The Rescue Of Praise And Prayer

The Rescue Of Praise And Prayer

Every war has casualties.

IN 1935 Italy invaded Ethiopia and two years later expelled the missionaries of the Sudan Interior Mission (SIM).

SIM was founded in 1839 when Rowland Bingham of Canada and two other missionaries arrived in Africa to evangelize its unreached inland tribes. All of north central Africa was called the Sudan at the time, and therefore Bingham named his mission Sudan Interior Mission (changed in the 1980s to the Society for International Ministries).

After being forced out of Ethiopia, SIM missionaries moved to southern Anglo-Egyptian Sudan. There they found the people trapped in demonism. Whenever twins were born, they were buried alive because they were believed to have the evil eye. An SIM missionary couple helped protect the first Uduk tribe twins ever allowed to live. They named the infants Borgay meaning “praise” and Thoiya meaning “prayer.”

In June 1940 two airplanes flew over the Doro mission station. The five SIM missionaries there did not know whether the planes were lost or on a bombing raid. Mrs. Kenneth Oglesby, one of the missionaries, wrote, “We don’t know what is ahead of us, but we do know our God is above us and He will watch over us.”

A month later an Italian Air Force plane bombed a Sudanese town near the Ethiopian border. Nick Simponis, an SIM missionary, was hit in the stomach by shrapnel but was able to return to his mission station at Chali. Dr. Robert Grieve, a new SIM physician stationed at Doro, walked thirty-five miles to Chali to treat Simponis’s wound.

On the morning of August 23, 1940, the Grieves, Oglesbys, and Miss Zillah Walsh watched as planes flew over Doro.

Suddenly bombs began exploding everywhere. “Oh, Bob, I’m dying!” Claire Grieve called out. The doctor didn’t answer. Kenneth Oglesby reached him and found him dying.

The planes circled back again. Blanche Oglesby ran and one of the planes tried to follow her. She and Zillah Walsh hid in tall grass as bombs fell around them. Kenneth Oglesby took refuge under a large tree.

Then the planes were gone. Zillah Walsh and some Africans carried Claire Grieve into the clinic while Kenneth Oglesby and others brought in the doctor. He had been hit in eight places and was dead. Claire Grieve was bleeding profusely and appeared to have a severed spinal cord. They couldn’t stop the bleeding. “Let me go be with Bob,” she pleaded. When asked if she had any message to give to her loved ones, she whispered, “Tell them my choice is to see him [Jesus] face-to-face.” A little while later she asked that the hymn “Face to Face” be sung at her husband’s funeral. Then she too slipped away to see her Savior.

Only Zillah Walsh was uninjured. Kenneth Oglesby was hit in the back, and his wife, Blanche, had thirty-five shrapnel wounds. The Italians had dropped eighty-nine bombs on their mission station.

The Oglesbys both recovered, but the following February Blanche came down with yellow fever. After five days her heart gave out and she joined the Grieves in heaven.

There were no further bombings after that fateful day, and the Sudanese churches grew rapidly. By the time Sudan achieved independence in 1955, SIM had established many schools and dispensaries and an orphanage for unwanted twins. Two of the most promising young adults were “Praise” and “Prayer,” the first twins they had rescued.

Today SIM has over eighteen hundred missionaries in twenty-five nations and over a million Africans attend the more than twenty-five hundred churches they have established.

Reflection

Have you ever seen God turn initial tragedy into blessing? Maybe you have experienced the tragedy but have yet to see the blessing. In some cases we won’t understand until we get to heaven, but God is working all things for his glory and for his children’s best.

God blesses the people who patiently endure testing. Afterward they will receive the crown of life that God has promised to those who love him.

James 1:12