For once in his life, C.T. was speechless. God had actually sent a dentist halfway around the world to fix his teeth!
Over the next week John extracted C.T.’s remaining teeth and molded a set of false teeth for him. C.T. was delighted. He could sing much better with his new teeth, and he often used them to play jokes on the local people, none of whom imagined that such a thing as false teeth existed. One time he put a pair of pliers in his mouth and pretended to extract all his top teeth at once. Another time he took his teeth out in the middle of a prayer, leaving those praying with him to wonder how the teeth had all magically disappeared.
The second set of people to come to the Congo—the seven new American missionary recruits from WEC U.S.A.—caused a lot of problems. Alfred was delighted to see them, some of whom he had personally recruited and recommended. But C.T. was not so impressed. All of the missionaries until now had been from Great Britain, and they all belonged to denominations such as the Methodists and Presbyterians. In contrast, the American arrivals were mainly Baptists, and it was not long before the British and American missionaries were arguing bitterly over different interpretations of certain Bible verses. Instead of helping to soothe the quarreling, C.T. joined in on the side of the British missionaries. Within weeks the American WEC missionaries announced that they would not be part of the mission and marched out of camp, never to return.
At first everyone was stunned, and then accusations started to fly. Alfred was particularly horrified that the Americans had met with such hostility from the British missionaries. He questioned C.T.’s judgment in involving himself in the debate rather than quelling it.
Worse was to follow. The American WEC missionaries wrote back to their home base, and soon WEC U.S.A. was threatening to withdraw its support and become an independent organization.
Other issues began to create tension between C.T. and Alfred. One was that despite the fact that Priscilla was now traveling the world representing WEC, C.T. forbade her to come and visit him in the Congo. Officially he cited the fact that Priscilla was too important a person in the mission to run the risk of catching tropical diseases, but something deeper pulled at his heart. C.T. would not go home unless God told him to, and he was afraid that if Priscilla came to visit him, he would not be able to help himself from wanting her to stay at his side. This would mean that either he had to return to England or she would have to stop her effective recruiting campaign and join him permanently. As an old soldier who had put his mission first for nearly fifty years, he could not allow either of those options to occur. So C.T. concluded that it would be better if they did not see each other again.
As the 1920s progressed, the letters C.T. received from the board of WEC began more and more to question his decisions. C.T. decided that he needed to send Pauline and Norman home to explain the situation in person. Before they left, Pauline came to say good-bye to her father. C.T. had a strange feeling he would never see his daughter again, and he looked around his room for something of value to give her. His eyes scanned an old Nestlé milk can with some pencils in it, a couple of well-worn Bibles, his comb, and a patched set of clothes. Seeing nothing else, he shook his head and said, “Pauline, I would really like to give you something, but I find that I gave everything I had to Jesus years ago.”
Chapter 16
No Chocolate Soldier
A great feeling of relief surged over C.T. It was July 1926, and C.T. had lived long enough to finish translating the New Testament and Psalms into the Kingwana language. He checked the translation one last time and then packaged it up and sent it off by mail to the coast to be published. So many things, including the mail, were easier now. In times past, a runner had to make a twelve-hour journey from Nala to rendezvous with the nearest mail service. Now roads had branched out into the Congo, and one came all the way to Ibambi. A mail car now came there once a week bringing packages and letters.
One letter the mail car brought was from Alfred Buxton. In the letter Alfred explained that he and Edith were in the United States. They had been invited there to discuss the future of WEC U.S.A. and in particular why the first set of WEC missionaries had been so poorly welcomed. C.T. was outraged by this news. He felt that the fault lay entirely at the feet of the American missionaries and that the work had been hurt by their disagreement and departure. He fumed at the idea that Alfred and Edith were trying to smooth things over. Before he had time to let his feelings subside and get a clear picture of the situation, C.T. shot back a letter to Alfred. In it he told Alfred that he was being disloyal and that he could consider himself dismissed from the mission. Edith, his own daughter, need not come back either. Regrettably C.T. could not see beyond his personal feelings in this matter.
The missionaries serving in the Congo were shocked when they heard what C.T. had done. Alfred had helped establish the Heart of Africa Mission in the Congo and had been a loyal part of it for thirteen years.
In February 1928 the mail car brought a different cargo to Ibambi. When it stopped in the village, Priscilla Studd stepped out of it. This time she had not asked C.T. for permission to visit. Instead she had simply informed him when to expect her. C.T., thirty missionaries, and two thousand native Christians were there to meet her. Many of them laughed with delight at seeing “Mama Bwana” for the first time. They had been told many times that C.T. had a wife in England who spent her energies finding more missionaries to send out among them, but many of them seriously doubted that she existed.
Now Priscilla and C.T. stood side by side. Priscilla had given her life serving in England so that the mission would have missionaries and money to carry on its work among the people who now crowded around her. C.T. was amazed at how well she looked at sixty-four years of age, and she was too polite to mention his ancient appearance.
