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Friendship with Purpose
By Daniel Jenkins
One of the greatest joys in ministry is being able to help people understand Who
Jesus is and to open the Bible and share with them God’s plan of salvation. It is also a
joy to see God orchestrate human relationships in ministry that are intended to point
people to Christ.

When we arrived on the mission field in Gambia in May 2019, we only knew a
handful of people. Since that time, God has allowed us to develop friendships with
hundreds of people, some who are believers and others who have yet to place their
faith and trust in Christ.

One man in particular whom I have developed a
friendship with is a man we will call Lamin. My
friendship with Lamin began a few years ago as I was
needing a small masonry repair on our rental house,
and our friendship has grown since then. As we began
the construction of our church building, Lamin and
his team have been the local builders we have hired
throughout this process.

Lamin Lamin is a very humble, honest, hardworking, and devout Muslim man. Over the
past year or so, I have had several good conversations with him about the Bible and
Jesus. Our conversations about life and death recently became very personal to him
as his father passed away. Since his father’s death, I have tried to encourage Lamin
but also challenge him to consider his own life and whether he knows Christ or not.

It is extremely sad to see how Muslims deal with death and how they place their
faith for eternity in their works and prayers.

Lamin recently told me that as a child he attended a Christian school in Senegal
and heard about Jesus there. His Muslim parents only sent him to that Christian
school because of the quality education he would get, not knowing that the seeds of
the Gospel would be planted in his heart to be cultivated later in life.

Daniel & Sarah Jenkins
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Please pray for Lamin that he will place his faith and trust in Jesus
Christ. My earthly friendship with Lamin is temporal, but I hope
and pray that he will choose Jesus for his eternal salvation.

As a missionary and pioneering church planter, it is impossible to
see how God is going to direct and whom God is going to bring
along one’s path. That is why we must view everyone as a soul
Christ loves and died for because one never knows who may be
ready to receive Him by faith.

The Bible says in Romans 1:16 that the Gospel of Jesus Christ is
the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth. Here
in Gambia, a small West African nation that is 96% Islamic, we do
not see the same response to the Gospel that other nations of the
world see. Yet we know that God has called us to this challenging
and difficult field to faithfully proclaim the Gospel. The fruits of
our labor are in the Lord’s hands, but what a joy it is to cultivate
friendships like the one I have with Lamin in hopes that they too
will know what it means to be forgiven and to be free in Christ. W
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