From a ministry family to a global calling
The story of The Spirit Echo begins long before the ministry had a name. It begins with a young man raised in a family where serving God was part of everyday life. Busara W. Kitebente (Pastor Bk) was born into a family of six children. His father, the late Bishop William Kitebente Sogomba, was a pastor and church leader who devoted his life to Christian ministry and became a founding leader of the Kigoma North region within the Tanzania Assemblies of God (TAG). Growing up in this environment created an early connection with ministry, service and the things of God.
On December 25, 2018, Busara lost his father. He was still a student at the time, and the loss was not only emotional — it changed the family's circumstances and brought a season of uncertainty, financial pressure and difficult family challenges. The person who had represented stability, leadership and ministry in the family was suddenly gone, and Busara found himself facing a new reality before he felt prepared for it.
The years that followed became a season of struggle. Promises were made but did not always become reality. People who were expected to remain close sometimes walked away. Financial challenges increased. Busara pursued business opportunities, took loans and tried different strategies to rebuild his life, but many of those efforts did not succeed as he had hoped. Yet beneath the financial and personal struggles was a deeper issue: he was struggling to hear God clearly. He believes God had been speaking, but the noise surrounding his life — pain, fear, circumstances, people, financial pressure, expectations and his own uncertainty — made it difficult to recognize and follow His direction.
A turning point came when Busara entered Dodoma Central Bible College to pursue theological and biblical studies, a decision shaped strongly by his mother's conviction that he should pursue biblical training. In the environment of Scripture, prayer, learning and spiritual formation, greater clarity began to emerge about God's direction for his life — and there, the burden that would eventually become The Spirit Echo began to take shape.
The message became increasingly clear: help people hear God. Busara began to recognize that his own years of struggle had taught him something important — there are many people who love God, want to follow Him and are searching for direction, but who are surrounded by so much noise that they struggle to recognize what He is saying. “I do not want people to spend years wandering because they have failed to recognize God's direction,” he says. That burden became the seed of a ministry.
The Spirit Echo was born from the desire to create spaces where people can worship, listen, learn, encounter and respond — built around worship experiences, biblical teaching, prayer, discipleship and digital ministry. Its deeper purpose is not simply to create powerful events, but to help people develop a lifestyle of listening to God and responding to His Word. The name itself expresses the heart of the vision: to become an echo of what is on God's heart, and to carry that message across generations, communities and nations.
What began as a personal calling is now becoming a larger vision, developed with a long-term direction — Tanzania, Africa, the Nations — reaching different generations and cultures through worship experiences, prayer and intercession, biblical teaching, discipleship, youth and university ministry, digital ministry, Spirit Echo Sessions, global worship experiences and missions. The long-term vision is to build a global ministry that raises people who can hear God's voice, understand His Word, respond in obedience and carry His presence into their communities.
In 2026, that vision moved from an idea into a visible ministry expression through The Spirit Echo — First Sound, under the theme “When Heaven Speaks.” First Sound became the first major worship experience of The Spirit Echo — not just the beginning of an event series, but the beginning of a movement built around one central conviction: God still speaks, and people need spaces where they can learn to listen.