Unforeseen Fruit
"Back in 1921, a missionary couple named David and Svea Flood went with their
two-year-old son from Sweden to the heart of Africa-to what was then called the
Belgian Congo. They met up with another young Scandinavian couple, the Ericksons,
and the four of them sought God for direction. In those days of much tenderness
and devotion and sacrifice, they felt led of the Lord to set out from the main
mission station and take the gospel to a remote area.
This was a huge step of faith. At the village of N'dolera they were rebuffed by
the chief, who would not let them enter his town for fear of alienating the
local gods. The two couples opted to go half a mile up the slope and build their
own mud huts.
They prayed for a spiritual breakthrough, but there was none. The only contact
with the villagers was a young boy, who was allowed to sell them chickens and
eggs twice a week. Svea Flood-a tiny woman only four feet, eight inches tall
decided that if this was the only African she could talk to, she would try to
lead the boy to Jesus. And in fact, she succeeded.
But there were no other encouragements. Meanwhile, malaria continued to strike
one member of the little band after another. In time the Ericksons decided they
had had enough suffering and left to return to the central mission station.
David and Svea Flood remained near N'dolera to go on alone. Then, of all things,
Svea found herself pregnant in the middle of the primitive wilderness. When the
time came for her to give birth, the village chief softened enough to allow a
midwife to help her. A little girl was born, whom they named Aina.
The delivery, however, was exhausting, and Svea Flood was already weak from
bouts of malaria. The birth process was a heavy blow to her stamina. She lasted
only another seventeen days.
Inside David Flood, something snapped in that moment. He dug a crude grave,
buried his twenty-seven-year-old wife, and then took his children back down the
mountain to the mission station. Giving his newborn daughter to the Ericksons,
he snarled, "I'm going back to Sweden. I've lost my wife, and I obviously can't
take care of this baby. God has ruined my life." With that, he headed for the
port, rejecting not only his calling, but God himself."…
(Eventually the baby landed with some missionaries from the States. They changed
her first name to "Aggie". Aggie grew up in South Dakota and married a young man
named Dewey Hurst. They had two children together and moved to the Seattle area,
where there was a large population of Scandinavians.)
"One day a Swedish religious magazine appeared in her mailbox. She had no idea
who had sent it, and of course she couldn't read the words. But as she turned
the pages, all of a sudden a photo stopped her cold. There in a primitive
setting was a grave with a white cross-and on the cross were the words SVEA
FLOOD.
Aggie jumped in her car and went straight for a college faculty member who, she
knew, could translate the article. "What does this say?" She demanded.
The instructor summarized the story: It was about missionaries who had come to
N'dolera long ago ... the birth of a white baby ... the death of the young
mother ... the one little African boy who had been led to Christ ... and how,
after the whites had all left, the boy had grown up and finally persuaded the
chief to let him build a school in the village.
The article said that gradually he won all his students to Christ ... the
children led their parents to Christ ... even the chief had become a Christian.
Today there were six hundred Christian believers in that one village....
All because of the sacrifice of David and Svea Flood. For the Hursts'
twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, the college presented them with the gift of a
vacation to Sweden. There Aggie sought to find her real father. An old man now,
David Flood had remarried, fathered four more children, and generally dissipated
his life with alcohol. He had recently suffered a stroke. Still bitter, he had
one rule in his family:
"Never mention the name of God-because God took everything from me."
After an emotional reunion with her half brothers and half sister, Aggie brought
up the subject of seeing her father. The others hesitated. "You can talk to
him," they replied, "even though he's very ill now. But you need to know that
whenever he hears the name of God, he flies into a rage." Aggie was not to be
deterred. She walked into the squalid apartment, with liquor bottles everywhere,
and approached the seventy-three-year-old man lying in a rumpled bed. "Papa?"
She said tentatively. He turned and began to cry. "Aina," he said. "I never
meant to give you away." "It's all right, Papa," she replied, taking him gently
in her arms. "God took care of me."
The man instantly stiffened. The tears stopped.
"God forgot all of us. Our lives have been like this because of him." He turned
his face back to the wall.
Aggie stroked his face and then continued, undaunted. "Papa, I've got a little
story to tell you, and it's a true one. You didn't go to Africa in vain. Mama
didn't die in vain. The little boy you won to the Lord grew up to win that whole
village to Jesus Christ. The one seed you planted just kept growing and growing.
Today there are six hundred African people serving the Lord because you were
faithful to the call of God in your life....
"Papa, Jesus loves you. He has never hated you."
The old man turned back to look into his daughter's eyes. His body relaxed. He
began to talk. And by the end of the afternoon, he had come back to the God he
had resented for so many decades.
Over the next few days, father and daughter enjoyed warm moments together. Aggie
and her husband soon had to return to America-and within a few weeks, David
Flood had gone into eternity."
Cymbala, Jim. Fresh Power. Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 2001, p. 115-119.