What’s Wrong With Angelina Juma?

“Nowadays you are not doing well. You have too much gospel and too many words. What’s the matter?”

Angelina Juma thought this was an odd question. She pondered her uninvited guest and his uninvited input. It was a partial truth. She had been rather outspoken lately to fellow attendees of her church in southern Kenya. But “not doing well” was simply inaccurate. In fact, Angelina felt better than she had in nine years. 

It all started in 2016 while she was teaching a Sunday school class for kids. “I was reading the Bible and came across the book of Exodus,” Angelina recalls. “When I read verse 8 [in chapter 20], which says ‘Remember the Sabbath day,’ I began to question which day was actually the Sabbath. As I read more, I realized Jesus died on Friday, rested on Saturday, and rose on Sunday—so the Sabbath must be Saturday.” 

A Message on the Radio

One day while listening to the radio in her home, Angelina heard a message from a Seventh-day Adventist evangelist. “I began reading more—listening more,” she says. “I’d prepare my notebook and pen, and follow along with the sermons on the radio.” Angelina could not help sharing what she was learning with others in her church. But they seemed to think something was wrong with her. “Some women began asking me questions, wondering why I was changing,” Angelina recalls. It was her outspokenness that earned her the visit from her pastor—the uninvited guest with the odd question.

Angelina chose her next words carefully. “I don’t have a gospel that causes problems, but I do listen to the radio, and that radio has helped me a lot.” 

“Nowadays many people are becoming prostitutes of the church” was her pastor’s cryptic response. “Don’t become one of them.”

A New Congregation

Feeling unwelcome within her church family because of her convictions was a difficult experience for Angelina—but one that gave her an idea. There was no Adventist church in her remote village, called Mutune, so she would start one herself. Angelina spoke about Jesus to anyone who would listen. Over time 17 people started meeting in the wooden shed on her property each Sabbath.

But the more their membership grew, the more inadequate their meeting place became. “The church was small,” says Angelina. “It became difficult for us to worship.” Wind and rain passed through large cracks in its walls and roof, often making it uncomfortable to meet there. When invited to join worship, potential guests often refused because of these factors. 

A Solution Comes by Truck

The solution to the Mutune Adventist Church’s problem arrived on June 13, 2025, in the form of a large blue truck rumbling through the village. It rolled to a halt on land Angelina had donated for a church. Crew members hopped to the ground, unloading tools and steel parts. Angelina watched all of this–and kept watching as her brand-new one-day church structure took shape. 

Unlike some of Maranatha’s more elaborate projects, which include more complex and aesthetic elements, the one-day church was designed with the single goal of efficiency. Its parts are easily transportable, and its strong frame, roof, and concrete anchors provide a stable starting point for members to add walls to with local materials. 

One-day churches are especially useful in rural Kenya. Roughly 2 percent of the country’s population is Seventh-day Adventist—a proportion that is growing because of people, such as Angelina, who share their faith with tenacity. But Kenya’s Adventist Church doesn’t yet have the financial viability to provide adequate meeting places for new congregations. In many remote villages such as Mutune, incomes are meager and resources scarce. 

“They don’t have churches,” says Maranatha’s country director for Kenya, Anu Kedas. “When it rains, they can’t worship under the trees. They look for places they can rent. But they don’t have a lot of income, so the church members sometimes are not able to pay the rent. Most of the time they are forced to stay in their homes without having a place to worship.” 

A permanent church structure solves these issues and gives congregations a sense of hope and dignity, as Angelina experienced firsthand. “When the one-day church was done and she actually saw it with her eyes, she was just dancing in praise of her heavenly Father,” Anu recalls. “She was so excited. I mean, you couldn’t stop her. She was just going on singing and dancing and just looking up at the roof and not believing what just happened on that property.”

Now instead of assuming that something is wrong with Angelina, friends and neighbors see her new one-day church and wonder what went right. “I know that when people in this area see how we are progressing, the church will be filled,” Angelina says. “To those who gave the donation for the church, I want to say thank you, because we in this community have come out of the darkness.”

The original version of this story was posted on Issue 4 2025 of The Volunteer. Maranatha Volunteers Internationalis a supporting ministry that is not part of the corporate Seventh-day Adventist Church.