The pastor told Rompas, a Maasai boy in Kenya, that Seventh-day Adventists were devil worshipers. He also said Adventists entered church backward on Saturdays and worshiped without wearing any clothes.

When he was 16, Rompas decided to find out if the pastor had told the truth. Early Saturday, he walked from his village home to an Adventist church several miles away. He hid in the hills near the church and watched.

Before long, the first person arrived. The man was not walking backward, and he wasn’t naked. Rompas was impressed that the man was wearing a nice suit and tie. The boy wished that he had a suit and tie. He was half-naked, wearing only a traditional Maasai shuka, a red cloth with black strips.

Then the pastor and other church members arrived. They also did not enter the church backward, and they also were nicely dressed.

Then the church choir began singing. as the words of the song “Oh Happy Day” drifted to Rompas’ ears, he couldn’t resist. Walking to the church, he sat in the back row and listened with great interest.

After the sermon, a young white man approached him. It was a missionary from the United States whom he had never seen before and never saw again. The man spoke with the help of an interpreter. “These are your pants,” he said, handing Rompas a pair of pants with many pockets.

Rompas was excited! He had never owned a pair of pants. He put them on and tore his shuka to make a belt to hold them up.

Back at home, his 82 brothers and sisters were surprised to see the Maasai boy wearing pants. They surrounded him and asked, “What happened?”

Rompas placed the prized pants under his bed that night. He only wore them again when he returned to church the next Sabbath. Putting on the pants attracted the attention of the children and women of his village every Sabbath. Some of them began to follow him to church.

 Several months passed, and Rompas and his mother gave their hearts to Jesus in baptism on the same day. The first two members of a family of nearly 100 people had become Seventh-day Adventist. Rompas felt free for the first time in his life. Jesus told His disciples, “And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free” (John 8:32, NKJV). “The truth has set me free,” he said in an interview.

Part of this quarter’s Thirteenth Sabbath Offering, also known as the Quarterly Mission Project Offering, will support projects in Kenya and elsewhere in the East-Central Africa Division. Read more about Rompas next week, and watch a YouTube video of him at: bit.ly/Rompas-IS.