Of a Man Who Was Disembowled by a Warthog

I met a man at our new drill site whom a warthog disembowled. The beast attacked him in his fields, tearing into his belly with tusks and teeth. He should not be alive today according to my missionary host David Reeves, the hospital doctor who attended the victim, and the victim himself, who in telling the story regularly says, "I should not be alive today."

He became a Christian some time after the accident. Unfortunately, he cannot regularly attend his local church because he has a wife in another village, and he takes care of both spouses. Somewhat naturally therefore, he speaks against polygamy. He tells the youth not to make his mistake. Polygamy is too hard, he says, and God does not approve of it. He relishes this opportunity to testify against multi-spouse lifestyles as an insider, while at the same time carrying out the responsibilities of a twice-committed husband.

"It is clear to me now," he tells people. "God kept me alive to do this work in his kingdom."

Often God's purposes are clear only in hindsight, and no doubt even all that we realize in this life will not be clear until the next, when we do not look through the glass darkly, if it will be fathomable at all. Who can declare God's purposes? And who would have been so presumptuous to venture to the victim in surgery that the God he did not yet know had spared him to warn against polygamy? It's our double joy that death did not take him then and that he has such a strong testimony now.

Seeing Providence unfold like that is a blessing to which I can presently attest. Almost daily I praise God that we did not start our first well where we are drilling now. It was a toss up as to where we would begin, and nothing would have been so discouraging as to have begun in this village where the rock begins four feet below the surface, even after digging three pilot holes in the same area before settling on the one we have now.

We're taking a couple days to repair a bit that was broken at the new site, to make one or two bits specifically for the rock, to straighten our nine-foot steel pipe, and then double or even triple-weight said pipe to make a glorified rock bar. After two days, after 20 hours of smashing pipe into the ground, we have advanced five feet. It looks like a hard week ahead of us. Praise God for the providential first success behind us.