God Made a Way in a Somali Refugee Village 🇸🇴

Somali Project Wrap-up

We always knew the Somali language project was going to present challenges we had never seen before, but God was faithful.

Any time you are working in communities with few or no believers, there are a lot of unknowns. Will we be welcomed? Will the local people understand our goals? Will anybody show up?

Those questions were ever-present as we entered a village of Somali refugees that was entirely Muslim.

But God was good. On the first day of recording, as many as 40 or 50 villagers were waiting for us and ready to be a part of the production. 

We are always looking for a "person of peace" in the villages who will advocate for us. In this case, it was a man named Bocha who was a leader in the local mosque. When we arrived, we were told that the men would leave at 12:30 to pray at the mosque, but when that time came, no one left!

Day two of production was rough. Almost twice as many people showed up. It may have been the largest crowd of actors our team has ever worked with, and that was a challenge of a different kind.

Navigating the crowds, off-and-on rain, and even some disagreements among the villagers made it a challenging day. But if we felt overwhelmed at the end of day two, on day three God showed us that He was in control. By the end of the week, we had recorded all 10 stories, and captured narrations in three different languages.

When we recorded the Crucifixion story, the actors covered their faces for fear of being identified, but they still participated!

When we finished, we asked ourselves, “Why were they so willing to help?” The only answer was that God was doing something special here.

Please continue to pray for the villagers and the leaders who helped us, that God would continue to draw them to himself.

If you missed any of the daily update videos from our trip, you can see them here.

And if you'd like to get to know OneMessage.tv's newest missionary, please watch our interview with James Kariuki.

Thank you so much for your prayers!

P.S. The next step is the editing process. It may not be as exciting as the recording part, but it’s every bit as important. If you would like to make a special gift to complete the Somali video Bible story library, you can give here.