“I believe it is called AIM,” the postmaster replied.
C.T. opened his mouth to say something and then closed it again. Instead he took the letters and walked out into the bright sunlight.
That night, as they made camp, C.T. wondered what to do. He had come to the heart of Africa to pioneer a mission to people who had no other chance of hearing the gospel, not to follow in the footsteps of other missionaries. In choosing Dungu, he was sure he had found a spot that would take other mission organizations years to reach, but apparently he had been wrong. He now wondered what he and Alfred should do next.
When C.T. went to speak to the four men, Morris and Batstone explained that after they had left C.T. in Mombasa, they had decided to join up with the Africa Inland Mission. The mission had two missionaries about to head into the Congo, and so the four men had joined together. They had taken a slightly different route from the one C.T. and Alfred had taken, and had not experienced the same delays. Thus they had started later and arrived earlier in Dungu.
After talking with the four young men, C.T. could see only one course of action. He and Alfred would proceed farther west to the town of Niangara, a place that everyone assured him had never hosted a missionary before.
Since their porters had already been paid and had left, C.T. and Alfred began the exhausting job of rounding up a new group. During this time they were invited to stay in the guest house of a Belgian merchant, and they gratefully accepted the offer. After spotting several black mambas, one of the most deadly snakes in Africa, they were glad for the protection of a house.
On their first night in the guest house, a terrible thunderstorm broke over Dungu. Thunder cracked and lightning illuminated the room where C.T. and Alfred knelt in prayer. Suddenly there was an enormous crash, and a chunk of plaster fell from the ceiling, landing beside C.T.’s leg. C.T. jumped up and rushed outside to see what was happening, Alfred close at his heels.
Sheets of rain drenched them both in seconds. C.T. looked up at the roof to see a thin plume of smoke coming from the thatch. Lightning had struck the house and set the roof alight. C.T. studied the roof for a moment, and then the two men raced back inside out of the rain. As he shut the door behind them, C.T. was convinced that the torrential rain would soon put the fire out. Meanwhile, a group of local people had gathered outside, and C.T. could hear them shouting above the din of the storm.
“What are they saying?” he asked Alfred.
Alfred gulped. “They’re telling us to get our things and run.”
The two men looked at each other for a second, and then some flaming thatch fell through the ceiling and landed next to a table. C.T. rushed over and stomped the fire out, but the crackling above his head told him there would be more fire raining down on them at any moment.
“Quick. Let’s grab our belongings and get out of here,” C.T. yelled to Alfred.
A minute later C.T. and Alfred were standing in the midst of the group of local people, watching as the guest house was engulfed in flames. For the second time, fire had stalked their journey.
As he stood watching, C.T. noticed a white man standing beside him. The man was wearing nothing but a towel around his waist. He introduced himself. “I am Count de Grunne, the Belgian district commissioner. Were you staying here?”
“Yes,” C.T. replied.
“I came as soon as I heard about the fire,” the commissioner said, “though I suppose you can see that!”
C.T. looked into the man’s direct, gray eyes and liked him immediately.
“I suppose you will need another house for the night. I will have one of my servants prepare one for you right away,” the commissioner offered.
“Thank you,” C.T. replied. “That is very kind of you.”
Over the next few days, Count de Grunne showed his kindness in many other ways. He helped C.T. and Alfred find more porters and granted them land at Niangara to build their mission station. He also gave them maps and advice on how to get to Niangara. He suggested that the easiest way to get there was to take canoes down the Welle River. In three days they would reach their destination. C.T. readily accepted the count’s suggestion.
On October 16, 1913, C.T. and Alfred stepped out of their canoes and onto the riverbank at Niangara. After nine months of living mostly in tents, they were “home” at last. In no time at all, the two missionaries had built themselves a large house from mud and wattle and christened it “Buckingham Palace.” Indeed, after the trials they had been through, they could not imagine anything more luxurious than solid walls around them and a waterproof roof over their heads.
On the first night in their new home, C.T. wrote in his journal, “We are the farthest outpost of God’s work; there is nothing west, north or south of us, till you strike the Congo River.”
That was just the way C.T. had always wanted things to be—he and Alfred deep in the heart of Africa.
As the next days unfolded, they found that Niangara was like the hub of a wheel. Around them lived many tribes, including the Bazande, Mangbetu, Medje, Nepoko, and Pygmies. C.T. was delighted; the possibilities for evangelization were even vaster than he had first thought.
Within days of arriving in Niangara, C.T. and Alfred set out to explore the area around them, looking for sites for potential mission stations. They decided to head south, despite the fact that only ten years before a band of thirty-five Belgian soldiers walking in that direction had all been killed, cooked, and eaten by cannibals.
No cannibals crossed their path on the journey, and after walking five days, they found a perfect spot for a mission station. Nala was an abandoned government poste that had a bountiful supply of food and water and several brick buildings that the local people did not use. More important, C.T. and Alfred were impressed by the friendliness of the people they met. Having been exposed to white people before, the residents of Nala were eager for someone to teach them to read and write and explain the outside world to them.
When they got back to Niangara, C.T. wasted no time in writing to the board of the Heart of Africa Mission. He explained the openness of the people at Nala and concluded, “We will need a doctor and a teacher for Nala. Send us good recruits; we need men. Where will the funds come from? They will come from God. Nala is a magnificent station, a golden opportunity.” C.T. addressed the letter to Martin Sutton, chairman of the board, and waited for the Belgian mail boat to arrive.
