The ship on which C.T. was due to sail to Africa departed in just three weeks, but C.T. had no money to pay for the ticket. He told no one that the committee had withdrawn its support of him, and he chose instead to continue his farewell tour, trusting that God would supply the money some other way. With two weeks to go, C.T. preached at the Linnacre Mission in Liverpool. As always, he never took an offering or asked for money when he spoke, but after the service a stranger pressed a ten-pound note into his hand. It was not enough to pay his way to Africa, but it was a start. Over the next two weeks, more money flowed in from the most unexpected sources, and soon C.T. had the money to pay for his ticket to Africa.
Priscilla and C.T.’s mother were still upset about C.T.’s leaving, but they had grown used to the idea in the two years that had passed since he first suggested it. C.T. reminded his wife of the pledge they had made to each other on their wedding day twenty-two years before: “We will never hinder one another from serving Thee.” He explained to Priscilla as gently as he could that God had called him to Africa, and he could not turn aside from that call. He also told her that he did not want her to come along, because he feared the many dangerous situations that most certainly lay ahead. The journey would be difficult for one person in weak health, he reasoned, but for two people in weak health, it would be impossible to accomplish the goals of the trip. C.T. felt he would need to be free to move as he felt directed by God.
On December 15, 1910, C.T. set sail aboard the SS Warwickshire, bound for Africa. It was a cold, gloomy day, and it matched his mood. It had been excruciatingly difficult to leave his family with no idea whether or when he would see them again.
Aboard ship C.T. sat at a table in the salon and prayed that God would comfort him in the turmoil he felt about leaving his family. As he prayed, the most astonishing thought ran through his mind. “This trip is not merely for the Sudan,” a voice seemed to be saying to him. “It is for the whole unevangelized world.”
C.T. shook his head. It seemed ridiculous that one fifty-year-old man, heading to the Sudan with little backing and no fellow missionaries, could alter the course of mission history! Yet as the voyage continued, C.T. could not forget the words. It was as if they were etched into his mind.
On the trip C.T. sent letters home to Priscilla from every port the ship stopped at. Knowing that this trip represented a huge sacrifice on her part, he hoped she would find comfort in the excitement of what he was certain lay ahead. On December 20 he brought his writing materials up to the salon and sat down at a desk to write to Priscilla.
Somehow God tells me all my life has been a preparation for this coming ten years or more. It has been a rough discipline. Oh, the agony of it! The asthma, what has not that meant, a daily and nightly dying! The bodily weakness! The being looked down upon by the world folk! The poverty! And have I not been tempted? Tempted to stop working for Christ! Doctors! Relatives! Family! Christians!
He looked out at the steel gray horizon for a few minutes before continuing.
Things simply surge through my mind and head, and God speaks to me every time I lie down, and assures me that He is going to do a wonderful work. Darling Priscilla, you remember Shanghai? Well, those days are going to occur again, only on a magnificent scale. Oh, this New Crusade, it burns in my brain and heart. It must be.
Then in January, as the SS Warwickshire approached the coast of Africa, C.T. wrote another heart-to-heart letter to his wife.
Let us in our old age reconsecrate ourselves to Jesus. He has done so much for us.… He has kept us going, and kept our girls and saved them. God grant that as a silver wedding present He may give us this noble work to do for Him in Africa.… Seldom in a life do two people have the opportunity to forsake all twice, but we are being offered this privilege. Let us grasp it with both hands.
Chapter 10
Africa at Last
Ready and eager to scout for mission stations across the African continent, C.T. Studd stepped off the SS Warwickshire in Mombasa, Kenya. From Mombasa he made his way to Nairobi, where he stayed with a Christian family to whom Karl Kumm had provided a letter of introduction. In Nairobi he began gathering maps and information about the Sudan, the great swath of land that stretched some twenty-five hundred miles across Africa south of the Sahara Desert, between the Niger River in the west and the Nile in the east. C.T. spent his days poring over the maps, many of them vague about the exact geography of the region, and visiting church leaders in Nairobi to find out just how many mission stations and churches they knew of in the Sudan.
Finally, six weeks after arriving in Kenya, C.T. was ready to set out. He had convinced Bishop Gwynne and Archdeacon Shaw, both of the Church Mission Society (CMS), to be his traveling companions. Their plan was to travel north to Khartoum and from there undertake a nine-hundred-mile trek to the southwest through a region called Bahr al Ghazal. Accompanying C.T. and his two traveling companions were ten porters and twenty-nine donkeys laden with provisions for the trip.
It was the rainy season when they set out, and progress was slow. Still, C.T., Bishop Gwynne, and Archdeacon Shaw made the most of every opportunity. They preached whenever they found a tribe willing to listen and made copious notes about what they found in the region. However, as the trek proceeded, C.T. got the distinct feeling he was headed in the wrong direction. The area they were traveling through was sparsely populated, and it seemed to him that with some organization, the CMS could easily evangelize the whole Bahr al Ghazal area themselves.
