The Christian and Missionary Alliance was born of a vision - the vision of a Presbyterian pastor who left his formal church setting and established a ministry for Christ that would eventually circle the globe! I am sure some people in those days questioned his actions...others probably thought what he was doing would amount to nothing (people cannot readily understand another person's vision)... and there were those who no longer associated with him because he left a fashionable church in order to minister to the "down and outers" of that period, as well as reaching out to the whole world. But the vision was of God and there were those who joined him, thankfully, so that today we have a viable Alliance witness in many countries of the world, as well as in the United States.
Recently during our visit in Nyack, we were amazed to see the vision of those leading the College and Seminary. The outreach back into Manhattan (where it all started!) is a thrilling chapter in the history of the college. God's work, whether here in North America or in the "uttermost parts" of the world, needs people of vision even today!
The work of the Alliance in West Africa also started with people of vision. Robert S. Roseberry and his wife (whom he called "Madame") were some of the first pioneers, along with the Ryan brothers. They opened up this new area of Africa to the Gospel. I remember them well from my girlhood. They were strong men with strong wills, but very kindly people as well. They loved children and we kids were all close to them and liked it when they visited our parents' work. The name "Roseberry" was a little too hard for a West African to pronounce and so they called him "Loosebelly", never dreaming what that meant in English!
When we arrived in West Africa in 1959, God's vision of what He was going to do in that part of the world had already begun to manifest itself. The Dogon people and the Bwa people groups were turning to Christ in large numbers. Missionaries in those two large people groups of West Africa learned the local language, thus identifying themselves with their people and in both cases they had multiple staffs to help in the work of evangelism and then training among these peoples.
However, such was not the case in the work among our people, then called the Black Bobo (or Bobo fing in Jula). This people group was looked on as being very backward, by both the colonial rulers and the missionary staff. They had very strong fetish worship, very few of their number were educated in French. In my youth the people wore very little clothes. The men wore a handmade jockstrap and the women wore large bunches of leaves fore and aft, tied together around the hips with strong vines. They also pierced the skin below the bottom lip of every baby girl born, put a small stick in to stretch it and kept making the stick larger as the skin stretched. And finally when the girl arrived at puberty she got a round white smooth stone to put into the hole. Years later when the government made a ruling that they could no longer scar their children (each Bobo - male and female - had three gashes given them on each cheek to mark them as belonging to the Bobo tribe) nor could the women wear their lip stones, it was difficult for the women to drink water as it would always partially trickle out the permanent hole in the skin below their bottom lip. So the Bobo people were looked on as a wild, uncivilized bunch!
The Richard Johansons worked among these people, learned their language, saw a few people want to "walk the Jesus road", started short term Bible Schools, and even started the translation of the Bible for these people. They had a vision for the Bobos and they began to see that vision come to life - but their ministry was interrupted (and later terminated) because of World War II and then sickness which prevented their return. You remember that all their language materials sank to the bottom of the ocean when their ship was torpedoed on their way to the U.S.!!
By the time we arrived in 1959, there were very few believers left and just a few stray pieces of literature that had been produced by the Johansons. The reasons for this were 1) the departure of the Johansons who had a vision for these people and 2) the Second World War which totally interrupted this fledgling work. When the Richard Johansons, living in Florida, heard that we were going to work with the Bobo people, they were overjoyed and always maintained contact with us until their death. When we were appointed to this tribe, we started right at the bottom. There was no vision on the part of anyone for a large group of Bobos coming to Christ. There was no vision for the Bobo Madare people - where there is no vision, the Bible tells us, the people perish!
The world is not full of visionaries. But interestingly enough, Dad and I were both visionaries, in different ways! Dad always has a vision to see the church established, to envision what a person can be when he comes to Christ. He has always had a vision to see people saved and mature in Christ. I, on the other hand, have a vision for seeing people maturing in Christ and helping to provide the programs and teaching methods for that to happen. We had already had a vision of what God could do during our home service. Dad picked out a small city in central Vermont, Rutland, and felt God leading us there to start a church in an area where the Christian and Missionary Alliance was unknown. God affirmed our vision as He helped us to plant that church which still stands today.
Amd so we went to work in accordance with the vision God had given to us (and the assignment of the mission) with the goal of seeing a healthy church grow in this unreached people group. We never dreamed what God would accomplish in that area, and today we marvel as we hear of the ongoing of His work among our beloved Bobos.
So we had come to Africa as workers, with one vision: to see a great church raised up among the Bobo people. This, by the way, was a last minute field assignment as we had been assigned to the girls' school in Mali, and at the last minute the field changed our stationing and asked us to work with the Bobo people. We got this assignment just before we left France on a ship headed for Africa. And the change was certainly of the Lord. (to be continued)
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