While I was interviewing Onesmo Ramadhan, a pastor in Kigoma, Tanzania, my translator, Renatus explained to me that the pastor was a former Muslim who had heard the Gospel at a Christian Youth Conference. The message touched his heart and his life was changed forever as he accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior. Upon returning home from this experience, his father had threatened him, punished him, and disowned him from the family because he refused to renounce the name of Jesus Christ. He fled to some Christian friends and survived. He began telling others about Christ through singing and preaching. He had started a few churches in his region, and was seeing God do an amazing work through his testimony of deliverance from the Islam faith.
When Renatus asked him on my behalf to sing a song of praise as part of the interview, Onesmo gently nodded his head in approval, closed his eyes, and began singing in his native Swahili tongue. After a refrain or two of the song, tears began to flow from not only the eyes of Onesmo, but also from those of Renatus. When Renatus was finally able to recover his emotions, he explained to me that Onesmo was singing a song he had written himself, about the wonderful day that Christ had delivered him from the Muslim faith, and he was praising the Lord for the chance to tell others about Him. Onesmo sang, Renatus translated for me, and we all wept, rejoicing as we celebrated the life-changing day that Christ “made us alive together with Christ!” Ephesians 2:5 (NAS)
Robin Palesano
CFO
Posted on
Mon, December 13, 2010
by Robin Palesano