The Legacy of Ann Bolden
As old men often do, I’ve been reminiscing about how I’ve spent my life over the last 50 years, the impact my life has had on Messiah’s Kingdom, and the part my wife, Ann, played in those Kingdom accomplishments. You see, my wife of 51 years, 8 months, and 11 days, passed away on Thanksgiving Day, November 24, 2022 at 6:00 PM, after a 3-year battle with colorectal cancer. During those 51 years, we resided in three foreign countries, learned two languages, and raised three daughters. That covers 30 of our 51 years together.
In total, 50 of the 51 years were spent together in ministry, bringing souls to Jesus, establishing churches, training leaders, and training others to train others. We lived and worked in the African nations of Kenya, Tanzania, and Liberia. One Kingdom has played an important role in the Kenyan work, primarily through World Radio and the publication and distribution of their newsletter, World Radio News.
During our years of living overseas, we would return to the States every three years and travel the roads, telling churches what God had being doing through us to broaden the Kingdom. Most of that emphasis was (unfortunately) on me! I would describe doing everything I did in a foreign language, 4-wheeling down rough and muddy roads, and working with primitive people who still resided in mud huts with grass roofs. I dealt with witchcraft, superstition, polygamy, and darkness daily.
Through living among those people (John 1:14), they came to faith and desired baptism. We’d go to muddy streams for baptisms, dodging poisonous reptiles, hippos, crocodiles, and parasite-infested waters. We planted churches, taught people to read, to interpret scriptures, and to change their lives to the Messiah’s standards… and trained them to do what we did.
Americans would often ask, “How big is your congregation?” I answered, “Which one? I work with 40!” I worked 12+ hour days, five days a week, and traveled with the family to different congregations every Sunday. Mondays were often spent welding and putting my vehicle back together. Tuesdays were family days topped off with a team devotional. Wednesdays were back on the road again. I loved every minute of it.
Congregations in the US cried, they loved us, continued to support us, and we stirred them up to continue their evangelism.
Once I listened in on a question-and-answer session where ladies were asking Ann about what she did in our ministry. Ann’s answer shocked me! She answered:
Do you know what it’s like at Thanksgiving when you make all the preparations? You’ve made purchases over the last week; all ingredients are fresh. You rise early in the morning and start preparations: stringing and cutting the beans, peeling the potatoes, mixing the stuffing, making the pie crusts, mixing, and cooking so that all is on the table and ready to eat on time. Well, that’s my every day!
There are no frozen things, or canned food, or anything pre-prepared. Every day I go to the market and barter over potatoes, carrots, beans, and every hunk of meat. There is no self-rising flour, and what flour I do have, I sift the weevils out; every cup of rice I sift the rocks out.
While doing that, I home-school the girls, wash clothes, deal with visitors all day long, pay the bills, keep up with finances (every thing was paid in cash… Kenyan shillings), and try to keep my kids protected from malaria, dysentery, amoebas, giardia, and every other tropical disease known to man. Every ounce of drinking water has to be boiled for ten minutes and filtered to protect from water-borne diseases. And when a kid runs a fever, I have to determine if its normal or life threatening.
That’s what I do, and Ken goes out in to the bush and preaches!
Charles Ngoje, a Kenyan church leader, recently made this comment on American missionary life in Africa:
Americans deciding to leave the US to come and live in Africa in the 60’s through the early 80’s was no ordinary decision to make. It was a mark of self-denial and self-sacrifice. I celebrate these missionary men and their wives for obeying the great commission command of Christ—for coming to Kenya and planting Churches of Christ.
They lived among us—they learned our languages and ways, ate our food with gladness (including matumbo: intestines), lived and slept in our homes, raised their children among us, taught and trained us, washed our feet, and handed over the responsibility of evangelization to us.
They did a great job. Theirs was a case of absolute humility and servanthood. The Church of Christ in Kenya is now 57 years old since the first missionary set foot in this land. This Kenyan Church now has sent missionaries and trained missionaries to and from several African countries and abroad: Uganda, Tanzania, South Sudan, Ghana, Nigeria, Zambia, Zimbabwe, Ethiopia, DRC, the US, and others.
Today, there are nearly 5,000 congregations of Churches of Christ in Kenya. In our 20 years there, we worked in the bush, made converts in the slums of Nairobi, helped to found a Bible college, and then expanded the college into numerous extension programs. That’s the legacy of Ann Parker Bolden, who shared my vision and partnered with me through those many years. This is what she wanted to be remembered for. We worked with 40 other families, all making the same sacrifices. That is our legacy, and we wouldn’t have done it any other way.
Ken Bolden has dedicated his life to mission work. Having lived in Kenya and Liberia, among other countries, Ken and his late wife Ann brought countless men and women to the Lord. Ken served as World Radio Director from 2003 to 2009 and currently serves at White’s Ferry Road Church of Christ at their University campus.