Our Life as a Refugee Family

It was Christmas Eve, 1989. My family had just finished pulling out the decorations for the western-style tree that was shipped to us all the way from Norway to our home near Monrovia, the capital city of Liberia. We always enjoy Christmas and look forward to celebrating with family and friends. Not this year…it was not meant to be.

In the blink of an eye our celebration was cut short by a cryptic radio announcement by Liberian President Samuel Doe. “The country should pray,” he said. “Our nation has been attacked. We are at war. If you see anyone who looks like they don’t belong, you should report it to the authorities.” With those few words, our whole country was thrown into panic. In the ensuing chaos, our comfortable but modest home was burned to the ground.

I happened to be looking out my living room window when an army jeep drove right onto our front lawn. Rebels started piling out. Wide-eyed, I screamed, ‘Bessie, get the children and hide!’ Small bodies ran past me as Bessie yelled her orders. In just seconds, it was quiet again. I stood alone, watching. There was nothing I could do.

I was dragged from my home, along with 100 other men, tortured for days and then gunned down in an open field. Because I reminded my fellow prisons not to give up hope but to pray - they called me Preacher Man. One day the rebels took us to an old field outside of town and told me to get in the middle and pray. I did and because of this I was the lone survivor of this mass execution. More rebels had been hiding in the tall grass surrounding us. As I began to pray the hidden rebels stood up and sprayed us with machine guns. Bodies of friends and neighbors who had surrounded me all fell on top of me, protecting me from the bullets. I waited for hours until I thought it was safe and crawled out, covered in blood.

Brother Bruce Beakley met Bessie and I on the flight to America and as heard God speak to him, he reached out to us. He asked us about our life and ultimately decided to help tell our unbelievable yet true story. Only with God’s help could we endure. The journey from our war-torn homeland to a new life for my family in America took nearly twenty years. As I look back on my life, and recount the details of our harrowing escape, I know God was with me and my family. The tragedies and triumphs we experienced are truly strung together on a thread of faith. I thank God for the gift of faith that he has given me. I thank God for how he reunited me with my family whom I had thought dead. I thank God that I did not give in to the rage I felt and desire to murder those who attacked us. I thank God that he has helped me to forgive and live in peace.

Our family has suffered much. Many times we don’t agree with what God allows to happen because it hurts us, or those we love, and we can’t understand His purpose. Those are difficult, painful times. But we refuse to live in fear.


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