A Christian and Missionary Alliance couple who spent ten years working in West Africa have begun a new ministry among Fulani asylum seekers in New York City, starting from a park bench outside a shelter that houses more than a thousand young West African men. Brian and Michelle, whom the denomination describes as Alliance international workers, returned to the United States and settled a few blocks away. Most of the men in the shelter are Fulani and most are Muslim. The couple now spend their days offering tea, coffee and conversation in a city that, by the Alliance's own count, is home to more than fifty unreached people groups with populations above 5,000.
The Fulani are a people spread across West Africa and the Sahel with deep historical ties to Islam. Tens of thousands have reached New York in recent years as asylum seekers, among them a small number of Christians who have fled religious persecution. Many arrive with little to occupy them while they wait for asylum papers, legal advice and permission to work. According to the Alliance's account, that waiting — and the men's curiosity about an American who kept turning up with a flask of coffee — is what turned the bench into a gathering place.
Through relationships built over English classes, biblical storytelling and help with immigration paperwork, the couple came to know a Christian Fulani man identified in the account as Omari, who had suffered persecution in West Africa. Brian and Michelle prayed that a believer in the city would take him in, and Michelle later described sensing that the answer to that prayer was their own household. Omari lived with the family for about a year and a half, and two more believing friends, both of them homeless, followed. The couple helped the men learn English and find their footing in an unfamiliar country, and say they learned from them about suffering and about the reality of choosing Jesus in the face of persecution and death.
Michelle describes a season of unusual openness among Fulani in the city, and a church involvement that is small but growing. She recalls the first time the household heard laughter after the men moved in, when one of her children pulled out a card game after dinner and taught them to play. The three men left the family home in August 2025, but Brian and Michelle continue teaching English, translating and advocating for West African refugees, praying with them and visiting homes and businesses to build relationships. "It just seems as though God is doing something really special among the Fulani in this season," Michelle says.
Source: Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA USA) — cmalliance.org
