“I WAS IN a valley burning with red-hot fire," says Gregory Wafula. "There was a cross lifted up, and on the cross an open Bible, and I could see an angel. Next I saw a small light from heaven shining on my face and my body shook. Then the command came: 'Preach the gospel to the people who are in the Valley of Decision.'"

Gregory was just 26 years old - and not one month old in Christ - when he saw this vision and heard the command to evangelise. It is a vision he has vigorously pursued and a command he has continuously obeyed in the 16 years since, and has led to his current position as Multiply Apostolic Man for East Africa.

It could all have been so different. With a father who was important in the Quaker Church, the dominant denomination in western Kenya, where Gregory grew up, he could have settled for a comfortable Christian life. A direct word from a preacher at a student crusade in India shook his complacency: "Your father is a founder of a church - but that does not qualify you for the kingdom of God." Gregory felt the cutting word and humbly put up his hand to accept Christ.

To be a disciple takes decisions - not just one, but many, over and over and over again. This was a lesson Gregory quickly learnt as he chose, for example, to cut himself off from his former friends in order to pursue his new life as a child of God.

Within a month he was elected leader of the Christian Union.

"That really pushed me on my knees because I was teaching some really mature and able children of God," recalls Gregory. His 5am prayer times provided fuel for the day and Gregory was soon thrilled to see people that he had been praying for committing themselves to Christ.

Every disciple has to learn the way of working out their faith in an alien world, with its many distractions. On returning to Kenya, Gregory put his Rural Industries and Management degree to use as a teacher at the Kenya National Polytechnic and later as a management training consultant. In 2001 he knew the Lord was telling him to leave to pursue ministry full-time - but his boss persuaded him to stay. It took three deaths in his family in one week to pull him back in line with God's call. Brokenhearted, he cried out: "God, if there's another price I have to pay, let me go through it now."

Suffering leads to fruitfulness, and now he plunged himself into the work of Christ Evangelistic Church. Its mission, based on Ephesians 4, is to equip leaders with the necessary skills to successfully plant other successful churches. It started in 1997 in one member's house; today 70 adult members meet in a hall in Nairobi, and there are three other churches in Kenya - in Mombasa, Tall Station and Kitale - and one in Uganda.

Another key scripture for Gregory is 2 Corinthians 4, which speaks of "setting forth the truth plainly".

"If we have to sell truth, we ourselves must be truth," Gregory says. The accountability and integrity that he saw in the Jesus Fellowship leadership structure at the first Multiply International Leaders Conference in 2002 was therefore very attractive to him, and played a key part in his decision to link with the network.

He and the leaders of the other churches in the Kenya Multiply Network have now been meeting weekly for three years.

"It has made a tremendous difference," says Gregory. "As a leader you suffer from a lot of loneliness, a lack of people to encourage and inspire you."

The five churches also fellowship together once a month and work together on crusades. "Working jointly means we have more impact than we'd have single-handedly," he explains.

The love that reached beyond walls of family, tribe and race in Jesus Fellowship also greatly inspired Gregory, who has a vision to have a church with all 42 Kenyan tribes represented: "I see Multiply as a network that assists in the breaking down of walls that have separated believers in terms of denominations and of races. Though we have extended families, inviting people who are not your own relatives to a meal is not very common. But I saw that here.

"And the bringing in of new believers, discipling them, that really touched me too."

As a result, when Gregory returned to Kenya he took in a boy from the Luo tribe and educated him. He now has a job and is almost independent.

What Gregory saw of sharing has also been put into practice, with church members bringing in unused clothes, household goods and shoes to share. "The church is now full of smartly dressed people," laughs Gregory.

The ever-present challenges of resources when unemployment is rife, the need to support family, a transient population and restrictive regulations don't stunt Gregory's vision. For Christ Evangelistic Church, he has his sights set on five new churches in Kenya and more in Uganda too. And for the mother church, he wants 250 disciples - and at least 150 seats (currently there are just 30 seats!)

For Multiply, the net spreads wider, with four more towns in Kenya - Kisumu, Eldoret, Kitale and Bungoma - plus Burundi, Tanzania, Rwanda as well as Kenya and Uganda all in his sights. An East African Multiply Conference in Nairobi on Saturday 2 February 2008 is set to draw them in.

The apostolic path can be lonely, but God always produces needed encouragement, as Gregory found at another desperately low time: "I was walking with the then president in a cassava field. All of a sudden there was a small dais. We climbed on it. The president was holding a microphone and I saw hundreds of people running towards us, from all directions. But he didn't say anything. He handed me the mike and said: "Preach to these people."

One thing is certain, Gregory can be relied on to deliver the gospel of Jesus Christ plain and clear, whoever is listening.

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