Missionaries Face Death in Jungle

Apologia Studios

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Anyways so we're gonna switch topics now. My mom's been patiently waiting over here. She's been so patient.

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So I'm gonna actually be in the next few months doing some things to kind of honor my grandparents, my mom's parents.

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And so briefly they were medical missionaries in the jungle in Africa.

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They went in the late 50s, right? Literally just at the time they had two children.

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They just packed everything up and essentially in a station wagon and drove into the jungle until they reached the station.

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My grandpa built a hospital and there's a hospital now that's still being used. So really, really cool stuff.

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So I'm gonna be doing some stuff hopefully in the next few months to kind of honor them. And some interviews and stuff my cousin actually had done with them before they passed.

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So I think last time you were on, grandpa was still alive, wasn't he? Or he had just passed? He was still alive.

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Okay, so it's been a while. So what has that been? Four years? Three years? Five years? Grandpa passing?

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Six. Six years. Yeah, okay. So and then my grandma just passed away almost two years ago. So anyways, we're gonna be doing some stuff, some really cool stuff with that.

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But since my mom is here, I wanted to have her tell some more stories. Just some really cool stuff.

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And I know Zach's never heard this, some of this stuff. So I'm all ears. We have a lot more listeners now.

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And so I wanted to kind of share some of that stuff. So what is your favorite story?

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Oh, by the way, my mom was born in Africa. I forgot to mention that. So she was actually born there. And I always joke that she is truly

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African American because she has to a dual citizenship in the Congo and also

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United States. So yes. So anyways, so you were born there and you left when you were three, right?

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They had to flee because of the Civil War. And it's still to this day, Civil War is destroying that nation, the

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Belgian Congo. And I think now it's a Democratic Republic of Congo, I think. We've actually been trying to possibly go there and do some work, but it's not even safe.

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Yeah. Anyway, so what's your favorite story that you want to tell? And then I have some I'll tell as well.

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Probably my favorite one is when the Simbas were going to be coming to our station and then.

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Simbas were the rebels. So is that one of the questions you were going to ask me? Let me tell that story first.

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Go ahead and tell it, yeah. So we knew that the rebels, first of all, independence came to Congo.

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It was a Belgian colony and Belgium gave independence to the country.

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And so when Independence Day came, it was relatively calm. We had village people coming to our house with baskets asking for independence because they'd been told they were given independence, but they didn't understand what it was.

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And because I was considered Congolese, my mom was really nervous for my safety.

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So at that point, I remember I wasn't allowed out of her sight, which was unusual.

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I had village children I played with, but I was never allowed off our porch and out of her sight.

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So my independence day came and went and everything was calm. So dad went back to the hospital and started on just normal days.

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But then as it progressed, the longer the longer away from Independence Day, then the

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Simbas, which was Swahili for lions, they started going from village to village and just murdering anyone who was basically

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European. And we, my dad had a shortwave radio and he always listened to Voice of America.

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So he would, that's how he would get his news. And he was tracking the

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Simbas and we were in the very center of the country, the very, we were in the Kibu rainforest and our village was called

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Kachungu. And he knew that they were on their way to our station. And we had another missionary family that was at our station with us that were waiting for my dad to deliver their baby.

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So they were trying to decide what to do. And dad tried to induce the baby, but um, the baby wasn't born.

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So he met with the village elders, the ones that he had trained, the

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Christians in the church and ask them what they wanted us to do. And they said, we want you to leave and go back to your country because when the

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Simbas come, we can go to the jungle and hide, but you won't be able to, you won't survive. And if you go back to your country, then maybe you can come back to us at some time.

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So I remember us packing by flashlight, like at midnight.

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And I remember my mom saying, you can take one toy. Um, I still have the doll that I chose, but, um, we just packed the best that we could.

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And my dad went and walked through the hospital, the Belgian government and appreciation for what he was doing, built him a real hospital that he was never even able to use.

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I want to start by saying, before you can finish the story, what he had been using was a hospital they built out of mud bricks.

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And they actually, he actually made a kiln where he had natives that were constantly 24 seven making mud bricks because it rained so much, it would just deteriorate the wall.