When the mail boat did arrive, C.T. exchanged the letters he had written for letters from home. He was shocked when he opened one of the letters from Priscilla. Both Martin Sutton and his loyal supporter Lord Radstock had died within a year of each other.
C.T. was so used to setbacks by now that he knew he would keep going, even though the mission board was now stacked against him. He wrote to his new friend Count de Grunne and asked for a concession of land in Nala. He received a prompt reply offering him land, as long as the local people agreed to having missionaries in their midst. This meant a second trip to Nala, and C.T. and Alfred left as soon as they could. When they reached Nala, they rode their bicycles into town. The local people cheered excitedly and gathered around them, glad to see that the missionaries had returned.
C.T. and Alfred stayed several days in Nala, and before they left, the head men put their thumbprints on an official paper to signify that a lovely tract of land in their village would belong to the Heart of Africa Mission. As C.T. looked at the land, he could already picture a thriving school and a hospital on the site.
Before C.T. and Alfred left Nala, a man named Sambo had become a Christian. C.T. hoped that Sambo would be the first of many believers in Nala.
To further encourage C.T.’s faith, a letter soon arrived from the mission board. Much to C.T.’s surprise, it stated that the board had dispatched five more missionaries to join them. C.T. was overjoyed.
Three months later C.T. and Alfred made two more long treks, one to Poko, five days northwest of Nala, and another six days farther on to Bambili. C.T. considered both of these sites ideal for mission stations, and he wrote to Count de Grunne applying for land concessions at both places.
C.T. felt as if things were breaking open at last. Since arriving in the Congo, he and Alfred had found four strategic centers for mission stations, and the work from these stations could easily reach eight different tribes. But hundreds of workers were needed in the Congo, not just five! So while still in Bambili, C.T. and Alfred decided on a plan to expand the work further. Alfred was to go back to Niangara and meet up with the new missionaries. Together they would start the mission station at Nala. Alfred’s job would be to oversee the new station and continue his work writing down the Bangala language.
Meanwhile C.T. would venture on another three hundred miles to meet up with the Congo River. He would then canoe seven hundred miles downstream to the river’s mouth. From there he would take a ship back to England to enlist more recruits. He knew that this would be made more difficult because a war had broken out in Europe, pitting Germany against Russia, France, and Great Britain. Young men were being recruited for service in the trenches in France. But C.T. was sure that he could make a good case for Christian men to consider volunteering for the noble task of fighting for the souls of men in the Congo.
In February 1915 C.T. and Alfred went their separate ways. The two missionaries had been together for two years. In that time C.T. had watched Alfred grow from a spindly twenty-year-old into a mature man. As they parted company, C.T. prayed that this maturity would be enough to sustain Alfred until he could arrive back from England with more help. Neither man had any idea how long that would be.
Chapter 13
Bwana Mukubwa
By April C.T. was back in England. On one hand, he was delighted to see his wife and daughters again and hold his first grandchild, but in other ways he found being in his homeland very difficult. He sat in overstuffed chairs in dining rooms, drinking out of china cups and eating dainty cakes and chocolates, and he did not like it one bit. The humor he once possessed was gone, and everything he saw was influenced by his recent hardships and the needs he had witnessed in the Congo. C.T. scrutinized every “frivolity” and even some things most people would argue were necessities. To him, saving a halfpenny here and a sixpence there meant more funds to open another mission station.
The Great War raging in Europe brought into sharp focus the urgency C.T. felt about the fight for souls. C.T. used the war to spur Christian volunteers for Africa. In one of the first articles he wrote for the Heart of Africa Mission newsletter after arriving home, he said,
There are more than twice as many Christian uniformed officers at home among peaceful Britain’s 40 million evangelized inhabitants than the whole number of Christ’s forces fighting at the front among 1,200 million heathen! And yet such call themselves soldiers of Christ! What do the angels call them, I wonder. The “Let’s-save-Britain-first” brigade are in the succession of the “I-pray-thee-have-me-excused” apostles.
Christ’s call is to feed the hungry, not the full; to save the lost, not the stiff-necked; not to call the scoffers, but sinners to repentance; not to build and furnish comfortable chapels, churches, and cathedrals at home in which to rock Christian professors to sleep by means of clever essays, stereotyped prayer and artistic musical performances, but to raise living churches of souls among the destitute, to capture men from the devil’s clutches and snatch them from the very jaws of hell, to enlist and train them for Jesus, and make them into an almighty Army of God. But this can only be accomplished by a red-hot, unconventional, unfettered Holy Ghost religion, where neither Church nor State, neither man nor traditions are worshiped or preached, but only Christ and Him crucified. Not to confess Christ by fancy collars, clothes, silver croziers or gold watch-chain crosses, church steeples or richly embroidered altar cloths, but by reckless sacrifice and heroism in the foremost trenches.
This and other similar articles made C.T. a lightning rod for controversy everywhere he went. Some Christians welcomed him with open arms, urging him to shake up the church even more, while others bristled at his abrasive message. C.T. did not care. He went up and down the country preaching and urging Christians to be wholehearted for God and to be as willing to fight for the gospel in foreign lands as they were willing to fight for England in the Great War.
