Missions Effort Comes Full Circle in Ghana
The interaction helps bring the relationship with the missionaries who started Central AG Community 4 Church in Tema full circle. In 1982, then nine-year-old Ahlijah would profess faith in Christ at the church.
While he can’t remember those Assemblies of God missionaries’ names, Ahlijah remembers how special it felt to know that someone would travel more than 7,000 miles to share the gospel with him.
“That sense of belonging gave me the desire to keep searching and attending church,” says the 52-year-old pastor of Harvest Missions Chapel in Tema, just east of the capital of Accra. “At the age of nine, I walked the aisle to give my heart to Jesus.”
His conversion marked the beginning of what would become a ministerial career. In addition to planting three churches over the years, in 2006 he founded Meaningful Life International (MLI), a ministry that partners with the Assemblies of God in Ghana.
The nonprofit agency has started more than 100 medical outreaches, planted or supported nearly 40 churches, offered leadership training, and drilled more than 80 fresh-water wells.
In 2017, World Vision estimated that MLI’s wells served 1.3 million people, but Ahlijah believes the number is now closer to three million.
Ahlijah has hosted approximately 100 teams from the U.S. since 2006. Three-fourths have also helped drill wells, many of them in predominantly Muslim villages.
“There’s never been a greater joy for me than when I see my friends from America come to Ghana,” Ahlijah says. “It takes a lot of time, but the impact that leaves in this country makes the time hosting them a small price to pay.”
Among the 20 close relationships the Ghanaian pastor has formed with U.S. residents is one with Sam M. Huddleston, assistant superintendent of the Northern California/Nevada district.
Huddleston never intended to visit Africa, but when a mission team from his church at the time traveled there and brought back a video, it touched his heart.
On his first trip to Ghana in 2002, Ahlijah took Huddleston’s team to a village to show them where residents got their water: “It was a mudhole,” Huddleston recalls.
“This little girl walked up, bent down and took a cup, and dipped it in the mud and drank it,” Huddleston says. “And I started crying.”
Inspired to make a difference, when Huddleston returned to California he spoke to numerous churches and civic organizations. He raised enough money to return to that village 18 months later and drill a well.
“He helped me build a bridge to a place that has warmed my heart,” Huddleston says of Ahlijah. “When I go there, God speaks to me and I’m very humbled and thankful to God for what He’s doing in my life.”
Their relationship has inspired the assistant superintendent to go further with African missions.
To date, he has visited nine countries on the continent and raised funds to drill wells, complete a hospital, and plant churches. Six of his 13 grandchildren have accompanied him on various trips.
Most recently, the NCN District raised $750,000 to help build churches in Kenya, where many congregations once met under trees. In late January, Huddleston led a team of six other pastors to see what those funds had helped accomplish.
The 72-year-old executive says among the many lessons traveling to Africa has taught him is how essential prayer is to doing God’s work.
“You can’t do what they do in Africa if you’re not a praying person,” Huddleston says. “It’s tough, from getting off the plane to riding on the roads.
“But the people? I’ve never met people like that. They’re honoring people. I’ve learned so much about humility and preaching, too. I’ve been all over the world, and the pastors in Ghana know how to preach.”
Ahlijah says Africa now has the world’s largest number of Christians, but the numerous conversions present a challenge: raising up enough leaders to disciple them.
“Mission teams can help meet this need,” says Ahlijah, who has pastored Harvest Mission Chapel for seven years.
“A good partnership between the global north and the global south has the potential to draw a lot of people to the Lord,” says the pastor, who will be visiting the U.S. in late May.
Among the benefits Ahlijah says these teams bring is encouragement for Ghanan believers, as well as gifts of needed supplies and medical equipment.
They have also sent doctors to train medical personnel, pastors to train ministry leaders, and helped further mission work in Ghana.
Ahlijah says the relationships he has formed with Americans also represent an endorsement of African missions.
“There was a time when people didn’t think Africans could minister to their own people without Americans coming over,” the pastor says.
“Now I find myself, as an African, being trusted by those who brought the gospel here, to go out to my own people. That means a lot.”
Alijah’s story is one that exemplifies how reaching one soul, even one belonging to a young child, can have a ripple effect that touches the heart of millions with the gospel.