Each of Senegal’s many ethnic groups cherishes its unique language and cultural traditions. Yet, nearly all of Senegal’s 16 million people (95%) bow toward Mecca and honor Muhammad as their prophet. Approximately 5% are Catholic.

The Wolof and Peul, the two largest ethnic groups, are proud of their long-held Islamic traditions and are content and complacent as Muslims. Sixty years of outreach efforts have produced fewer than 500 Christians among 10 million Wolof and Peul living today.

Yet, Jesus called us to make disciples among every people group ― even resistant ones. Jesus himself loved a proud and resistant people. Millions of people in Senegal have yet to hear clear and consistent gospel messages in their mother tongue.

The ministry efforts of the Metro SenWest Initiative focus on a large geographic triangle from the capital city of Dakar to two rapidly growing population centers to the east. Many large development projects within this triangle draw people from all over Senegal searching for employment and a new urban life.

We faithfully proclaim God’s message of salvation through a variety of strategies and venues. Muslims with “ears to hear” will rejoice in God’s redeeming love and come to faith in Jesus.

We are asking God for 5% of Senegal’s urban triangle to become reproducing disciples of Jesus,emphasizing the unreached Wolof and Peul.

Vision

We are asking God for 65% of the least-reached people groups having at least 5% of their population following Christ and gathered into disciple-making communities.

Background

• Nigeria is the seventh-largest nation in the world
• There are 251 least-reached people groups living in Nigeria
• The Gotel Mountains cover eastern Nigeria and extend into western Cameroon
• Ten least-reached people groups live in the Gotel region

History

In the early 2000s, Converge saw the need to address the HIV/AIDS pandemic sweeping through Nigeria. In 2004, Converge missionaries Art and Dorothy Helwig formed GECHAAN (Gembu Center for HIV/AIDS Advocacy Nigeria) to address this need. James 1:27 was their guiding verse. For 10 years, they worked in the HIV/AIDS community, treating it as a moral issue as well as a medical issue.

When the Helwigs retired in 2014, Dan and Tina Gibbs joined the ministry. Since that time, GECHAAN has expanded influence in the community providing community services in many areas, including health care, leadership development, children’s ministries and educational and empowerment programs providing training in many occupations and skills in how to maintain and run successful, godly businesses.

With this positive impact and reputation in the community, it has also given us a platform to address the needs and concerns of many internally displaced persons in our area because of Boko Haram and refugees from Cameroon escaping the violence happening in English-speaking Cameroon. We plan to use this platform to develop a disciple-making movement among the people indigenous to the Gotel Mountains.

The Africa Impact Team serves to recruit, develop and lead a team of leaders to come alongside indigenous and cross cultural leader/missionaries to reach the least reached and unreached in their areas of influence.

The Africa Impact Team co-labors with missionaries and indigenous leaders to strengthen their ministries and train them in reaching the least reached and unreached peoples of Sub-Saharan Africa.

The 6º Initiative is a church planting movement focused on the unreached people groups just north of the equator in West Africa. The Sixth Degree spans across the balmy African coast that has been impacted most by Voodoo and its exportation of precious human life through the slave trade.

As Converge missionaries, we partner with national leaders to plant churches in the region’s least-reached cities. A concentrated church-planting movement within these culturally significant cities serves as a launch pad for ministry into smaller communities. Our prayer is that we’ll see 190,000 disciples from unreached people groups in Togo and Benin.