Many difficult things had happened since C.T. and Priscilla had last seen each other, including C.T.’s dismissal of Alfred and Edith. Priscilla told C.T. that Edith was now living in a house in London, while Alfred and some of his American recruits had joined the Sudan Interior Mission and were working in Ethiopia. She also said that as a result of Alfred’s dismissal and the persistent rumors that C.T. would not come home for a furlough, even though the mission board demanded he did, many missionaries and supporters had left WEC. Other rumors about C.T.’s being a morphine addict who had lost touch with reality fueled the controversy at home. But these were not matters Priscilla and C.T. discussed at length. It was too painful for them both, and C.T. had no intention of backing down or going “home.”
With Mama Bwana in the Congo, a series of daily meetings was hastily arranged at which Priscilla preached through an interpreter. However, Priscilla stayed in the Congo for only two weeks; work back in London called her. This time when the couple parted, C.T. knew for sure that this would be the last time they would see each other on earth. Quietly, in his hut, C.T. said his last farewells to his wife. They prayed together and asked God to bless the work and their children and grandchildren. Then, slowly, arm in arm, they walked down the path to the waiting mail car. The gathered crowd were strangely silent at the sight.
C.T. watched as Priscilla stepped into the car. The door was shut behind her, and she looked straight ahead as she was driven off. C.T. felt that by her doing this, she was saying that they both had tasks to do and would keep their eyes on those tasks with every ounce of strength they had left.
Eleven months later C.T. received a letter from Pauline. After a single day’s illness, Priscilla Studd had died on January 29, 1929. C.T.’s last tie to England had been severed, and he knew for a fact that he would never again leave the Congo.
A year later C.T. received word that he had been made a Chevalier of the Royal Order of the Lion by the king of Belgium. He was too weak to go to Kinshasa to collect the award in person, and so it was delivered to him by mail. His native friends were greatly impressed by the medal, but it meant little to C.T. He told everyone that he valued the approval of God far more than the approval of any man, including a king.
In the spring of 1931, C.T. was so ill that he seldom left his bed. However, he still had plenty of company as streams of Christians came to ask him for his blessing and advice. One of them was a little man named Zamu. As he sat beside C.T.’s cot, Zamu explained his reason for visiting. “I have come to say good-bye. I am on my way to the tribes beyond. They are our hereditary enemies, and I wish to bring them the gospel. I have already spoken to Mama Roupell [one of the other missionaries] about it.”
“What did she tell you?” C.T. asked.
“She asked me about my foot,” Zamu said, looking down at a large ulcer on his left heel. “But I told her, ‘God is, White Lady.’ Then she told me that the food where I was going was very different and that with no palm oil and no salt I might starve. What could I say to her but ‘God is, White Lady’? Then she asked me about my wife, and I told her that where I go, my wife will follow. We will walk and talk for God together.”
C.T. nodded. He knew Zamu well, and he believed his words.
“Yes, you are right. God is,” C.T. replied, pulling up his shirtsleeve. “See this arm of mine, Zamu? Once it was very strong, but now it is weak, and the flesh is shrunken. I cannot go with you; my time is nearly finished among you. I can only go on from day to day as God gives me strength, so don’t depend on me; depend on God. He is with you. He won’t die. He will keep you.”
C.T. then pulled himself up to a sitting position. “Don’t go with shame! Don’t be afraid! Preach the gospel with boldness. Don’t drag the flag of God in the dirt. Hold it high, and don’t bring shame upon it. Set your face like a soldier to overcome whatever gets in your way.”
Zamu nodded.
“How many of you are going?” C.T. asked.
“Just me and my wife,” Zamu replied.
“Ah,” C.T. responded, thinking of a time long ago. “That is how I started out, just my wife and I. If you are true, God will make a great company of you one day.”
After Zamu left, C.T. lay for a long time thinking back over his life and the decisions he had made. He pulled a piece of paper and his pen and ink off a nearby shelf and wrote in his journal.
As I believe I am now nearing my departure from this world, I have but a few things to rejoice in; they are these:
1. That God called me to China and I went in spite of utmost opposition from all my loved ones.
2. That I joyfully acted as Christ told that rich young man to act.
3. That I deliberately at the call of God, when alone on the Bibby liner [the SS Warwickshire] in 1910, gave up my life for this work, which was to be henceforth not for the Sudan only, but for the whole unevangelized world.
My only joys therefore are that when God has given me a work to do, I have not refused it.
By June 1931 C.T. was in great pain. He consulted his medical encyclopedia and decided that he was suffering from a new complaint, gallstones. For the next month the pain increased daily until he was completely incapacitated. On Thursday, July 16, 1931, C.T. lapsed in and out of consciousness. He fought for every breath he took and often uttered just a single word: “Hallelujah.” Soon after dark that day, he died at age seventy.
Twenty years before, when doctors advised C.T. not to go to Africa because he would be dead within weeks, many people asked him what would happen if he did die. C.T. always gave them the same answer. “Shout hallelujah,” he would say. “The world will have lost its biggest fool, and with one fool less to handicap Him, God will do greater wonders still. There shall be no funeral, no wreaths, crape, not tears, not even the death march. Congratulations all around will take place. Our God will still be alive, and nothing else matters! To die is gain.”
