Extinguished flame ignited bushfire

I drove together with my young son to park the Land Rover near the cemetery gates, writes Eric Gaudion.

It was hot and humid, typical for the period after midday when I would normally collect him from school in the city of Mutare in Zimbabwe.

We were missionaries with Elim International Missions and had not long settled in that city.

We both wore hats to protect us, especially with my boy being so white and blond haired, and I swatted at the flies that seemed to want to explore my nose and mouth.

My purpose that hot day in early June was to check on the condition of the tombstones and memorials erected in memory of our team of Elim missionaries who were massacred during the blood-soaked struggle for independence and majority rule in that country, just a few years earlier.

As we approached their burial place, father and small skinny boy, hand in hand, I felt nervous as well as sad.

This was the first time that I would explain in any detail to my young son what had happened to our missionary colleagues and their children as they served the Lord in the same place to which we had now come.

That would not be easy, but we walked on together.

Finally, stooping to wipe the dust from the inscription on the simple memorial stone, we read that ‘their lives were taken on 23rd June 1978’.

The horrific manner of their deaths, though, shocked the world, both Christian and secular, and brought great pain to their families and loved ones, as well as to the communities that they served in Christ’s name.

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