Abdullah

The Former Witch Doctor

by Chris and Candy Wood, Digo Focus Team

In a small village on the coast of Kenya, there lived a witch doctor. This man was powerful in the spirit world, and people came from many miles away to seek him out for healing. He was well-known as a powerful healer. He was a committed Muslim, and his name was Abdullah*.

A few weeks ago, Abdullah’s wife suffered from an issue with her neck. He used his healing powers on her but to no avail. One day, while Abdullah was away on business, his wife attended the local Digo gathering of believers and asked this group to pray for her, for healing. As the believers prayed, the woman was healed in Jesus’ name!

When her husband returned home, she told him about her meeting with the believers, and he was angry, telling her, “We are Muslim. We don’t pray to Jesus.” But, because the healing was so obvious and because she wanted to learn more about Christ, he permitted her to continue meeting with the local believers.

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A few weeks later, our family returned from Nairobi, excited to be back on the coast in our new home and ready to see what this new chapter for the Digo Team would look like. At that time, a short-term team from Korea came to visit, and they wanted to pray in as many local villages as possible. Pastor Menza, our local AIC Kenyan Pastor, suggested we take them to his home village, which was predominately Muslim, so we headed off to his hometown to pray and share the gospel.

As the Korean prayer team, Pastor Menza, and I walked through a kaya (a Digo homestead), we stopped to talk to an older man. His name was Abdullah, the witch doctor. He welcomed our team to sit and talk, and he told Pastor Menza that many pastors had come through the area over the years talking about Jesus, but the news had never made any impact on him. He told the pastor he could hear all the spirits inside of him, telling him not to listen to us, and then he asked, “If I turned to Jesus, how would I heal the people? How would I support my family?”

“People will be healed in the name of Jesus,” Pastor Menza said. “Jesus can take care of your needs, not the spirits.”

As the men talked and we prayed, God worked in Abdullah’s heart. After some time and a lot of discussion, Pastor Menza turned to the team with a smile on his face. “He says it’s time. He wants to turn his life over to Christ.”

The team, along with the Pastor and I, gathered around the man, laid hands on him, and prayed for freedom for him. Afterwards, the now FORMER witch doctor said, “As we prayed, I could feel every spirit leave me.”

But God wasn’t finished performing miracles in this village yet.

As we left his home, a neighbor woman come out of her hut and said, “I know why you are here, and I want to follow Jesus.” So we prayed with that woman. Shortly after that, another woman came out of her house, the daughter-in-law of the first woman, and said, “I also want to follow Jesus.”

Since that beautiful day, Abdullah, his wife, and these two ladies have faithfully gathered together with the small (but growing) body of believers each Sunday. They are hungry to know more about Christ, and we pray that their example will be a bright light in their village.

*name has been changed