Jan 28, 2007 By Jenny Susa 4 min read

Many years ago, the Rev. Terry Collins made a promise to God that he would go anywhere in the world that he was invited to share God’s word with others. Collins, pastor of three local churches, kept his promise, traveling as far as Israel and Russia to preach and help those in need. But when he was invited by e-mail to take a trip to Africa, Collins said he did not feel the conviction to go right away.

“Generally, I would delete e-mails from people I don’t recognize,” said Collins. “But this one caught my attention because it said ‘invitation’ in the subject line, so I looked at it.”

The Rev. Matthew Onjere, president of Hope of Salvation Ministries, in Kenya, had discovered the Web site for Discipleship Ministries, Collins’ nonprofit organization.

Onjere explained in the e-mail that he was compelled to invite Discipleship Ministries to help organize a crusade for the area.

“I didn’t think I was going to go,” said Collins, adding that after a few weeks of prayer, he found that God was going to hold him to his word once again.

“In a couple of weeks I accepted the invitation and we began preparing for the trip,” said Collins.

Collins said he thought that May of this year would be a good time to make the trip, but Onjere said the need was so great that it would be better for the ministry’s volunteers to visit in February.

With little time to prepare, Collins was able to get two local volunteers, David Campbell and Michael Kabay to make the trip with him.

The volunteers will be traveling to Eldoret, Kenya, on Feb. 5 and will stay until Feb. 19.

“We found out the education in the area is almost nil,” said Collins, explaining that 40 percent of the city’s population have some form of elementary education, 30 percent have secondary education, and only four percent are educated beyond high school. There is a 65 percent rate of unemployment, and 20 percent of the population, including children, are infected with HIV.

“They are living in poverty,” said Collins, who said they were told to expect to preach to about 6,000 people each day for five days while they are there.

Collins said that while sharing God’s word is so important to him, he felt his ministry should help meet other needs as part of this mission, since the people have so little.

Onjere told him they could not offer to feed the city’s poor, because the area is in such desperation that if they let it be known that help was available, 700,000 people would likely show up to receive it.

Still wanting to reach out to those in need, Collins asked if there was any way they could help. Onjere said that one of the villages had been flooded recently, and its people were starving to death. Discipleship Ministries plans to take enough corn meal to provide those people with food until more help arrives.

Collins said they also hope to form a partnership with Hope of Salvation Ministries that would allow them to rent a small building to use as an orphanage that could house 20 to 25 of the children who are living in the streets.

“We would like to raise them up in the ways of the Lord, and help them teach their own people,” said Collins, adding that this could become an ongoing part of his organization’s ministry, which has sponsored orphanages in Russia for several years.

“We hope to see a large number of citizens converted to Christianity while we are there,” said Collins. “The opportunity to teach is enough, but it would be great if we could help meet the needs of some of the people and this could become part of our outreach. It’s a big vision but until we go and evaluate everything, we won’t know what we can do. I can’t wait to see how God is going to use each one of us.”

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