I was praying one day at a public campsite in the forest. It was near a place where elephants sometimes come and feed. Suddenly, the spiritual atmosphere around me seemed to change. A kind of shadow was there, and a presence—I can’t describe it any better than that. In one sense, I was afraid, but in another sense, I knew that I was hearing God.
Then I had a vision. God showed me a Kenyan desert, a big desert that takes two hours to cross by car. God brought me to a place that I knew very well. Suddenly, a question came to me: “Can cabbage grow in this place? This land is an empty land, only rocks, not a single tree. Can cabbage grow in this place?” I said, “Why am I dreaming in the daytime?” And I stood up and stretched.
Later, I went back to pray, and the vision came to me again. The question again: “Can cabbage grow in the desert?” There is no water, it’s very hot, and it’s covered by rocks, so how can cabbage grow? And then suddenly the Lord led me to Isaiah 43:18-19, the verses that say, “Behold I will do new things, I will cause a river to flow in the desert, and this shall bring glory to my name.”
I didn’t know exactly what this meant. It was not only a vision, but literally, I saw the cabbage—how can cabbage grow in the desert? Then God led me to Jeremiah chapter 17, the potter and the clay. “I am the potter; you are the clay.” It was like a drama, and I could hear the person going to the potter’s house. And all the time I was having this vision, I was not hearing or seeing anything that was going on around me.
Elephants had come during this time, and they surrounded me, just eating leaves. The game wardens were on the other side, and they saw me praying, and they did not know what to do, or how to warn me because it is very, very dangerous for a person to move around in the middle of a herd of elephants.
But I didn’t know all this, I just knew that God was speaking to me. So, I stood up to leave the place where the cabbages grew, and then I saw the elephants.
The warden called out—but kind of softly, you know, because he didn’t want to spook them. “Don’t move,” he said, “or the elephants will attack you.” But I just walked away, and the elephants didn’t do anything to me. That was the beginning of my calling. As I kept preparing, God showed me the desert of northern Kenya, where 14 unreached people groups live.
Disciple Making Movements
This leader went on to plant a church on the Kenya/Ethiopia border. It became a very large church that began to send out teams every year into the desert, and many Muslims became Christ followers. It also became an equipping center, training disciple makers across Northern Kenya and throughout East Africa.
More than 7,500 new churches in 91 different people groups have grown out of his response to God’s will for the desert dwellers—His cabbages in the desert.
Click here to learn more about New Generations’ approach to Disciple Making Movements.
