God's calling is not safe

WARNING: Contains some graphic material.




(top)Rhodesian soldiers charge into battle, with bayonets drawn. Soldiers would often stop by our mission station. I remember one time, when I was about 5, a troop came by our house after a skirmish like this. They had the body of a terrorist thrown in the back of their truck, and blood was still dripping from the bayonet of his AK47.
(middle) Funeral of the Elim missionaries
(bottom) Authorities gather remains after a viscount passenger plane was shot out of the sky near Kariba. Our friends, Jeremy and Karen, died in that crash. They were returning from their honeymoon. To make matters worse, terrorists found the crash site and shot many of the survivors.

Last year I visited with fellow MK Aaron Hood. We were talking about his life in Colombia, and my heart broke as he told how his Dad was murdered in front of their house in Bogota.

Another MK I know watched her mother be brutally gang raped at gunpoint.

And a third MK was herself assaulted and gang raped by a group of men in an Arab nation, while returning from babysitting for another missionary family.

I could tell you story after story like that.

For years I questioned why God would allow horrific things to happen to families who had given their all to follow Him.

It has only been in the past few months that God has given me peace in this area.

The healing really started for me last Fall. About that same time, Dr. Jerry Rankin, president of the International Mission Board, came to our state convention. As he started his message that night, I knew I wouldn't be able to stay in the room. I had heard him preach this sermon twice before.

I went to the back of the sanctuary and slumped down on the floor in the corner. My heart was pounding, and hot tears burned my face as he recounted the stories of missionaries who had lost their lives on the field. The way he told it made their deaths sound so noble and romantic.

But inside I was screaming, "It's NOT that way!!! It's scary, and horrifying, and UNFAIR!!!"

Afterwards I went up to him, and blurted some emotional response through my tears. I'm not even sure what I said, but it was something like, "those were real people to me, not just names in a story. I'm not okay with all of that."

I'll never forget his reaction. It was so kind and compassionate. He did not try to explain the suffering away as being "God's will." He did not make light of my feelings, or treat them as trite and irrelevant.

Instead, he took my hands in his, and with tears in his own eyes, said, "I know, Kiki, I know."

His actions spoke volumes. With that one gesture, he communicated, "I don't fully understand it either. And it hurts me, too. But God is good. God is Sovereign. And one day we will fully understand the purpose of 'lives given, not taken.'"

Not long after that, I asked my parents why we had stayed in such a dangerous place. My Dad responded with empathy but conviction. He said, "I cannot make an apology for the call of God on our lives."

I am finally coming to a place where I can accept what it means to "take up the cross and follow Me." I can't say I fully understand, but I do know that God is good. I know that God is Sovereign. And our time here on earth is just one small part of a bigger story.

I am also learning that the fullness of God's grace and glory seems to shine brightest when set against the backdrop of man's depravity. In the darkest times God's love and mercy are fully illuminated.

I've been asked to share more about my past, but haven't wanted to or really known how to until recently. I was between 8 and 10 during the worst years of the war. So I'll reveal a segment of that time period with you.....


1978 was a stressful year for our family. The war had gotten bad. We had grenade shields on our windows, and most of my friends went to school in armored trucks. Landmines and ambushes were common hazards on the road. We had forced military curfews--no one could go out at night. Travel between cities only occured in armed convoys. Everyone carried firearms--even to church.

Terrorist attacks on mission stations had increased. We had already been forced off of the Sessami station, and were now on a station outside Gwelo.

A few months before, my friend Pieter Brand had lost his Mom and Dad in an ambush. They had been going to one of their preaching points on a Sunday morning, when the terrorists cut them off on the road and shot them in cold blood.

Terrorists struck again on June 15th. We got word from our Sanyati station that missionary Archie Dunaway (one of my favorite "uncles") was missing. He was a sweet man, who absolutely loved MKs and spoiled us rotten. Whenever we would go visit him in Sanyati, he would have a big cookout on the anthill. We also liked playing with his little chihuahua, Joe. The two of them were inseparable.

