He Would Not Let Me Go

Testimony · Called to serve

Pastor Asenath Nyabonyi Omoro · As told to Belden Orina

I first sensed God’s call as a little girl in my grandmother’s home. It took many years, many closed doors and more than one refusal before I answered it. This is the story of a God who kept calling, kept providing, and would not let me go.

“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28)

A seed in a small heart

My name is Asenath Nyabonyi Omoro. I come from Nyaneke village in Nyamira County, in the green hills of western Kenya, and I am a member of Maili Mbili Seventh-day Adventist Church in Kisii County. I grew up in my grandmother’s home, and it was there, in fourth grade, that a quiet thought first settled in my heart: one day I would be a pastor. I did not understand it, and as the years passed it seemed less and less likely.

Life soon gave me reasons to doubt it. When I completed primary school, my mother made it plain that she would rather educate a boy than a girl beyond that level. My schooling could have ended there. But God had already prepared a helper. A kind woman began giving me 200 Kenyan shillings at a time, less than two US dollars, towards my fees. With that small gift I completed my first two years of high school, and when I had to change schools, my grandfather carried me through until I completed high school.

The same woman then sent me to her daughter, and I worked in her home as a babysitter while she paid my college fees. The strain grew heavier until I went back home. Later I spent four years working in the home of one of our lecturers. Then God opened a door: a three-month contract at Kisii University. My joy lasted only a moment. The woman I lived with put me out of her house and called me a hypocrite. I felt so abandoned that dark thoughts, even of ending my life, crept into my mind. But God sent an angel, a woman who worked as a cleaner. She opened her home to me until I found a room of my own.

Running from the call

Through all these storms I never left the church. I was often weak, but I kept leaning on God, and He kept giving me strength for one more day. I served as a Pathfinder director and taught the Sabbath School lesson, and in 2017 our members chose me as their youth leader. I loved the young people, but I struggled. My English was poor, our church was in town, and I was still living with a family and working in their home, so I could never give the work the time it deserved.

Then, in 2018, the call I had felt as a child came back with a name and a place. The conference office invited me to serve for a year in Tanzania through the One Year in Mission programme. It should have been the answer to my childhood dream. Instead, I turned it away. I looked at my poverty, my poor English and my many burdens, and I told myself that people like me do not become missionaries. I did not yet understand that the thought that came to me in fourth grade was not a passing wish. It was the voice of God, and God does not take back His calls.

“For the gifts and calling of God are without repentance.” (Romans 11:29)

When every door closed

What followed were some of the hardest years of my life. In 2019 a small mistake cost me my job, and I went home to my village to start again. Nothing worked. My brother, wanting to help, took me to Nairobi to look for work. He knocked on every door he knew and used every connection he had, and every door stayed shut.

Slowly I began to see what was happening. I had the strength and the ability, yet I could not reach the place that everyone, including me, expected me to reach. It was as if a hand was holding me back. I returned to Kisii and tried a small business, but my heart had no rest. Looking back, I can see that the Lord was gently closing every road except the one He had chosen for me. Like Jonah, I had run the other way, and God was patiently bringing me back.

Tea pickers in the Kenyan highlands. Photo: Rik Schuiling / TropCrop-TCS, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

The call comes again

In March 2020 the conference office called once more, and this time the message was firm: I was to go for One Year in Mission, with no more excuses. Even then I hesitated, but my resistance was wearing thin. In January 2021 I finally surrendered, packed my few belongings and went to serve in a district.

It was not easy. Many times I had no money for transportation to the homes I was visiting. Yet God used me. In those homes I met people carrying burdens of every kind, needs far greater than my own. As I sat with them, listened to them and prayed with them, my spiritual eyes were opened. I finally saw what Jesus saw when He looked at the crowds:

“The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few; pray ye therefore the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labourers into his harvest.” (Matthew 9:37, 38)

There, in those humble homes, I met Christ in a new way. For years I had known Him as the One who carried me through hunger, rejection and closed doors. Now I knew Him as the Lord of the harvest, and I understood that all along He had been preparing me to be one of His labourers.

Here am I

In 2022 the call grew stronger than ever. A voice kept ringing in my ears: “Go and accomplish God’s mission.” This time I did not run. I did not argue about my poverty or my English. Like the prophet Isaiah, I simply said yes.

“Also I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me.” (Isaiah 6:8)

Faithful all the way

Saying yes did not fill my pocket. I had no money for university. But the moment I began to seek admission, I learned that the God who calls also provides. When my own parents left me to find my own way, He gave me new parents: Prof. Worancha and Mrs. Masebo, a couple from Ethiopia who were lecturers at Bugema University and have since moved to the University of Eastern Africa, Baraton. They cared for me as their own, and the church stood with me all the way.

“When my father and my mother forsake me, then the LORD will take me up.” (Psalm 27:10)

Today I am graduating from Bugema University with a Bachelor of Theology. I do not yet know where God will send me, and I am waiting on Him for my next assignment. But I have seen His hand in every chapter of my story: in a few shillings from a kind woman, in a cleaner who opened her home, in the doors that closed and in the call that would not go away. As Ellen White wrote, “Our heavenly Father has a thousand ways to provide for us of which we know nothing.”¹

If you are walking through a hard season, please do not lose hope. God is still working all things together for good.

Lord, thank You for calling me, and for not letting me go when I kept turning away. Wherever You send me next, I will go. Help every reader who is running from You to stop, listen and say, “Here am I; send me.” Amen.

The God who called me would not let me go, and He will not let you go either.

“And we know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.” (Romans 8:28)

Cover: Onsando Dam, Nyamira County. Photo: Banja-Frans Mulder, CC BY 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Notes

1. Ellen G. White, The Ministry of Healing, p. 481 (MH 481.2). egwwritings.org

Bible quotations are from the King James Version.