Bruce Mukaba and God's Extraordinary Gifts
Published Tuesday, October 6, 2026
Global Mission Leadership Fall 2026 Newsletter
The disciples approach Jesus, driven forward by the energy pulsing from a desperate crowd of 5000, fingers gripped white around withering wrists, eyes filled with hope, fear, and a deep, visceral need for Christ. The disciples say, “Send them home.” Jesus responds in a low, tender voice, “Give them something to eat.” “We don’t have enough,” the disciples balk. Does Jesus’s mouth turn upwards in a compassionate smile, not just for the sick and their caretakers, but for his dearest friends, anxious and unbelieving? He gestures to the crowd to sit, blesses the food, and the disciples begin handing out fishes and loaves. No matter how much they give there is still more, until all are fed and 12 baskets overflow.
GML Alumnus Bruce Mukaba, MSW 2021, knows this story well, not just as a pastor knows scripture, but because time and time again, as he has moved through the world, Christ has made a way. Before his time at Baylor, Bruce, husband and father to then three children, worked as an accountant for a copper mine and served as an elder at Bread of Life Church International’s Luanshya branch, located in the mining city of Luanshya. “We started doing social work as a church,” he shares, “and that's where I developed the passion to learn more and develop skills to serve my community better.”
Bruce supported not only his own immediate family, but his extended relatives as well: “In Africa, the way we live, we have so many people that depend on us.” After a recommendation from Dr. Moffat Zimba, Vice Chancellor of Northrise University in Zambia, to apply to Baylor, Bruce consulted his family. “All of them supported me. It was faith, taking such a risk, just stopping work and not knowing what will be next after you complete [your degree].”
Bruce looked at what he had, just enough to support so many loved ones, and knew the Lord would multiply it. After being accepted to the MSW program, he quit his job to start preparing for graduate school in the United States. “People would tell me, ‘How can you stop when you don't have even the visa?’ The reality dawned when I went for interviews. I saw how people were being rejected and I was saying, if they don't accept me, then what is going to happen?”
Bruce loved his time at Baylor, especially his internship at NeighborWorks Waco. “The way the whole program is structured is going for work and also learning. It helped us to practice the things we were learning in the field, and then come back and discuss how you applied the concepts, how you applied the perspectives.”
It was also a lonely time. In March 2020, Baylor asked its community to shelter in place due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Though Bruce and the three women in his cohort took walks and shared meals, he missed his family. “The loneliness was so much. You feel like it can kill you.” His cohort-mates went to stay with family in Canada and the Northern US to wait for repatriation flights to return them home. “So, I remained alone. All these people that were so close to me went to other states, and I remained alone. It was a difficult situation. It was a lonely moment for me away from my family.” Before the semester ended, Bruce had packed his bags ready to fly home to Zambia at a moment’s notice. But flights were cancelled, rebooked, cancelled, rebooked, while Bruce waited for God to make a way.
Bruce returned home after a month of waiting, reunited with his family, started his second year of coursework online while interning in the Student Life department at Northrise University (supervised by GML alum Makupa Musonda-Herrod), and returned to his beloved church, full of a renewed humility and empathy for his flock.
After graduating from Baylor, Bruce began serving as a pastor at Bread of Life Church International’s Mikomfwa branch, a church he spearheaded to plant with the Luanshya city. Mikomfwa, where Bruce’s church is located, has a vibrant faith community but alcoholism causes common paternal forsaking. Bruce shared. “because of [alcohol] men are not productive, and the women will be the ones sustaining their families. So, the abandonment can be in the physical, where [a man] literally lives with another woman, but it can be just an absent father or husband. Their actions are literally their absence.” In addition, some children and wives are victims of gender-based violence. “We are in a male-dominated, culture. People don't have much respect for women. A man [can] become so uncaring for the family that [he] will just abandon the family, and then the woman will remain to care for the family. [Bread of Life Church International has] a number of women who are in such situations. And one of the ways that we can help them is to empower them, especially with skills, so that they can continue to look after their family.”
Bread of Life Church International, through its Community Affairs Ministry, attempts to both empower vulnerable women to continue care for their families and to encourage men to return to their familial calling. They host skill training workshops taught by members of the congregation with expertise to share, skills like tailoring, food preparation or online business. As a result of these trainings two women at the church now own small tailoring businesses with which they financially support their extended families.
In addition, the church encourages the men in the community to be better fathers and spouses. Bread of Life Church in Mikomfwa is surrounded by bars, so church members will start preparing food outside, drawing in the men with the smell of ndiyo and nshima. “We talk to them about the responsibility of a father, of being responsible in the community, and seeing somebody who was a drunkard, and you begin to see them come in your church, seated there, and you can talk to them, you can encourage them. That just gives me a lot of joy.”
Bread of Life Church International had become, not just a place of worship, but as Bruce describes it, “a foundation for impactful programs, such as empowering women, rehabilitating youths from substance abuse, and feeding vulnerable children and the elderly.” So when an opportunity to purchase the church building came about in 2023, Bruce and his leaders jumped at the opportunity, entering into an agreement with the landlord that Bread of Life Church would purchase the building. In a short amount of time they were able to fundraise two-thirds of the needed funds, but they could not find donors for the last third of the money owed, “It was so difficult, because my church is in a poor community, so we reached a point where we didn’t know what we were going to do.” Bruce reached out to his contacts abroad hoping that financial support would come through from external funders. It did not. In late 2025 the landlord gave an ultimatum: either they pay by March 31, 2026 or the church will be evicted. “I was so sad. I said, ‘God, why did you let me start this thing? Is this how it is going to end?’” Somehow the idea of a local fundraiser came to mind. The church invited everyone in the community, poor though they may be, as well as some local politicians to come and help. From the very community it was serving, Bread of Life Church International was able to raise more money than was needed, baskets overflowing with leftover bread. “Sometimes you have people in mind. You are thinking of who may come and help you. But they may not be the people that will really help you, because [for us] help came from different people that I was not considering.”
God’s provision for Bruce, for Mikomfwa, for Luanshya, for Zambia, has been so evident, overflowing blessings of education, of homecoming, of homemaking. “When it is God who is doing it, it may take longer,” Bruce preaches, “but when you depend on Him, He will fulfill it.”