What a testimony
Posted by wagardner - 23/05/08 at 03:05:19 amThis is from Project North Africa
In 1921 a missionary couple named David and Svea Flood went with their two-year-old son from Sweden to the heart of Africa: the Belgian Congo. They met up with another young couple and together the traveled to the interior village of N’dolera where they were rebuffed by the chief. They were not allowed to have contact with the town fold for fear of alienating the local gods. The two couples opted to go half a mile up the slope and build their own mud huts.
They prayed for a spiritual breakthrough but all they received was contact with one young boy who was allowed by the chief to sell the families food twice a week. Svea Flood decided that if this was the only african she could talk to, she would try to lead the boy to Jesus. And in fact, she succeeded. Their partners quit and returned to the mission station but the floods stayed. Svea became pregnant and soon died after giving birth to their daughter, Aina. David became bitter toward God and returned to the mission station where he said, “I am going to Sweden. I have lost my wife, and I obviously can’t take care of this baby. God has ruined my life.” With that he gave the baby to an American family and returned to Sweden determined never to serve the Lord again. The American family changed the girls name to Aggie and raised her in the U.S.
Aggie grew up in South Dakota, went to Bible college and married a young preacher named Dewey Hurst. Years past and her husband became president of a Christian college in the Seattle area. One day a Swedish religious magazine appeared in her mailbox. She had no idea who had sent it, and of course, she could read the words. But as she turned the pages a photos stopped her cold. There in a primitive setting was a grave with a white cross and on it the words SVEA FLOOD. Aggie had a local Swede translate the story for her and she found out it was about missionaries who had come to N’dolera long ago. The birth of a white baby…the death of the young mother…the one little African boy who had been led to Christ…and how after the whites had all left, the boy had finally persuaded the cheif to let him build a school in the village. The boy gradually won all the students to Christ…the children let their parents to Christ… even the cheif had become a Christian. Today there were six hundred Christian believers in that one village…all because of the sacrifice of David and Svea Flood. For the Hursts’ 25th wedding anniversary, the college presented them with the gift of a vacation to Sweden.
There Aggie found her father, now an old man and dying from alcohol. His children warned her not to mention God to him. Aggie was not to be deterred. She walked in to the squalid apartment, with liquor everywhere, and approached the 73 year-old man lying in a rumpled bed. “Papa”, she said tentatively.
He turned and began to cry. “Aina! I never meant to give you away.”
“It’s all right, Papa.” She replied, “God took care of me.”
The man instantly stiffened. “God forgot all of us. Our lives have been like this because of Him.”
Aggie continued, “Papa, I’ve got a little story to tell you, and it’s a true one. You didn’t go to Africa in vain. Mama didn’t die in vain. The little boy she won to the Lord grew up to win that whole village to Jesus Christ. The one seed you planted just kept growing and growing. Today there are six hundred African people serving the Lord because you were faithful to the call of God in your live… Papa, Jesus loves you. He has never hated you.”
The old man turned back to look into his daughter’s eyes. His body relaxed. He began to talk. By the end of the afternoon, he had come back to the God he had resented for so long. Within a few weeks, David Flood had gone to his rest.
A few year later, while the Hursts were attending an evangelism conference in London, a report was given from the nation of Zaire. The superintendent of the national church, representing some 11,000 Baptized believers, spoke of the gospel’s spread in his nation. Aggie asked him afterward if he had ever heard of David and Svea Flood. “Yes, madam,” the man replied in French, his words being translated into English. “It was Svea Flood who led me to Christ. I was the boy who brought food to your parents before you were born. In fact, to this day you mother’s grace and her memory are honored by all of us.” He embraced her in a long, sobbing hug. Then he continued, “YOu must come to Africa to see, because your mother is the most famous person in our history.” In time that is exactly what Aggie Hurst and her husband did. They were welcomed by cheering villagers. She even met the man who had been hired by her father many years before to carry her back down the mountain in a hammock.
You can meet the missionary telling this story at Vision Baptist Church for the Our Generation Leadership Conference the first week in June if you will just come.
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