C.T. wondered where the great masses of unsaved Africans he had heard so much about were located. As he talked to people along the route of their journey, he learned that the masses he sought were beyond the southern frontier of the Sudan in the Belgian Congo, where, he was told, lived millions of destitute people who had never heard the gospel. Before the journey through Bahr al Ghazal was over, C.T. knew he was destined to work in the Congo.
After ten weeks of traveling, the group straggled back into Khartoum. Only five donkeys had survived the trek, and several of the porters had defected along the way. But C.T. was happy. He had enjoyed wonderful health the entire time, a sign, he was sure, that God wanted him to start a mission in the Belgian Congo. His plan was to return to England and gather a small group of dedicated daredevils to come back to Africa with him. But those plans had to wait. Within days of returning to Khartoum, C.T. came down with a severe attack of malaria. He lay on his bed for eight weeks before he felt well enough to travel back to England.
C.T. was still weak when he arrived in England, and almost everyone he met criticized him for going to Africa in the first place. He spent most of the summer of 1911 recuperating, but even as his body rested, his mind was alive with ideas.
C.T. kept a notebook and pencil beside him at all times. As the days went by, the outline of a very different mission society began to take shape in his notebook. C.T. decided that there were enough mission organizations to support “regular” missionaries. What he wanted to do was attract and train a group of young men who would go into the most dangerous places on earth with no thought to their personal safety. They would be a union mission made up of many denominations, blazing a trail that other mission societies could follow. C.T. scribbled down a mission statement for the new mission:
For this purpose we have banded ourselves together under the name of “Christ’s Etceteras,” and invite others of God’s people to join us in this glorious enterprise.… We rejoice in and thank God for the good work being carried on in the already occupied lands by God’s Regular Forces. We seek to attack and win to Christ only those parts of the devil’s empire which are beyond the extremest outposts of the regular army of God. Christ’s Etceteras are a union mission; a Christian, and, therefore, an international brotherhood; a supplementary Worldwide Evangelization Crusade.
As soon as he was well enough, C.T. took to the road with his new ideas. He had decided to call the new mission the Heart of Africa Mission, or H.A.M. for short. He was gratified to learn that the English public had not forgotten their old sports hero, and as before, huge crowds came out to hear him speak.
At the meetings C.T. had only one message for his audience. “Five hundred millions of heathen have not yet been evangelized, so it is computed,” he would tell the crowd. “The heart of Asia, the heart of Africa, and well nigh the entire continent of South America, are untouched with the gospel of Christ. Yes, we shout, ‘Onward Christian soldiers, marching as to war,’ and then?…then?…we whisper, ‘I pray Thee have me excused.’ What glorious humbugs we are! We have been waiting far too long for someone else to get the job. The time for waiting is past. The hour of God has struck. War is declared! Didn’t Christ Himself tell us that the gates of hell should not prevail against us? What have men like us got to fear? Before the whole world, yes, before the sleepy, lukewarm, faithless, namby-pamby Christian world, we must dare to trust our God, to venture our all for Him.”
As a result of C.T.’s numerous speaking engagements, twenty-four young men volunteered to return to the Belgian Congo with C.T. The desire of one of these young men to go to the Congo strained the relationship between C.T. and one of his oldest friends. C.T. and Barclay Buxton had first met while they were students at Cambridge. Barclay came from a wealthy family, and he shocked everyone when he and his wife, their estate carpenter, and two housemaids set out for Japan to start a mission. The mission became known as the “Japan Band,” and now, even though Barclay and his family were back in England, Barclay still supported other Japan Band workers.
Barclay’s second son, Alfred, was a tall, thin twenty-year-old studying at Cambridge University to become a doctor. He was also courting Edith Studd, C.T.’s daughter. When Alfred heard C.T. speak, he was immediately captivated with the idea of going to Africa as a missionary. He wanted to leave right away with C.T. for Africa, but his parents called it a harebrained scheme. His father refused to allow him to go, frustrating Alfred and straining the relationship between Barclay and C.T. But Alfred’s conviction that he should go to Africa with C.T. would not leave him. Eventually Barclay relented, although he was less than enthusiastic about Alfred’s dropping out of medical school to venture into such a dangerous place.
Alfred’s father was not the only person who thought C.T.’s plan was crazy. Priscilla and the girls also hated to see him return to Africa. Priscilla was particularly upset because it would mean staying with her mother-in-law indefinitely. As C.T. prayed about Priscilla’s situation, he became convinced that they should buy their own home in London for her to live in while he was away in Africa. Soon C.T. heard about a house at 17 Highland Road, Norwood, London. He went to see the place and liked what he saw. The house was modest but adequate, and best of all, it was a great bargain. C.T. borrowed some money and bought the place. Priscilla was overjoyed to be moving into her own house and soon had it furnished.
Once Priscilla had settled in, C.T. felt free to return to Africa and blaze a trail for the young men who had committed themselves to join him there. Three of the young men from Cambridge were already in Mombasa, awaiting C.T.’s arrival. Alfred Buxton would accompany C.T. on the voyage to Kenya.
On January 31, 1913, C.T. spent his last night at home. He and Alfred were due to set sail the following morning. After dinner that night, a young man came by to say farewell to C.T., but as they spoke, the young man became agitated about the situation.
