I heard a wonderful

I heard a wonderful story today.  It was about a missionary family who went to Zaire to witness for Jesus Christ.  They were David and Svea Flood, who were staying at the Missionary Center with the Ericsons.  They were all from Sweden.  The Floods had a two year old boy.  The Ericsons had no children.  They decided to go to a small village called Candalara to witness for Jesus, and when they got there, they found that the chief would not let them come into the town for he said that they might alienate the gods in the village.  So they built mud huts and stayed out in the outskirts of the village.

Soon they were faced with Malaria and other diseases, and the Ericsons decided that they had endured enough and went back to the Missionary Center to stay.  Soon Svea Flood got pregnant, and it took all she had to bear this child, a girl whom they named Aina.  Aina was seventeen days old when Svea, who had no stamina left, due to having had malaria and other diseases during her pregnancy and before, died, leaving David extremely devastated.  David took their two year old boy, and the baby Aina, and went to the missionary center to give them to the Ericsons to take care of.  He said, “God has taken my wife away and I can no longer take care of these children.  God has ruined my life.”  Then he went back to Sweden.

The Ericsons were raising the boy and the baby girl, but soon they contracted a mysterious disease and within days of each other, they died.  An American Missionary family decided to take the baby, and soon they went back to America.  Fearing that the authorities would take the baby away from them, they did not return to Africa, but started a pastoral ministry in the United States, raising the child, whom they renamed Aggie, in South Dakota.

Aggie grew up in South Dakota, and when she came of age, she went to a Christian College in Minneapolis, Minnesota, where she met Drew Hurst, whom she married.  Drew accepted a call to be president of a university in Seattle Washington.  One day a Swedish newspaper landed on their porch, and Aggie, not knowing how to read Swedish, just looked at the pictures.  She saw among them a picture of a grave which she knew was her mother’s.  She got into her car and went to the university and found someone she knew could read Swedish, and had him read it to her.  He did this, and told her that the woman buried there had brought a little boy to Jesus Christ, and he eventually started a school and led all his students to Jesus Christ, and they in turn led their parents to Jesus Christ as well.  She then rejoiced at this.

Aggie and Drew received a vacation in Sweden for their 25th anniversary, and they found her dad there.  He had remarried and raised four more children, and they said that he had one rule and that was to never speak the name of  God before him, for God had ruined his life.  They told Aggie that and she said she wanted to see him anyway.  When she saw him, she told him that God had been taking care of her.  He turned his back and said that God had forsaken all of them, and that he did not think of God anymore.

Aggie said that God had not forsaken him,  nor had her mama died in vain.  She told him that the little boy that her mama had brought to Jesus Christ had caused 600 people to come to Jesus Christ, and God never hated him.  He accepted Jesus that day.  Soon upon returning to the US, she learned that her father was in Heaven.

She had to go on a trip to London, and met the boy that her mother had brought to Jesus so long ago, and asked him if he knew David and Svea Flood, and he said that he did, that she was the one who had brought him to Jesus Christ, and he had brought them fool before she was born.  He was so happy to see her that he gave her a big, sobbing hug and told her she must come to Africa, for her mother was the most famous person in the village.

She did go and all the people were glad to see her.  She went to and prayed over her mother’s grave, knowing that the courage of her parents had brought all this Christianity to this village.

The Scripture goes that a seed must fall and die to produce fruit.