I want to share an
incredible story with you. It’s one of those stories that when you read it, you
never forget it. It’s stuck with me. It will take a few minutes to read, but I promise you'll enjoy it. And so the story goes…
In 1921, a
missionary couple named David and Svea Flood went with their two-year-old son
David, from Sweden to the heart of Africa—to what was then called the Belgian
Congo. They met up with another young Scandinavian couple, the Ericksons, and
the four of them sought God for direction. In those days of much tenderness and
devotion and sacrifice, they felt led of the Lord to go out from the main
mission station and take the gospel to a remote area.
This was a huge step
of faith. At the remote village of N’dolera they were rebuffed by the chief,
who would not let them enter his village 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 there was none. Their only contact with the
villagers was a young boy, who was allowed to sell them chickens and eggs twice
a week. Svea Flood — a tiny woman who stood only four feet, eight inches tall,
decided that if this was the only African she could talk to, she would try to
lead the boy to Jesus. And in fact, after many weeks of loving and witnessing
to him, he trusted Christ as his Savior.
But there were no
other encouragements. Meanwhile, malaria continued to strike one member of the
little band after another. In time the Ericksons decided they had had enough
suffering and left to return to the central mission station. David and Svea
Flood remained near N’dolera to go on alone.
Then, of all things,
Svea found herself pregnant in the middle of the primitive wilderness. When the
time came for her to give birth (1923), the village chief softened enough to allow
a midwife to help her. A little girl was born, whom they named Aina (A-ee-nah).
The delivery,
however, was exhausting, and Svea Flood was already weak from bouts of malaria.
The birth process was a heavy blow to her stamina. After seventeen desperate
days of prayer and struggle, she died.
Inside David Flood,
something snapped in that moment. His heart full of bitterness, he dug a crude
grave, buried his twenty-seven-year-old wife and took his children back down
the mountain to the central mission station. Giving his newborn daughter to the
Ericksons, he said, “I’m going back to Sweden. I’ve lost my wife, and I can’t
take care of this baby. God has ruined my life.” With two year old David, he
headed for the coast, rejecting not only his calling, but God himself.
Within eight months
both the Ericksons were stricken with a mysterious illness (some believe they
were poisoned by a local chief who hated the missionaries) and died within days
of each other. The nine month old baby Aina was given to an American missionary
couple named Berg, who adjusted her Swedish name to “Aggie” and eventually
brought her back to the United States at age three.
The Bergs loved
little Aggie but were afraid that if they tried to return to Africa, some legal
obstacle might separate her from them since they had at that time, been unable
to legally adopt her. So they decided to stay in the United States and switch
from missionary work to pastoral ministry. And that is how Aggie grew up in
South Dakota. As a young woman, she attended North Central Bible college in
Minneapolis. There she met and married a young preacher named Dewey Hurst.
Years passed. The
Hursts enjoyed a fruitful ministry. Aggie gave birth first to a daughter, then
a son. In time her husband became president of a Christian college in the
Seattle area, and Aggie was intrigued to find so much Scandinavian heritage
there.
One day around 1963,
a Swedish religious magazine appeared in her mailbox. She had no idea who sent
it, and of course she couldn’t read the words. But as she turned the pages, all
of a sudden a photo stopped her cold. There in a primitive setting in the heart
of Africa was a grave with a white cross and on the cross was her mother’s
name, SVEA FLOOD.
Aggie jumped in her
car and drove straight to a college faculty member who, she knew, could
translate the article. “What does this say?” she asked.
The instructor
translated the story:
It tells about
missionaries who went to N’dolera in the heart of the Belgian Congo in 1921…
the birth of a white baby girl… the death of the young missionary mother… the
one little African boy who had been led to Christ… and how, after the all
whites had left, the little African boy grew up and persuaded the chief to let
him build a school in the village.
The article told how
that gradually the now grown up boy won all his students to Christ… the
children led their parents to Christ… even the chief had become a Christian.
Today (1963) there were six hundred Christian believers in that one village.
