I arrived in Timbuktu and discovered I was in trouble. I’d hitched a ride from Bamako, Mali, 500 miles away, on the only seat left on a Navajo six-seater airplane chartered by UNICEF. Two of their doctors were in Timbuktu and might fly back on the return flight, which meant I’d be bumped, but I decided to take the chance. Now here I was, standing by the plane on the windswept outskirts of the famous Berber outpost. The pilot approached me as I started for town. He reported that the doctors were on their way and I’d have to find another ride to Bamako. “Try, the marketplace. Someone there might have a truck. Be careful, Westerners don’t last long in the desert if the truck breaks down.” I went from person to person trying to find someone who spoke English, until I finally, came across a local gendarme who understood my broken French. “I need a truck,” I said. “I need to go to Bamako.” Eyes widened in his shaded face. “No truck,” he shrugged. Then he added, “No road. Only sand.”
Suddenly I had a powerful desire to talk to my father. Certainly he had known what it was like to be a foreigner in a strange land. I needed Dad to help answer my new questions of faith. I was struggling with the whole notion and questioning the God who had let my father be killed. “God,” I found myself praying as I looked around the marketplace, “I’m in trouble here. Please keep me safe and show me a way to get back. Please reveal Yourself and Your love to me the way you did to my father.”
I remembered a fellow worker had said, “There’s a tiny Christian church near the famous mosque in Timbuktu, which virtually no one visits. “Look it up if you get the chance.” I asked the children. “Where is L’Eglise Evangelique Chretienne?” The youngsters were willing to help, though they were obviously confused about what I was looking for. Finally we arrived, not at the church, but at the open doorway of a tiny mud-brick house. Within minutes, my army of waifs pointed out a young man approaching us in the dirt alleyway. Then the children melted back into the labyrinth of the walled alleys and compounds of Timbuktu. The young man was handsome, with dark skin and flowing robes. But there was something inexplicably different about him. His name was Nouh Ag Infa Yatara; that much I understood. Nouh signaled he knew someone who could translate for us. He led me to a compound on the edge of town where an American missionary lived. I was glad to meet the missionary, but from the moment I’d seen Nouh I’d had the feeling that we shared something in common.
“How did you come to have faith’?” I asked him. The missionary translated as Nouh answered. “This compound has always had a beautiful garden. One day when I was a small boy, a friend and I decided to steal some carrots. We’d been told that Toubabs (white men) eat nomadic children. Despite our agility and considerable experience, I was caught by the former missionary here. Mr. Marshall didn’t eat me; instead he gave me the carrots and some cards that had God’s promises from the Bible written on them. He said if I learned them, he’d give me an ink pen!”
“You learned them?” I asked. “Oh, yes! Only government men and the headmaster of the school had a Bic pen! But when I showed off my pen at school, the teacher knew I must have spoken with a Toubab, which is strictly forbidden. He severely beat me.” When Nouh’s parents found out he had portions of such a despised book defiling their house, they threw him out and forbade anyone to take him in; nor was he allowed in school. Nouh had come to believe that what the Bible said was true. Nouh’s mother decided to kill her son. She obtained poison from a sorcerer and poisoned Nouh’s food at a family feast. Nouh ate the food and wasn’t affected. His brother, who unwittingly stole a morsel of meat from the deadly dish, became violently ill and remains partially paralysed. Seeing God’s intervention, the family and the townspeople were afraid to make further attempts on his life, but condemned him as an outcast. I asked Nouh “Why is your faith so important to you that you’re willing to give up everything, perhaps even your life? It couldn’t have been easy for you as a teenager to take a stand that made you despised by the whole community,” I said. “Where did your courage come from?”
“Mr. Marshall couldn’t take me in without putting my life in jeopardy. So he gave me some books about other Christians who’d suffered for their faith. My favourite was about five young men who willingly risked their lives to take God’s good news to stone age Indians in the jungles of South America.” His eyes widened. “I’ve lived all my life in the desert. How frightening the jungle must be? The book said these men let themselves be speared to death, even though they had guns and could have killed their attackers!” The missionary translator said, “I remember the story. As a matter of fact, one of those men had your last name.” “Yes,” I said quietly, “the pilot was my father.” “Your father?” Nouh cried. “The story is true! Yes,” I said. “It’s true.” The missionary, and Nouh and I talked through the afternoon. When they accompanied me back to the airfield that night, we found that the doctors weren’t able to leave Timbuktu after all, and there was room for me on the UNICEF plane. As Nouh and I hugged each other, it seemed incredible that God loved us so much that He’d arranged for us to meet “at the ends of the earth.” Nouh and I had gifts for each other that no one else could give. I gave him the assurance that the story, which had given him courage was true. He, in turn, gave me the assurance that God had used Dad’s death for good. Dad, by dying, had helped give Nouh a faith worth dying for. And Nouh, in return, had helped give Dad’s faith back to me.”
Source: MAF – Stephen Saint, son of Nate Saint, one of five missionary men killed by Waiorani (Auca) Indians in the jungles of Ecuador in 1956.
[God’s timing, faith, assurance, stranded, English, a missionary book, multiple answered prayers, persecution, Africa, Timbuktu, Linked to 43]