By Bulus Silas Bossan

When I first met Louis Sonkey in Cameroon, I knew that he was an answer to a prayer I had been praying for decades. In 1991, I met Navigator pioneer Roy Robertson, and he told me he had gone to China as a missionary when he was only 26 years old. That year I began to pray for the Lord to raise up young people who are 100% committed to taking the Gospel to the nations. That describes Louis.

Louis was barely out of college when I met him in 2015, but the clarity of his commitment and vision inspired me. He had already written a mission statement for his life including clear goals like marriage, a PhD, and foundations for generations of disciples. Today he has accomplished most of the three- to five-year goals he had set out to do by this time (and it is a good thing, because there are plenty of long-term goals left on his list)! His wife of three years, Sunita, is equally sold out to a vision of reaching the poor in difficult areas. They are totally yielded to Jesus and to making disciples. They also feel called to cross-cultural missions.

Louis and Sunita have determined that their calling is “to introduce ministry in new cities and nations through university students, bringing healing to relationships and hope to the deprived in the society.” Their trajectory of doing ministry in universities to reach the rural poor makes a great deal of sense in Cameroon. The government assigns first jobs to many new graduates (especially those who are trained as teachers), often placing these graduates in rural areas around the country.

The Sonkeys have a ministry among university students. They are also reaching out to rural areas directly. Back in 2015, Dan Ndangason (a member of the Africa Regional Team who is responsible for pioneering countries) trained Louis in orality and oral disciple making movements. Now the Sonkeys lead short-term trips of university students to rural areas several times a year. They pass out audio Bibles, show films, and facilitate training so locals can start hosting oral Bible studies. These methods simultaneously put tools in the hands of the university students, who will need to know how to do oral discipleship when they are assigned jobs in the villages in a few short years.

Louis and Sunita, who were both high school teachers in the past, have been intentional about obtaining the credentials they will need to pioneer more rural areas in the future. Sunita has a master’s degree in economics, and Louis is soon to complete a PhD in agribusiness project management. They have seen God give them grace for hard ground, so they feel equipped to move into even less-reached areas.

Some years ago, when I sent out a prayer guide for new areas we’d like to pioneer in Africa, Louis and Sunita began to feel drawn to Sierra Leone. They had both studied economics, so maybe it is not surprising that God used statistics to impress that country upon their hearts. They saw its extremely low level of Gospel exposure, high poverty rate, and poor education system. They went on a vision trip in 2020 and are now believing God for all the resources to move there by the summer of 2023. They plan to use their platform of working on university campuses and supervising graduate-student research to see the Gospel move further into rural areas.

A key passage for Louis and Sunita has been Habakkuk 2:14, “For the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord as the waters cover the sea.” They look forward to seeing the Lord move his Gospel into every corner of Africa and beyond.