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So they were constantly replacing. So that's what he had been using. So now the Belgian government made him a hospital that's actually there today, but I'll eat.

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So they came and they built him a real hospital with real concrete and real bricks. And they gave him the keys to it.

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We're just a short time before we had to flee. He never even got to use it. So he had the night that we were packing, he went and walked through the hospital with a flashlight to see what he could bring home.

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And the only thing he was able to bring home where he brought his diplomas off the wall. But he had taken out barrels and barrels and barrels of insecticides to fight all the termites and the driver's ants and everything and they were stored in the ceiling of the hospital.

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So we okay, so we left. And it took us five days to get to the border city and we crossed into Rwanda.

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And there was a refugee camp set up on Lake Kivu. And then two days after we crossed the border, the border city was captured.

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So then if we had waited longer than we wouldn't have made it out. Oh, wow. The baby was born along the way, but it was still born.

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And then the Simbas did finally arrive at our station. And they gave 24 hours to anybody who was in the hospital to leave.

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But if they were too sick, then they just dragged them out into the middle of the compound and cut them open with machetes and poured gas on gasoline on them and burn them.

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And these were their own people. It wasn't like these were foreigners. These were their own people. But the group of Christians, there was 12 men that my dad had trained and their families and they fled to the jungle.

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And the jungle isn't like our forest here in the States. It's a rainforest, very, very dense.

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You have to like cut your way through with a bupanga or a machete. And they were following animal trails and they were just night and day, night and day, running for their lives.

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And they got to a point where they had no food, no more water. And they, the women were just couldn't go any further.

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So the men put the women and children together in a group and they went in search of food and they just got a short ways away and they heard screaming and yelling and they came back and the

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Simbas had found them and captured the women and children. And they were armed with machine guns. Our pastors were only had the native spears and machetes, but they were able to fight them off and they rescued the women and children and just took off through the jungle again.

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And they came to a fork in the trail and one, one way went upstream and one way went downstream and they didn't know what to do.

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They went downstream and they got to the edge of the river, which was extremely deep crocodile infested.

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There was no way, there was no way they could swim across it. And they just fell to their knees and just started praying.

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And then the Simbas got to the same fork, but they went upstream and they came to the same river.

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But the, they, when they got to the river, they saw native canoes that were tied up along the bank and they said, we need to cut these canoes loose so that then the

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Christians won't find them and get away. So they cut them loose and pushed them out into the river and God brought them right in front of the

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Christians. When they quit praying, when they stopped praying and opened their eyes, the canoes were right there in front of them and they were able to survive.

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Wow. And the way that we know that is that, um, after the uprising, then one of the pastors, um, was able to communicate with my dad in the

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States, writing back and forth. And then dad, um, sent their son to medical school to be a doctor to his own family, his own people, because we were never able to go back.

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And so then up until the scene, um, up until my top, my dad passed away in his late nineties, even like it was early nineties, he was still communicating with this young, well, it wasn't a young man anymore, but still communicating with him.

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So I think that's probably my favorite story. Yeah, it's mine as well. And so I forgot, I want to mention too, that we, uh,

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I know Jeff and I are always encouraged because, um, you know, we're like, you know, there's a time where we're just like feeling like discouraged or whatever.

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Like I always think of my grandparents because, you know, like they really, truly sacrificed everything and suffering, you know, like, and, um, and yeah.

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And I also want to mention, um, I mean, they were very, they were big supporters of our ministry very early on when we didn't have any money, they were, they were helpful.

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So a lot of what you see today is even here because, because of their, their help, um, tell what they were going to take you, right.

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And kill grandpa, tell, tell, tell that. It was in writing. We found out later that, um, they were going to be taking my father to force him to be a doctor to the

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Simba's. That's why they were on their way to our station. Cause they knew he had a hospital there and was there. And then

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I had two sisters and a brother and my mom, um, I had been promised as a wife to one of the chiefs because I was considered a prized possession because I was white, but I was

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Congolese. And, but they would have murdered. They would have raped and murdered my mom and my sisters.

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Well, they, well, Debbie was born there too, wasn't she? No, she was born here in the States. Oh, that's right. That's right. Cause they on the furlough.