Jeremiah Getanda’s Story

by Pastor Leon Curfs

Jeremiah Getanda is a Kenyan who at a young age had his ankle crippled due to polio. He had no other choice than to just live with this handicap as others before him and after him had to do.
Jeremiah is an evangelist and had been working together with Seventh-day Adventist Churches to spread the news of the 3 angels’ messages. He came to the LIGHT training school at Nyanchwa Kisii, Kenya to learn more about evangelism.
Jeremiah was known as a critical person by the the local Seventh-day Adventist Conference. At the end of the 6-month training the Lord had changed Jeremiah to the extent that even the guest speaker at the LIGHT Graduation held on 23rd July 2009 at Nyanchwa Seventh-day Adventist Church remarked that Jeremiah had truly become a new person.

After the graduation, the Kisii Central Church made a plan to sponsor Jeremiah to do evangelism among an unreached people group, the Maasai in Maasai Mara, Kenya.
So Jeremiah took the challenge and went with his old and new wisdom in evangelism. The LIGHT school taught and practized a little agriculture. We do not know if Jeremiah learned there how to grow vegetables but one thing is sure when he went to the Maasai Mara he had learned at the LIGHT school that it is good to grow your own vegetables, etc.
So that is what Jeremiah embarked on. The soil was hard and the climate was dry. Nevertheless he succeded to grow some local vegetables called “sukuma wiki”.
The Maasai people found this very interesting and thus Jeremiah had an opportunity to share his wisdom about vegetables which later turned to the Gospel.

The Maasai people started coming and now Jeremiah has a small church among the Maasai.

The Maasai chief heard about Jeremiah’s farming wisdom and had to come and see for himself. The chief said to Jeremiah “our people have been here for a long time, and we eat meat and drink milk mixed with blood but now we see that vegetables can grow here. Thanks for showing us”.

Please pray for Jeremiah.

He is far into the Maasai Mara so I had no opportunity for real pictures from there but the two pictures you see are of the people in the Maasai Mara.

A typical Maasai house. Made from sticks woven together smeared with cow dung.
A typical Maasai dress, no pants but a small blanket that they wrap around themselves.

Maasai’s live together in small so-called “boma’s” surrounded by a fence of dried branches with thorns to protect themselves from wild animals coming in and to keep their domestic animals from going out.