So when his truck was found that horrible night, with Joe still inside, we all knew something had happened. His body was discovered a few hours later. He had been bayoneted numerous times, and the African people were forced to stand around and laugh as he died.

The next day we all evacuated to the MK home in the city. Whole families were jammed into tiny rooms.

About the same time, we learned from security forces that my Dad's name was on a terrorist hit list.

Eight days later, a mission station on the Eastern border was attacked and entire families were murdered. Here is the newspaper report......

On the night of June 23, 1978, Elim Mission in the Rhodesian Eastern Highlands was subjected to the worst massacre of missionaries yet experienced. Terry Blocksidge reported in the Sunday Mail (Salisbury):

Eight British missionaries and four young children - including a three-week-old baby - were bayoneted to death by terrorists on Rhodesia’s Eastern border on Friday night in the worst massacre of whites since the six-year-old war began.

Three of the missionaries were men and the others women.

A sixth woman was stabbed and beaten and left for dead. She staggered 300 m into the freezing Vumba bush to spend the night before being found semi-conscious by security forces yesterday. Despite intensive care in a Salisbury hospital she subsequently died.

The gruesome murders, by a group of eight to 10 terrorists, happened at Emmanuel Mission School - 15 km south-east of Umtali and 8 km from the Mozambique border - once used as the Eagle boarding school.

The dead, who belonged to the Elim Pentecostal Church, were:

* Mr. Peter McCann (30), his wife, Sandra (also 30), son Phillip (six) and daughter Joy (five).

* The Rev. Phillip Evans (29), his wife, Suzan (35), and their daughter Rebecca (four).

* Mr. Roy Lynn (37), his wife, Joyce (36), and their daughter Pamela Grace. She would have been three weeks old yesterday.

* Catherine Picken (55) and Elizabeth Wendy Hamilton- White (37).

* Miss Mary Fisher (28).

Most of the women had been sexually assaulted, and one mutilated.

The children had been dragged from their beds. Two children were in yellow pyjamas, one with a red dressing gown, and a third in a flowery nightdress.

One child had her tiny thumbs clenched in her palms.

Even hardened security men were stunned by the bloody scene and stood around silently. “The quiet is uncanny”, said one.

Mr. Brian Chapman, director of the Church in Rhodesia and South Africa, visited the scene yesterday. He said: “We saw no humanity here.”

The massacre began shortly before 8.30 p.m. when the white families were forced by the terrorists from their homes and classrooms, and marched to a playing field.

Near the sports pavilion, about 400 m from the main school, they were split into groups, then beaten with lengths of wood and logs, and stabbed.

When security forces reached the scene yesterday, the full horror on the cold, mist-and-rain shrouded Vumba mountainside confronted them:

A mother, beaten to death, lay with her young baby. The baby had also been savagely beaten.

Their arms stretched out to each other, their hands resting an inch apart. The child’s hand was clenched.

The mother had a hand squeezed tightly around her engagement ring, turned into her palm, as she reached for her baby in her dying moments.

Nearby, another woman had died from an axe-wound - the weapon still protruded from her shoulder and two men, one with his hands tied behind his back, lay beaten and slashed to death.

A blood-soaked chunk of wood had been dropped near to them.

Three children lay in a pitiful huddle, with two women’s bodies next to them.

Some had raised their arms to defend themselves from the brutal blows.

Witnesses say that the missionaries were praying for their perpetrators as they died. Since then, several of those terrorists have come to faith in Christ. And the work that these brave missionaries started is being carried on today by Zimbabwean nationals.

Richard Smith, son of retired Elim missionaries, reports that "the leader of the rebels became a born-again Christian a number of years after the fact and was able to meet with Peter Griffiths (who was back in the UK at the time of the massacre)".

There were also two children who were away from the mission at the time of the massacre--Timothy and Rachel Evans. They lost their parents and little sister. I don't really know where they are now, but wonder what their perspective would be.

Matt. 16:24-25 "Then Jesus said to His disciples, "If anyone wishes to come after Me, he must deny himself, and take up his cross and follow Me. For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it; but whoever loses his life for My sake will find it."

Murder of Missionaries in Rhodesia

Anatomy of Terror