Ethiopia
Unreached Tribes Meet Jesus
CfaN is well-known for our mass Gospel Campaigns in Africa. We have been conducting huge evangelistic events in cities and towns across Africa since the Big Tent became too small in the eighties – it’s been forty years of massive campaigns, resulting in over a hundred million responses to the Gospel in that time.
Yet, as successful and fruitful as this strategy is, it can never be the answer to reaching all of Africa for Jesus. Why? Because 55% of the population of Africa is not urban. Over half the people in Africa do not live in anything resembling a “town”. They live a rural life. And “rural” in Africa generally means far away from any modern infrastructure, in places with no roads, no electricity, no shops.
A heart for the unreached
It was just such an area that God began speaking to Evangelist Kaisa Fischer about, over four years ago. Kaisa, who had already been working as an evangelist in Germany for several years, felt the Lord calling her to more. She put her faith into action, graduating from the second CfaN Evangelism Bootcamp in 2021. Along the way, she met and married our CfaN Germany Director, Herbert Fischer, but that’s a testimony for another time!
What I want to share with you today is what the Lord has been doing in Ethiopia through Kaisa and her co-partner in the work, Marita Orevi Tornes. God sent them to the Omo Valley in Ethiopia, a region about the size of Israel where 13 of the 16 local tribes are considered unreached.
What does “unreached” mean?
“Unreached” does not necessarily mean that there are no believers at all, but rather that the Body of Christ – the church – is still very small and fragile. They are not yet able to evangelize and disciple without help. Missionary trips are undertaken both to preach the Gospel and to build and encourage the local church until they can stand strong.
For the past four years, Kaisa and Marita have been visiting the Omo Valley, ministering especially to the Hamer, Desenech and Mursi tribes. This is physically taxing, dangerous work. The days are blisteringly hot, there are often no real roads, it can take whole a day to reach some of the most remote villages.
Strengthening the Church
In 2025, the work in Ethiopia took a leap forward, with CfaN evangelists training locals from 13 of the tribes in evangelism, discipleship and church planting. Many of these young people have continued to evangelize in their tribes after the missionaries have left. And when the missionaries return, the testimonies are extraordinary. God doesn’t stop moving because the foreigners have left – the fire is now burning in the hearts of the locals, and they keep going. Churches have been planted in almost every village reached so far, but there is often fierce resistance to the Gospel at first. Read these stories of God’s miraculous intervention in the Omo Valley, and while you read, ask yourself: what you are willing to do for the Gospel today?
Persecuted and beaten for the Gospel
Kaisa Fischer shares: In May 2024, we visited a village with three believers. People mocked us, laughed, and rejected our message. We left feeling it was useless. But then we returned a year later and heard what happened after we left. One believer from that small group, a young man called Alex*, got set on fire for God. He started evangelizing everywhere, spreading revival fires to his village and other villages nearby. People started believing and most of his own family came to faith.
This made the village elders furious. They threatened the believers, tore down their little hut-church, and declared them cursed. The persecution grew so severe the young leader had to flee. Then one night, the persecutors came for him. When they couldn't find him, they seized other believers instead, beating them savagely until they bled. Someone managed to call Alex and he rushed back, only to be bound and beaten nearly to death himself. He survived, and amazingly, went right back to preaching.
Their curses were turned on them
Later, while he was sharing the Gospel, two elders – men known for cursing people to death – watched in rage as two women accepted Christ. The elders began to curse the preachers, but suddenly, they both dropped dead on the spot.
Alex was eventually forced to leave for his own safety. Then, something crazy began to happen: his persecutors started dying. One died from a snakebite, one by vomiting blood, another by suicide. One just went mad and disappeared. Finally, the young evangelist's own brother, a chief opponent, fell gravely ill, urinating blood and near death. Seeing all this, the village elders gathered everyone and said, “Look, this Jesus they preach must be the real, true God. We need to ask those believers, those young people, to come back and pray for us. We must ask their forgiveness.”
The young believers returned. Their first act was to pray for Alex’s sick brother, and he was completely healed. Today, that once-dying brother is the pastor of the village church. At least five of the former persecutors are now saved. The whole village has confessed Jesus as Lord. What was a tiny, mocked group is now a church of about 50, with more coming to faith all the time.
“Your God doesn’t love us.”
We went to a far-off village where, again, the people didn’t want our message. We went hut to hut, greeting and praying where allowed, and found a 16-year-old boy lying on the ground, mute and paralyzed.
His mother explained he’d gone to a bull-jumping ceremony, a demonic fertility rite where men jump over bulls and women show love by having their backs beaten until they bleed. The boy had only gone to watch, but on his way home, he went crazy, then mute and lame. He had been like that for a month. We prayed for him, and suddenly he could speak. He stood up, completely healed.
But still, even though they had witnessed this miracle, the village resisted, because the elders were bitter. They said, “Your God doesn’t love us. We’ve had no rain here for five years.” We still blessed them, prayed for rain and then left, not knowing if anything changed.
“We’re all believers now!”
Months later, one of our local pastors went back. The place was transformed – green and lush, no longer a desert. A church had been built. The people greeted him saying, “We’re all believers now. After you left, the rain came the very next day. It’s been raining ever since.”
When I returned in 2025, I saw it myself – the green, the church. We asked a young man if he knew the healed boy. “Yes,” he said, “he’s my brother. I’m a believer now too, because of the healing and the rain.” His brother was out with the cattle, doing well. He said basically everyone there believes now. We met two women who came to faith. Their husbands had beaten and abandoned them for following Jesus, but the women were living together, full of joy. “We have Jesus,” they said. “Our lives are so much better. We lost a lot, but we gained so much more. We don’t regret it. Jesus drove our terrible husbands away.”
*name changed for his protection
Will you stand with the evangelists and pastors who are putting their lives on the line for Jesus in places few dare go? Will you pray for them and encourage them? Will you sacrifice some of your own comfort to train and send out laborers into the harvest?
Together with you for the Gospel,
Evangelist Daniel Kolenda
(and the CfaN team worldwide)
