KENYA: A Church, a Prayer and a Water Well

Excerpt from our June 2026 Newsletter:

Sitting in the living room of his home, shaded from the oppressive heat with only one small fan for relief, Pastor Galgalo, 49, laughs as he recalls the miraculous ways God has worked in his life.

“It encourages me when people ask my testimony,” he said, “because sharing my testimony feels like I am preaching to myself. As I look back and see, I am encouraging myself.”

Galgalo grew up in a devout Muslim household in Merti, a small rural town situated at the foot of a flat-topped butte in the remote and arid desert of northeastern Kenya. While Kenya is a majority-Christian nation, Merti is in a predominantly Muslim area. The town itself has 13 mosques, and 95% of its population of 47,000 identifies as Muslim.

Merti’s isolated location and staunch Islamic influence have made it difficult to advance the Gospel in this area, but when Galgalo was a young boy, an Italian missionary established a Christian school in the town. Since Galgalo came from a large Muslim family (his father had seven wives, and his mother married at least three different men), his parents struggled to meet their children’s needs. So when the Christian school began offering a feeding programme and free education, Galgalo’s parents sent him there, despite the religious differences. “That is how I first heard about Jesus,” Galgalo said.

As he advanced through school, Galgalo started to call himself a Christian. When his father confronted him and threatened to disown him if he didn’t renounce Christ, Galgalo stood firm.

“He told me that I either convert to Islam, or I cease to be his son,” Galgalo said. “I chose the latter option. I chose the Lord.”

At the time, Galgalo was preparing to leave for college to become a teacher. His father’s rejection threatened to upend his plans because he could not afford college tuition without his family’s help. To Galgalo’s surprise, a few members of the local Christian community helped pay for his education.

Upon his return to Merti after college, Muslims in the community compelled Galgalo to take his Christian faith more seriously. “ Muslims like to debate Christians,” he said. “They are trained, and they quote the Bible. Like one time I was wearing the crucifix of Jesus Christ, and the Muslims surrounded me and told me, ‘Hey, read the Ten Commandments; God does not want you to love idols.’ So the Muslims pushed me to study the Bible.” He endeavoured to study God’s Word in earnest, and as he did, he made a life-changing discovery.

“I realized I said I was Christian, but deep inside I was not transformed. I had not accepted the Gospel,” he said. “Once I realized that, I surrendered.”

Galgalo continued studying God’s Word and growing in his faith. He had gotten married, and his wife became a Christian also. He shared the Gospel with others and soon started meeting with other new Christians under an acacia tree. However, opposition from the local Muslim leaders caused the small group of Believers to flee to Nairobi.

Galgalo was sent to a teaching post in a different remote village, where he was the first Christian from his ethnic group the villagers had ever met. “It was as if a monkey had been brought to the market,” he said, laughing. Galgalo eventually led 12 students to faith in Christ, and he met with them after school for prayer and Bible study. But trouble arose when leaders of the local mosque discovered Galgalo’s evangelistic activities.

As Galgalo walked along the road around midday on a Friday, he suddenly heard a loud commotion. “I looked back and saw a large crowd in the distance, all of them carrying big sticks,” he said. “I didn’t know what was going on, so I just continued on my way to school. When I arrived, there were three men with big sticks asking for Teacher Galgalo.”

The men reported that the sheikh had incited the community to come kill Galgalo or chase him out of town. Just as the mob advanced toward Galgalo, a local woman stepped forward.

“This man is a Christian (infidel), yes we know,” the woman said, “but he is here because of our children. He is here to give us studies, so whoever touches him shall first challenge me.” Suddenly, the crowd’s mood shifted in support of Galgalo.

“The Lord used that one woman to bring change,” Galgalo said. “God saved my life that day.” Though the threat on Galgalo’s life subsided, other threats persisted. The stress was so intense that Galgalo’s wife lost multiple pregnancies. After 18 months, Galgalo asked to be transferred back to Merti. But that would only bring new challenges.

Galgalo did not originally intend to plant a church in his hometown.

“It was not in my plan. I didn’t know what ‘church planting’ means,” he said. “I just shared Christ with the people. The idea of planting a church was not in my vocabulary.”

