Attempted robbery
Again going through my hard drive files I am coming across some very interesting articles that I may have had on world-evangelism.com before. The following is from Jason and Amanda Hamby. They wrote it and it shows how God worked even in the difficult times. Read and enjoy. This is quite old but still a great testimony.
When Amanda and I arrived in Ivory Coast of October 2000, the country was in political turmoil. The political situation had caused a major rise in crime. As a result we had to hire guards to watch the house.
One evening while working in the yard, I noticed my guard was late for work. The guard I am speaking of is a former Muslim and fetishist called a “Dozo”. These Muslim “Dozo” men are the traditional African hunter-warriors who believe the fetishes they wear give them power to withstand bullets. Four months prior to this night, this guard named Traoré had given his heart to Jesus and had left his fetishes. Traoré was supposed to be at work at 6:30 pm that evening, but he had been at the Bible Institute all day, and after having a chance to rest, he had overslept. As I was working, I noticed a couple of well-dressed young men walking around the five-foot wall of our house. About that time, Traoré came in with a worried look on his face. He asked me if we were okay. I told him that we were fine. He then said that he had overslept and something woke him up and told him to get to our house quickly. At this time, two more young men, also fairly well dressed, walked by, scoping at the inside of the house. Traoré and I were then suspicious, so he followed them back up the road where he saw them meet up with the first two men. They then proceeded to circle around behind our house again.
Traoré came back and told me to lock up the house while he went to our neighbor’s house who was the police commissioner for our town. Meanwhile one of the young men stepped out of the shadows and followed Traoré down the road. I saw others duck down behind the outside of my wall. The police officers who lived next door called out for the one young man who had followed Traoré. The young man began to run from them, and they shot their guns into the brush behind him. The other two who were hidden, jumped out from behind the wall and began to walk quickly past were I was positioned, so Traoré ran to catch them.
Once they were caught, the police officers and the commissioner began to question them right in front of our house. There were also about ten other guards from the neighborhood surrounding them. There I was, right in the middle, preaching at them about how they were choosing the wrong path.
My guard Traoré turned and headed out to find the fourth man. When he turned around he saw a black plastic bag beside the wall where the young men had crouched. He brought the bag to me and inside was a hand grenade and masking tape. My knees began to knock as I handed the grenade to the police officer. They then ordered the robbers to strip down to their underclothes. One young man began rapidly removing his clothes, and ran off into the brush while the other one was removing his clothes slowly. The police officers began shooting and chasing at the one who ran away.
While they gave chase to the one, we had the other man surrounded; he soon noticed that we were unarmed, so he pulled a 45 cal. military issue pistol out of his shorts. He pointed the gun at us, and then turned it directly to the commissioner, also unarmed, and fired it on him. The gun just clicked. He pulled the trigger three other times as he and the police commissioner fought. I jumped over the wall and yelled at Amanda, who was 8 months pregnant, to get herself and our son Joshua to the back of the house.
The first robber was caught, but the other three got away. As the shooter was running towards the highway he ran into Traoré, who had been looking for the other two men. Again he pulled the trigger, and nothing happened. Twenty minutes later we heard a gunshot coming from near the highway. We later found out that he had robbed a man of his money and clothes and hopped on a bus headed for Abidjan.
We tied up the one robber that we caught and the police took him in for questioning. He told the police that there were seven members of this gang that came from Abidjan on a word from one member, who was from our town of Divo, that there was an American living there. Two of the gang members were sons of a military man and that is how they had obtained the grenade and pistol.
Back at the house, Traoré who was still excited about the events of the evening proceeded to tell me that God had truly protected his life as well as ours. He said, “Pastor, when I was a dozo that gun would have fired; the bullet may not have pierced me, but it would have fired. But God is so powerful that He didn’t even allow the gun to fire.” I say, “Praise His Name!!!” Not only for the protection against intruders, but also for showing His mighty hand to a new convert. Psalms 91 is so true!
Since that time, Traoré has surrendered to preach, has almost completed two years of Bible Institute and has helped us start a work in his home village were he helps preach on Sundays. He has also led his Muslim wife to the Lord as well as his Muslim brother. He is now working on evangelizing his father. Please pray for this family.