To commemorate 50 Years of Serving Congo we are posting to our blog nearly every day, and will send you a preview of new content once a week. The PCP Promise will return to its twice-monthly schedule in 2015.
A personal story from Pastor Rick Carlson - As an eight-year-old boy in 1964, the world was already upside down. Only one year earlier, President Kennedy was assassinated. We practiced regular air raid drills in school where we turned out the lights and crawled underneath our desks in case we got the alert that the Russians were going to drop a nuclear bomb on our town.
And then, in November of ’64, everyday after school I ran home and poured over the newspaper to see if there was any news about the fate of Covenant missionary, Paul Carlson, who was captured by rebels in Congo.
I suppose I was interested in Dr. Carlson’s story because we shared the same last name and he was from the same church denomination as my family. But looking back, I realize that my fascination went much deeper. Upon hearing word of his death, I lost a hero. As a child, I did not understand the complicated Cold War politics that surrounded Congo at the time, or the convoluted motives of the Congolese rebels who captured and killed Paul.
All I knew was that a man who had a brilliant career ahead of him as a surgeon in Southern California, responded to the call of God, took his family to the “end of the earth” to serve people who he didn’t know. When given the choice to escape, he chose to stay in order to save a life. Continue reading...