Because of the
willingness of David and Svea Flood to answer God’s call to Africa, because
they endured so much but were still faithful to witness and lead one little boy
to trust Jesus, God had saved six hundred people. And the little boy, as a
grown man, became head of the Pentacostal Church and leader of 110,000
Christians in Zaire (formerly the Belgian Congo).
At the time Svea
Flood died, it appeared, to human reason, that God had led the young couple to
Africa, only to desert them in their time of deepest need. It would be forty
years before God’s amazing grace and His real plan for the village of N’dolera
would be known.
For Rev. Dewey and
Aggie Hurst’s twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, the college presented them with
the gift of a vacation to Sweden. There Aggie met her biological father. An old
man now, David Flood had remarried, fathered four more children, and generally
dissipated his life with alcohol. He had recently suffered a stroke. Still
bitter, he had one rule in his family: “Never mention the name of God because
God took everything from me.”
After an emotional
reunion with her half brothers and half sister, Aggie brought up the subject of
seeing her father. The others hesitated. “You can talk to him,” they replied,
“even though he’s very ill now. But you need to know that whenever he hears the
name of God, he flies into a rage.”
Aggie could not be
deterred. She walked into the squalid apartment, with liquor bottles
everywhere, and approached the seventy-three-year-old man lying in a rumpled
bed.
“Papa?” she said
tentatively.
He turned and began
to cry. “Aina,” he said, “I never meant to give you away.”
“It’s all right
Papa,” she replied, taking him gently in her arms. “God took care of me.”
The man instantly
stiffened. The tears stopped.
“God forgot all of
us. Our lives have been like this because of Him.” He turned his face back to
the wall.
Aggie stroked his
face and then continued, undaunted.
“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 you
both 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 (about 1964) there are
six hundred African people serving the Lord in that village because you and
Momma were faithful to the call of God on your life.”
“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. And
by the end of the afternoon, he had come back to the God he had resented for so
many decades.
Over the next few
days, the father and daughter enjoyed warm moments together. Aggie and her
husband soon had to return to America—and within a few weeks, David Flood had
gone into eternity.
A few years later,
the Hursts were attending a high-level evangelism conference in London,
England, where a report was given from the nation of Zaire (the former Belgian
Congo). The superintendent of the national church, representing some 110,000
baptized believers, spoke eloquently of the gospel’s spread in his nation.
Aggie could not help going up afterward to ask him if he had ever heard of
David and Svea Flood. “I am their daughter.”
The man began to
weep. “Yes, madam,” the man replied in French, his words then being translated
into English.
“It was Svea Flood
who led me to Jesus Christ. I was the boy who brought food to your parents
before you were born. In fact, to this day your mother’s grave 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
throngs of villagers. She even met the man who so many years before, when she
was less than a month old, had been hired by her father to carry her down the
mountain in a soft bark hammock.
The most dramatic
moment, of course, was when the pastor escorted Aggie to see her mother’s
grave, marked with a white cross, for herself. She knelt in the soil of Africa,
the place of her birth, to pray and give thanks. Later that day, in the church
service, the pastor read from John 12:24:
“I tell you the
truth, unless a kernel of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains only a
single seed. But if it dies, it produces many seeds.”
He then followed with Psalm 126:5: “They who sow in tears shall
reap in joy.”
Is that not one of the most inspirational and encouraging
stories you’ve ever read? It was for me. That goes to show that we never know
the impact that we could possibly have on those around us. You never know who
you might come in contact with that could ultimately impact the world in a
great way. Look at the little guy who was the only person they had contact
with. They could’ve chosen to become bitter because they were denied access to
that village, yet Svea Flood made the most of the opportunity. She shared Jesus
with the little boy who sold them eggs and chickens and it changed his life. He
eventually led his whole village to the Lord then became the leader of some
110,000 baptized believers. Incredible to say the least.
May we each have the same determination to make Christ known. We
may never see the result of the seeds we plant, yet we must continue to press
on and continue to plant.
God bless,
Ford
