FORT WORTH, Texas – About a decade after a short-term mission team from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary led him to Christ, Texas Baptist College student Bosco Soajoro now looks forward to completing his studies and returning to his home country of Madagascar to bring the Gospel and theological training to others.
Raised Roman Catholic in the southern part of the island nation in the Indian Ocean off the southeastern coast of Africa, one of the 10 poorest countries of the world, Soajoro considered himself a Christian because of his upbringing.
Southwestern alum and International Mission Board (IMB) missionary Adam Hailes met Soajoro in Fort-Dauphin, Madagascar, when he was about 12 or 13 years old and would come play basketball at a fellow missionary’s home. But often, Soajoro would disappear when they transitioned to a Bible study. Hailes, team leader for southern Madagascar, also interacted with Soajoro over a few years at an English center, where he developed a relationship with him and continued to try to share the Gospel with him.
Hailes and other teams in Madagascar began to partner with Southwestern Seminary to reach the Antandroy people of Madagascar – Soajoro’s people group, which includes more than 1.4 million, less than 2 percent of whom profess to be evangelical Christians.
About once a year, teams from Southwestern would go to Madagascar, including faculty members such as Dean Sieberhagen, current dean of the Roy J. Fish School of Evangelism and Missions, and Keith Eitel, former dean and professor of missions.
About 10 years ago, Sieberhagen went on his second trip to Madagascar with a team from Southwestern and recalled being asked to take part in a Bible study during an English language program.
The members of the visiting team shared from John 3, the truth of being born again, and Romans 10:9: “If you confess with your mouth, ‘Jesus is Lord,’ and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”
Sieberhagen said he and the students told their young listeners that they had two birthdays, a physical one and again when they were born again in Christ.
Sieberhagen said Soajoro, who was then in his later teens, told them he was ready to be born again and prayed with the team, then immediately led another Bible study attendee in a prayer of salvation. Soajoro said he had come to the realization that salvation is through faith in Jesus and not works.
“Growing up Christian doesn’t make me Christian; growing up in a Christian family doesn’t make me a Christian,” Soajoro said of the moment he understood the Gospel. “Attending the masses and everything, and no work I do, would make me Christian.”
“That was the day that we really rejoiced,” Hailes recalled, “because we had all gotten to know Bosco quite a bit better, and he totally surrendered to the Lord. … He never looked back after that moment.”
Soajoro said he instantly felt a passion for evangelism, starting with leading the Friday Bible study the very next week even though Romans 10:9 was the only verse he knew.
“His whole spiritual life just took off,” Sieberhagen said. The next year, Soajoro served as a translator for another team in Madagascar, carrying Bibles in his backpack to villages where he would share the Gospel.
Soajoro began attending the Haileses’ church, traveling with Hailes on trips into the bush country and villages and learning Bible stories he could share with others.
“You look for the faithfulness in people, and he was somebody that was faithful and reproducing himself by starting to disciple others in his area of influence,” Hailes said of Soajoro, who was still a teenager.
After those early years of personal discipleship and working with the missionaries, Soajoro began to plant churches in the city of Bekily, a difficult area the team had made a focus of prayer. Soajoro said during his time of planting and visiting Madagascar churches he developed a desire to pursue theological training. He became more aware of how biblically illiterate many believers and even pastors were.
“I realized that the believers and just those churches didn’t have enough resources and just didn’t have what they needed to grow,” he explained while sharing his testimony at a recent Southwestern Advisory Council meeting. “And so, since then, I have been burdened to teach, to just see that those churches and the believers and the pastors have more resources so that they can learn the Bible, learn how to read the Bible, and learn how to just get closer to God through that and equip also the churches that they lead.”
Soajoro started taking an online theological course, but technological limitations forced him to stop those studies, leading to a time of waiting and searching as he felt a strong desire to study on a university or seminary campus.
Because of what Hailes described as an open channel between Madagascar and Southwestern, Sieberhagen heard of Soajoro’s desire to study and learned he was a good candidate to be a professor in a Bible school that was planned for Madagascar. Sieberhagen extended an invitation to him in 2021 to come to study at Texas Baptist College, the undergraduate school of Southwestern.
“I’ve taken a really personal interest in him because God allowed me to be part of his salvation story,” Sieberhagen said.
Soajoro applied for a scholarship and continued to serve where he was. Five months later, he received word that he’d been awarded the scholarship, but he still had to fundraise for a plane ticket and go through the visa process – all while his country was still experiencing shutdowns because of the COVID pandemic.
“The fact that I’m here is just God’s grace and God’s blessing,” Soajoro said.
“God protected me through it all. I was like, ‘If He wants me to be in the U.S. for my school, He will take me through it.’ He did.”
Soajoro arrived in the U.S. and was enrolled as a Bachelor of Arts in Humanities student at TBC in early 2022. A year later he returned to Madagascar to marry and bring his wife Sophia back with him. They now have two young daughters.
“The Southwestern family took him in,” Hailes said.
Soajoro said courses such as hermeneutics, Old and New Testament, critical thinking and evangelism have encouraged him to study and understand the Bible rightly. At the same time, he has been challenged by his professors to be more like Christ.
“I’ve been blessed,” Soajoro said. “I’ve had just God-fearing professors, … Jesus-loving professors” who are “brilliant, know their stuff, and I’ve been inspired by that to grow more, to lean deep in my faith, and to know the Word, but at the same time not be ignorant of ideas in the world out there.”
Soajoro expects to complete his degree in December and plans to return to Madagascar with his family with the goal of sharing the knowledge he gained with students and churches there.
“We have seminaries that need teachers, and so I’ll go back and help with that … because pastors in those churches that were planted, they need training, and we can’t go to every one of them,” Soajoro said. “Instead, we should just have them [at the seminary] and give them either a few months’ training, or others can get a few years’ training, and then they go back and train others, and so be able to lead those churches faithfully with robust theological training, just to be able to read their Bible and read theological books as well.”
Just as Southwestern professors challenged him to be transformed into a godly man, Soajoro said he wants the “people that I teach to be more like Christ first, that the content that they receive is content that will make them more like Christ and not just fill their heads.”
Hailes is grateful for how God guided Soajoro so far and looks forward to seeing what the future holds.
“He had a wisdom that God had put in him to be able to make right decisions in hard situations, and he stayed the course even in the difficult times,” Hailes said. “Bosco always remained committed, even whenever it seemed hard. … And seeing him grow up in that faith, and even what he’s been doing here at Southwestern, seeing him grow into a good preacher that is more polished, better handles the Word of God, but eager to go and teach others, is something that we’re really excited for.”
Soajoro said he is grateful for his time at Southwestern that was so transformative for him and his family.
“[I’m] just thankful for God’s grace,” Soajoro said. “And I’m thankful for Southwestern’s involvement in Madagascar, as well. I just wanted to be thankful that they committed the resources, committed the time to engage Madagascar particularly, and Africa in general, and work with the IMB to see the Gospel spread and involved in missions. I wouldn’t have made it here without SWBTS resources being spent. I don’t want to take it for granted.”
Those interested in partnering with Soajoro and his family financially as they prepare to move back to Madagascar after his graduation, can visit here.
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