The couple are Dr William Leslie and his wife Clara. They
are returning from many years as missionaries in Angola and the Democratic Republic
of Congo. They have faced charging buffaloes, armies of ants, fierce
hurricanes; one of them on the eve of their first child being born. They have
been beaten and thrown out of towns they worked in. They have witnessed many
atrocities against the local population by the Belgian overlords.
They have cleared jungles to build mission stations. They
have faced leopard attacks and dealt with cannibals.
But as this Canadian couple arrive back in North America
after so many years, the last 17 of them in the Congo, they feel defeated. They
feel they had failed. Failed to make an impact. Failed to establish anything
that was long-lasting. Failed to see many come to a faith in Christ.
It hadn’t started like that. William Leslie had responded to his
faith in God by training as a doctor, having already been working as a
pharmacist. His initial work in both the Congo and Angola included meeting a
young nurse who helped him recover from an illness. He and Clara married in 1896.
Their hardest work involved clearing jungle in order to
build a new mission station along the Kwilu River at Vanga . And it’s from here
that they worked out into the seemingly impenetrable jungle areas reaching
distant tribes, some of whom were still cannibals.
After 17 years at Vanga, there was a disagreement with some
of the tribal leaders. Although reconciliation was achieved, William and Clara
knew it was time to return to the States.
They felt the disappointment.
In 2010, missionary Eric Ramsey travelled to Vanga. The two
and a half hour flight from Kinshasa to Vanga was then followed by a canoe
trip over the river and a 10 mile hike through the jungle.
Ramsey was keen to make contact with the Yansi people. As
far as he was aware, there had been some contact with Christians in the past, but he was not expecting what he
found.
‘When we got in there, we found a
network of reproducing churches throughout the jungle’, Ramsey reports. ‘Each
village had its own gospel choir, although they wouldn’t call it that,’ he
notes. ‘They wrote their own songs and would have sing-offs from village to
village.’
Ramsey found a church in each of
the eight villages he and his team visited, scattered across 34 miles. They
even found a 1000-seat stone “cathedral” in one of the villages. They learned
that this church had become so crowded in the 1980s – with many walking miles
to attend — that a church planting movement had begun in the surrounding
villages.
It took a bit of detective work to
find out how this had happened. The tribal people remembered a missionary. They
remembered a name but Ramsey wasn’t sure it was a first or second name.
The name was Leslie.
Back in the States, Ramsey did his
homework. William Leslie and his wife Clara had been missionaries with the American
Baptist Missionary Union. They would travel at least once a year to these
outlying villages. Clara would play her portable organ- although it’s not clear
this was always taken with them. William would preach the gospel, teach the
tribal children how to read and write, and he even set up a rudimentary
educational system.
Those tribes responded. And the Holy
Spirit did the rest.
As two tired, disheartened
missionaries walked down the gangplank and into the depths of a November
evening in New York in 1929, they had no idea as to what God had done.
What a legacy.
We never know the impact we have
had as Christians. One day we will find out.
Further Reading:
God reports, May 2014
Our Ancestry Site - Dr William H. Leslie
Further Reading:
God reports, May 2014
Our Ancestry Site - Dr William H. Leslie
