Christian missionaries working tirelessly in a dangerous and remote part of Nigeria have been highlighted for praise in The Spectator magazine.
David and Shirley Donovan have served the community of Enekorogha and helped save numerous lives.
Writing in The Spectator, journalist Colin Freeman revealed how their actions had prompted a village ‘idol keeper’ to tell the couple, “the God you serve is greater than the god I serve”.
Amazing Grace
Freeman also shared the story of Ian Squire, another British Christian working in Nigeria, killed last year while being held hostage with the Donovans.
He had been playing Amazing Grace on a guitar moments before his death.
the God you serve is greater than the god I serve.
Foreign correspondent Freeman said Squire and the Donovans were examples of the “foot soldiers of a less fashionable and largely forgotten wing of aid work – Christian missionaries”.
Dangerous
Freeman – a journalist with two decades’ experience of reporting on Africa and the Middle East – related how David and Shirley have faced kidnapping, malaria, theft and rat-infestation.
“Dangerous as it was, though, the work that the Donovans and their companions did in Enekorogha made a difference.”
foot soldiers of a less fashionable and largely forgotten wing of aid work – Christian missionaries.
He explained that the missionaries helped reduce the village’s child mortality rate of 45 per cent – which was due to conditions like measles and cholera – to just 2 per cent.
Read the Bible
Adding this was “a fact not lost on the local witch doctors, who had been hostile to the clinic when it first opened, but who ended up seeking treatment there themselves”.
It was this that prompted the ‘idol keeper’ to make his comments on God, and invite the missionaries to read the Bible with him.
The Donovans’ clinic in Enekorogha only re-opened recently. Freeman reported, “locals have already named several newborn babies ‘Ian’ in memory of the late Mr Squire”.
Satisfied?
In an interview with The Telegraph last November, David and Shirley explained that they had left a stable environment for missionary work.
“We had good jobs, our two sons in private schools, and a big house in Cambridge, and pretty much everything we wanted”.
“But we realised it didn’t satisfy us”.