As Galgalo shared his faith, people responded and came to faith in Christ. By 2007, the small group of Believers who had previously fled to Nairobi had returned to Merti. They asked Galgalo to be their pastor, and though they could not offer him a salary, they sponsored his theological training. So Galgalo attended Bible school to earn a theology degree.

The church in Merti grew, and one of the members gave a small plot of land to the church. In 2010, the congregation raised enough money to build a small structure on the land for church gatherings. The Muslim community began to realize that the church was gaining influence, and persecution increased. The church received threats, and members of the community threw stones at the building when the Christians gathered. They could not meet to pray at night without police protection.

Galgalo started carrying a black book to document threats in case he needed to provide evidence of attacks for the police. When VOM workers first met Galgalo in 2018, the book was nearly full.

Still, the church grew, and the congregation realized their current meeting place would eventually be too small to accommodate their numbers. In 2012, they applied for a new plot of land from the local government.

“The community elders said these people should be given the land, but not in the middle of town,’” Galgalo recalled. He said they considered Christians too “noisy” to have a place of worship in town.

The church was granted 10 acres of wild bushland. The members spent the next year or so clearing the land, and then they submitted a request to the local government to install a water access point. Their request was denied. They kept asking, and they kept being denied.

“There was war for seven years,” Galgalo said. “It cost us a lot of time and emotions.”

Galgalo and the church continued to fight for water access, and they continued to meet and work on the land. Galgalohad a vision for the land to one day be a farm to help the church be more sustainable. Then, in 2018, the need for water became more dire: Local Muslim leaders prohibited any church members from using the community water supply.

“Now there was no getting water,” Galgalo said. “So I prayed.

A very simple, sincere prayer. I told the Lord, ‘You know we need water; make us water. The community has denied us water. But you are the one who brings rivers out of dry land.’”

Soon, Front-Line Workers connected with Galgalo, and the global body of Christ helped the church in Merti dig a water well on their land. Out of it fresh, clean water flowed, a rarity in this part of Africa, where contamination and salinity can make water unpotable. Before the water had even been sent off for testing, Galgalo took a sample of it home and planted some seeds to see if they would grow.

“It was fresh water. I prayed for that,” Galgalo said. “God silenced the community, all those people who were trying to attack us, saying that the church should not be given land.”

Soon after the well was completed, a severe droughthit Merti and the surrounding region. It devastated the community. All of the town’s water sources dried up, except for the church’s well.

“All the shallows dried up; the river was dry. Now they, the community, are coming to beg for water,” Galgalo said.

The church shared their water with the community, and not only with the people, but with their livestock also. Since then, things have changed between the church and the Muslim townspeople of Merti.

“We have thought, ‘Are we dreaming?’ Those people who hated us, called us names, they have started now to give us good names just because of that water. ... In their mosque they could not get a cup of water for their ceremonial washing . Now they have to send somebody to get it from this church.”

Elders from the Muslim community have come to apologize to Galgalo for how they treated him and the church, something that he says is rare in their Muslim culture. “The well saved the name of the church,” he said.

While relationships have improved with the community, Galgalo continues to experience opposition because of his Christian witness. Since the church cannot afford to pay him as a pastor, he still teaches in the local school to provide for his family. He has been passed over for promotions multiple times, and students he once taught are now in leadership above him, something he knows happens because he is a Christian.

“They want to humiliate me because of my faith,” he said. “Unless you deny your faith, you are not promoted.”

He also can only do ministry visits during the day because of the risks of being out after dark. Still, Galgalo remains in Merti because of the encouragement he has received from the global body of Christ and because of the great number of remaining unmet needs.

“Last year, I almost reached a breaking point,” he said.“I thought about resigning. But if not me, who else will go and encourage these people? If I leave this community, then who else? Because of the rough road, because of the weather, because of the facilities, no one is willing to come. ... All these people need fellowship. Some are failing ... souls are perishing. There are no missionaries, there are no evangelists, there are no full-time pastors. So I give my life full-time to the ministry of the Gospel.”