A Life Saved – A Life TransformedWe heard so many powerful testimonies during our missionary placement visit to Tyndale Theological Seminary. As an encouragement to you, we wanted to pass on to you just one of them that was shared during the school’s weekly chapel service. One of the African students shared that as a child he had been eager to assist his grandfather who was the witch doctor for their village. The boy’s father was a Christian – and therefore ostracized by the village – but the son liked to help his grandfather with the sacrifices because then he could share in the meat! Growing up with Christian parents brought him to know God on one level, but he was still resisting committing his life to Jesus fully. One day, however, while riding his motorcycle to a village nearby, he was robbed at gunpoint. Bandits like these were known for killing those whom they held up. What the thugs did not know was that he understood their language. To his surprise, they kept saying to each other in the middle of the robbery, “I just don’t think we’re supposed to kill this one” – and they let him go. Hours later, when he finally reached his village, he was furious that they had taken his bike. But once his father heard his story, he fell to his knees crying and praising God. This made the now pedestrian son all the more angry, and he asked his father how he could be happy to hear that his son had been assaulted at gunpoint? His father shared with him that the night before he had dreamed that his son would make that same trip on his bike and would be robbed – and then killed. But he had prayed that God would spare his life, and now he was praising him for his mercy. From that moment on, the son knew that God had a far greater plan for the life that he had saved. In the years that followed, he became first a pastor and then, through the prayers, counsel and support of the church, a student far from home at Tyndale. His goal there was to receive further training in how best to raise up disciples of Jesus who will give their own lives to serve God’s Kingdom. In a day and age when so many people are anxious to “find themselves,” we’re incredibly excited that our family gets to serve students from all over the world who arrive confident that God has staked a claim on their lives and given them a part to play in fulfilling the Great Commission. Having left country and family to be raised up in their faith and trained in leading others to Christ, they eagerly await being deployed again into the mission fields from which they have already come.
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