Abraham Kalyapu – Overseas Staff Team with Mission Direct in Zambia and Zimbabwe

Mission has always played a significant part in Abe’s life. The youngest of 10 children of Christian parents, his father was a headmaster in Western Zambia in various Mission Schools. On the death of his father when Abe was two, his mother moved the family to a village just outside the Luampa Mission Station, in a remote, rural part of the Western Province and 600km from the capital – Lusaka.

The station was founded by the South Africa General Mission (later to become part of SIM) in the early part of the 20th century with a Church and a Basic (primary) School. In the 1950s a hospital was also built in the compound. Missionaries, mostly from USA, Canada and the UK, staffed the Station and as Abe grew up in the 1980s and 90s he was greatly influenced by friendship with them and their children. One American couple in particular, took him under their wing and sponsored his secondary education and a theology degree in Zambia.

He helped with youth ministry as a volunteer before theology studies; did youth ministry as his placement during college and worked as a youth pastor at Kitwe Evangelical Church for a year before coming to UK.  In 2003, Abe came to the UK on a volunteer visa to work at SIM’s HQ near Ipswich.

As Abe was coming to the end of this time in Autumn 2004, he saw an advertisement for the post of Youth Pastor at Godmanchester Baptist Church. He applied and was appointed. Having obtained the necessary Work Permit (a miraculously smooth process) Abe was Youth Pastor at GBC from 2005 to 2010, bringing a taste of Africa and God’s Word to young and old alike.

Abe is now working on the Overseas Staff Team with Mission Direct, helping to facilitate the MD Teams in Zambia and Zimbabwe.

In Zambia, most of the projects are in and around Lusaka, in partnership with the Evangelical Church in Zambia (ECZ), but in 2011 he co-led a Medical Mission Team to Luampa Hospital, now run by ECZ – a God-given completed circuit! Sent from the Luampa Church as a missionary to the UK, he has gone back as Godmanchester’s missionary to them!