris and I felt the Lord calling us to full time international ministry, and we began working as Beehive Global Collective. As we began to seek out where God was leading us to engage, it was a natural fit to go back to Kenya, where my missionary roots were planted deepest.
Three Dreams, His Mission:
By 2019, the three of us were back together again, serving God together on the mission field Rev. David has started in Marsabit, Northern Kenya. In brief, this is the story of how God was always at work behind the scenes to bring us back together to accomplish His mission, to see the Gospel preached to unreached villages of Samburu and Rendille peoples in Northern Kenya. While there are many more stories, enough to fill volumes of books, there are three vignettes that are critically important to how we all came to be back together.
While David was studying at Kaboson Bible school, he received one night a prophetic dream, wherein he was standing before a large crowd of very dark Africans, preaching the Gospel. The men in his dream were all dressed in white gowns, with white hats on their heads. Upon awaking from this dream, David knew that he had been called as a missionary to the North, to bring the Gospel to Muslim communities in the Sub-Saharan Desert. When he graduated college, David and his wife Christine joined Africa Gospel Church as cross-cultural missionaries, Maasai who would serve the Samburu and Rendille. The only question was ‘where to begin?’.
David and Dan’s paths were the first of the three of us to intersect, as David sought to find a mission field which reflected the vision God had given him. After first being rejected in one region, David reached out to Dan for assistance in planting a church among the Samburu. Dan and David began taking steps together to establish a church in Dan’s homeland, among the Samburu that would become our base of operations today.
During his time serving on the well drilling team in Northern Kenya, Dan also received a dream from the Lord. In this dream, Dan was standing on the top of Mount Wargas, near his mother’s village of Wamba. As dusk began to settle in the dream, Dan began to see little fires popping up across the barren landscape, burning brightly with a brilliant light as night enveloped him. As he shared with me later, Dan knew upon waking that the ten little fires he had seen out in the bush represented ten churches, which God was calling him to build. As Dan and David continued to work together, the first of those little fires, burning brightly for the Gospel was being built. More would soon follow.
My path finally intersected with Dan and David’s in 2019, a year after Beehive Global Collective officially began. At that time, David was still teaching the Gospel under the largest tree in the village, and the plans for the construction of the church building were still being made. In the early days of the three of us working together again, we were focused on the construction of the church, increasing its security with a fence and sharing the Gospel in the local villages. As time has progressed, God has opened doors for us to plant three more churches in surrounding villages, representing three more little fires burning brightly with the Gospel in the surrounding darkness. Additionally, we have been blessed to start an outreach ministry for the youth of the area, hosting an annual soccer tournament for over 200 secondary students, providing a platform for us to teach the Bible between soccer matches.
In 2021, God revealed to me a vision as well, while Dan and I were driving north on the A2, en-route to meet up with David. Rather than a dream, God began to reveal to me in the waking hours His leading and calling and purpose for our combined ministry in Northern Kenya. This vision, this calling to be fully surrendered to God’s leading, continues to expand as God opens new doors for His ministry in Northern Kenya. Soon, our team will reconvene for its most ambitious expedition to date: taking the Gospel to an unreached ethnic group, completely isolated on an island in the middle of Lake Turkana.
God, in His gracious providence has led three young men from the Serengeti plains of Southern Kenya full circle, connecting us in intricate ways that we could not have foreseen so many years ago. It is only by His good grace that we have come so far together. And it will be by His leading that we continue to serve, to faithfully carry the Gospel into dark places in Northern Kenya.
Our team will be working together in Marsabit throughout the month of August on several different endeavors: completing the construction of a church building for one of the ‘little fires’, continuing to engage the youth with the annual soccer ministry, and reaching the unreached and isolated community on the island in Lake Turkana.
You can support our ongoing work here: https://web.charityengine.net/Default.aspx?tsid=33126
From one man He made all the nations, that they should inhabit the whole earth; and He marked out their appointed times in history and the boundaries of their lands. God did this so that they would seek Him and perhaps reach out for Him and find Him, though He is not far from any one of us. Acts 17:26-27