N’DJAMENA, Chad – In one of the most perilous regions of the world, an American missionary is quietly building an army – not with weapons, but with prayer. Carole Ward has made it her life’s mission to follow God’s call and train fearless believers in Africa’s Sahel region.
The Sahel region of Africa isn’t the kind of place you just wander into. You’re called here.
“It’s very dry. It’s very sandy. It’s dusty. It’s desert. It can be 100, 115 degrees year-round,” Ward tells CBN News.
This vast stretch of land cuts across ten African nations, from Senegal to Eritrea. It’s a land of extremes – scorching heat, shifting sand, and deadly danger.
More than half of the world’s terror-related deaths happen here. It’s the front line in a spiritual and physical battle.
“And now, here you are in the middle of one of the most dangerous swaths of land in Africa. What is wrong with you?” CBN News asks Ward.
“The call of the wild. I don’t know. It’s in my blood,” she answers back.
Ward runs toward the fire. She has been doing it for decades, starting in northern Uganda during the height of the brutal Lord’s Resistance Army. Then came South Sudan – civil war, destroyed villages, broken hearts.
While others fled, Carole stayed, bringing healing, hope, and the relentless love of Jesus.
“You can’t live here until you’ve already died,” insists Ward. “You’ve died to yourself, and the devil can’t kill a dead man because your life isn’t your own.”
This kind of courage runs deep.
“So, this map was my father’s map on the wall of his, of our missionary house in the Philippines,” Ward describes as she walks to a map of the world that hangs in her modest home on the outskirts of Chad’s capital city. “And he would lay his hands, particularly on Muslim areas, just weeping and weeping.”
Her parents spent 62 years preaching the gospel in regions terrorized by Abu Sayyaf in the Philippines.
Her grandparents served as missionaries in China for 30 years.
Following Jesus wasn’t just a decision. It was their legacy.
“I realize then fear is contagious, but so is faith,” Ward says. “And so, I grew up in a home that, even though Abu Sayyaf was looking for my own father’s head for 45 years, he had no fear. He absolutely loved the people that burned the Bibles and threw them back in his face. And he was willing to lay his life down.”
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Today, Carole’s mission continues here in Chad – a country shadowed by the presence of Boko Haram, ISIS, and Al Qaeda.
“My heart is to move farther and farther north into more Islamic darkness with the gospel. Because if we’re not advancing as rapidly as they are, we’ve lost,” she says.
She’s launched a nationwide prayer movement, raising up local believers – Chadians who know the land, language, and cost of following and sharing Christ.
“We’ve had some Boko Haram come to Jesus in our missionary training school, we’ve done five of them in Chad now and are launching missionaries,” Ward tells CBN News during a recent visit to the country. “We have over 150 launched in Chad, and these are Chadian missionaries.”
Some of those missionaries have gone east, into the flood of Sudanese refugees escaping war.
“Many baptized, 202 of them, at the first missionary training school they had,” she says.
These aren’t outsiders – they’re locals. Trained, equipped, and ready to go where few others will.
People like Digba Katsala, a street evangelist. He doesn’t just preach – he rides straight into the chaos.
“Sometimes people are not very receptive, at times it gets a little confrontational, but afterwards, when people see that you persist with the Word of God, then they get used to you. And when you preach, at the end there are people that start giving their lives to Christ and that’s extraordinary,” Katsala described as CBN News joined him on the back of his motorcycle.
For the past 5 years, Pastor Digba has been using his motorcycle to ride the streets of Chad’s capital city N’Djamena, and at different locations he sets up his audio system, gets his microphone out, opens his Bible, either in French or Arabic, and he boldly proclaims the gospel of Jesus Christ.
Chad is more than 50 percent Muslim, but that doesn’t stop Digba from openly talking about Jesus.
His voice echoes through market squares and busy roads. People stop. They listen. And many respond.
Then there’s Abdoulaye Mayangar, another missionary who once followed Islam.
“I was a fervent Muslim,” says Mayangar, a traveling evangelist. “I prayed 5 times a day. I fasted during Ramadan, and I did not like Christians at all.”
His father trained with Islamic extremists in the Sahel to target Christians. Now Abdoulaye walks into the same regions, not with hate, but with hope.
While the world sees terror here, he sees something else.
“There is hope because many Muslims in these countries are open today to listening to the gospel,” Mayangar tells CBN News. “God is really working in the Sahel. They are coming to Jesus in large numbers, and their lives are being transformed.”
Ward calls Abdoulaye, Digba, and countless other Chadian believers the tip of the spear.
Through prayer, sacrifice, and the reckless love of God, they are reshaping the spiritual map of one of the most dangerous places here on the continent.
“Prayer transforms us to be willing to lay our lives down and fulfill the Great Commission, no matter the cost. Prayer gives us the burden,” Ward says. “We actually get maps out and we map where are the unreached people groups, where is terrorism, where are wars and bloodshed and let’s go.”
