by Aila Tasse with Dave Coles

I was born into a staunch Muslim family in Marsabit, northern Kenya. I started going to the mosque with my father at a young age. My family were all very devout, with daily life centered on the mosque in the afternoons and evenings. Our community was predominantly Muslim, and other faiths were scorned and rejected outright. Those we thought of as Christians were few and disliked by our community.

While growing up, I took my Islamic studies seriously and avoided the Christians. At around the age of nine, I developed a deep desire to know more about my Islamic faith. I remember longing deeply for a personal relationship with God. While watching my father’s cows, I would often look up at the sky and ask Allah, ‘Can you speak to me?’ I felt sad and frustrated that I went to prayer five times a day and didn’t know to whom I was praying. The answer eluded me for years, even as my desire to serve Allah grew.

When I was 13 years old, I went to a Muslim-dominated boarding school in Moyale, about a day’s drive from my home. I quickly joined the Young Muslim League. A preacher from a very conservative Muslim sect came every Wednesday evening to teach those of us in the group. He taught that the primary duty of a young Muslim is to propagate the religion of Allah.

My searching soul cried out for more of Allah, and the allure of this presentation of conservative Islamic teachings gripped my soul like talons that dug deep. My desire for relationship with God led me to embrace these teachings. My gradual radicalization had begun. It wasn’t long until I was ready to pay the ultimate price for my faith: to die for Islam.

That year in the school’s second term, an intern teacher named Teacher Francis, from a university in southern Kenya, came to our school for three months. He was a born-again Christian. I didn’t know what that meant, but God used him to bring me the message of life.

During that term, a deadly malaria and yellow fever outbreak occurred in our area. Medical services were poor: just one small, ill-equipped health center served the whole town. Many students, including myself, became so ill that we had to be admitted to the health center for treatment. Some students and many from the local community died in the following weeks.

Every day, more dead bodies were wheeled through the hall outside my room. This birthed in my heart a great fear of death. ‘Will I die? Where will I go if I die?’

About a week after I entered the health center, the infection caused my brain to swell and my vital organs to slow down. Medical personnel informed the school administration that they did not expect me to survive.

Then Teacher Francis came to visit. He had heard that I was the next one likely to die, and he felt led to come to the hospital and share Christ with me. He brought me some food and spoke with me for a while. Then, before he left, he asked me, ‘If you die today, where will you spend your eternity?’

I instinctively responded, ‘Inshallah’ (‘Allah knows’). The Qur’an states that only Allah knows a person’s ultimate fate. No one receives any assurance whatsoever.

‘You know, your sins can be forgiven,’ he told me.

This was the first time I had ever heard this! As he spoke, I realized that he wanted to convert me to Christianity. ‘I don’t want to be Christian,’ I told him.

He responded wisely, ‘You don’t have to be a Christian for your sins to be forgiven, you just have to believe in Christ through whom sins are forgiven.’

That night I began to hear a male voice in my sleep repeating, ‘Your sins can be forgiven.’ I dismissed it as just a thought in my head, since I was still sick enough to be in the hospital.

This continued for a whole week before Teacher Francis came back. By then, I was desperate for him to come and take away this tormenting ‘Christian spirit’! My illness was also worsening, and I had become even more afraid of dying.

When he returned, he explained to me more of the gospel. I told him again, ‘I don’t want to be a Christian, but I want my sins forgiven, so I die without sin.’

He asked, ‘Are you willing to pray for your sins to be forgiven?’

I said ‘Yes!’ And he quietly led me in a prayer of salvation. I suddenly felt complete peace, as the fear of death evaporated and my heart was at rest. That night I slept soundly for the first time in three weeks. My newfound peace was so profound that I didn’t notice the rapid changes taking place in my body. To the astonishment of the doctors, my health had taken a dramatic turn, and I was undergoing a rapid and noticeable recovery! God had healed me.

During the following weeks, Teacher Francis discreetly discipled me, telling the other teachers he was helping me catch up with studies after my long illness. When the time came for him to leave our area, he told me to do three things to grow in faith: Pray every day to God in Jesus’ name, read the Bible (giving me his Gideon’s pocket New Testament), and ‘share with others what happened to you’.

For many months, I did the first two secretly while fear prevented me from doing the third. But months later, while I was back at home, the Lord allowed my new faith to be discovered by my parents. My father was irate, and after I resisted days of pressure to recant, I was thrown out of the house. The Lord provided a Christian family three hours away who took me in, enabling me to finish my studies and attend church regularly.

One day, I went to a campsite in the Marsabit forest to pray in solitude. Suddenly, I felt such a strong presence of God that the environment around me totally changed. As I started praying in his presence, I went into a dramatic vision that lasted for many hours. The climax was a vision of cabbages growing in the desert. I realized God was calling me to bring the gospel to my own people and other unreached tribes in Northern Kenya, and was promising to bring fruit in those efforts.

Over the next few years, the Lord allowed me to plant many churches among unreached peoples and attend Bible school. He also expanded my vision to include taking the gospel to all the unreached groups in Kenya.

Then in 2005, I began applying the ministry approach now known as disciple-making movements. The Lord blessed this approach with multiple generations of disciples making disciples and churches planting churches. In the 20 years since then, thousands of groups and families from other faith backgrounds have come to Christ—grounded in biblical faith and sharing that faith with others. Our network has now multiplied to impact multiple unreached peoples in nations throughout East Africa, the Horn, and Southern Africa. To God be the glory!

Excerpts from Cabbages in the Desert: How God Transformed a Devout Muslim and Catalyzed Disciple Making Movements among Unreached Peoples by Aila Tasse with Dave Coles, © 2024 are used by permission. This article was first published by lausanne.org  and is used here with permission.