In 2001, while he was an international student at the Washington Bible College and Capital Bible, Abednigo and his family settled in a crime-ridden neighborhood in Washington, D.C. Things got so bad that they hardly dared to go outside their apartment.
“Someone from the seminary advised me to leave [that neighborhood] immediately,” say Abednigo, a native of Zimbabwe.
Abednigo’s boss at the school, a Covenanter named John Bannan, heard about his need and decided to help. Bannan called Sally Meyer, a friend from Church of the Redeemer, a Covenant Church in Bowie, Maryland. She invited Abednigo and his family to stay in her home.
“What moved me most was the fact that she let us move into her home while she was away,” Abednigo recalls. “She did not know us, but she trusted us with access to her home. Her neighbors stood by their doors looking to see what was happening, seeing us black people move into this home with the owner away.”
The Ndogas moved in on a Saturday. The next day, feeling somewhat obligated, Abednigo visited Bannan and Meyer’s church.
Before long he and his family became an integral part of the life of the church. Minutes after Abednigo attended his first service, the music director asked him to sing the next week. Later that day, he and wife heard a knock on the front door. It was the pastor, asking if their son, Rejoyce, could come over and play with his son.
“I must tell you that this was the first time in a month that our son could play.” Abednigo recalls. “We know that our son left that afternoon and came home at 11 p.m.”
Within weeks, Abednigo was preaching and teaching Sunday school. “Before long, even before we decided whether Church of the Redeemer was to be our home church, we were all over the place,” he says.
Abednigo ended up serving part-time on the staff for three years and preaching every six weeks. He adds with gratitude that “The people there showed us so much love for us in everything we did. In fact, they took upon themselves some of my seminary financial needs.”
The acceptance and love shown by the Bowie church inspired Abednigo and helped him overcome images of the past and develop a vision for the future. “We were shown real love,” he says. “You must understand that this was a church I would call a ‘white church,’ and for me to be a pastor having been brought up in a country where apartheid was the norm, it was not easy.”
There was no apartheid at the church. “There was not even a single day where I felt discriminated,” Abednigo declares. “It was great to minister there.”
The church is grateful for the time the Ndogas spent with them. “They all brought such joy,” says member Nancy Sanders. “They were a real inspiration to us.”
“It’s broadened our sense of having to minister cross-culturally. It certainly put Africa on our hearts,” says Timothy B. Johnson, the congregation’s former pastor who now serves Bloomington Covenant Church in Minneapolis, Minnesota.
“We became brothers in Christ quite quickly,” Johnson says. “He was as joyful a person as you would ever want to meet.”
“He is very passionate,” Johnson adds. “His heart’s calling is to be an evangelist.”
That call is now being lived in Zimbabwe. Abednigo returned to his country in January 2005 and has been planting churches and supporting other pastors ever since.
He supervises four pastors who are in charge of 32 churches. “My responsibility is to oversee the whole ministry and facilitate training for the pastors and church leaders.”
Abednigo says he hopes to establish a school or college to train pastors. He adds that he still is a member of the church in Bowie, “and believe I am serving in my home country as their missionary.”
Recently Adebnigo started a new church plant in Bindura, Zimbabwe. The name of the new congregation? Church of the Redeemer.
