But God had other plans: He knew what lay under the desert land

Ephesians 3:17 Christ will make his home in your hearts as you trust in him. Your roots will grow down into God’s love and keep you strong.

Hebrews 10:24 Let us think of ways to motivate one another to acts of love and good works.

I (Debbie) was fascinated by the story my Wheaton College classmate Sue Long told in their last newsletter and am excited to share it with you. It coordinates with the “God Most Loving” chapter in Jen Wilkin’s book, In His Image, which calls us to agape love like God’s: holy, infinite, and costly. “For agape, there is no such category as “unlovable” (page 41).

Here’s Sue:

SIM (at that time Sudan Interior Mission; now SIM International) entered Niger in 1924. Terry and I and my brother Jack will return to Niger in December to celebrate this centennial. SIM’s initial work concentrated on trekking and nomadic outreach. After a decade, SIM asked the French government in Niger for property to establish a surgical hospital among the poorest of the poor in the vast rural areas of the Sahara Sahel. Finally, following 15 years of vigorous discussion, the French ceded to SIM what looked like a wasteland on which to build. It seemed a mockery: “You can try, but you won’t succeed.” But God had other plans!

In July 1950, after a year of French study in Paris, Sue’s parents, Dr. Burt and Ruth Long, landed on a desolate stretch of runway, having leapfrogged across the mighty Sahara Desert to this isolated destination. With two young sons in tow, they reached their new home in a small village scalding in the heat of brilliant sunshine. They would add four more children to the family over the next years.

The village was called Galmi, located far from anywhere, with scrubby bushes, hard, stony ground, lonely thorn (acacia) trees upon which camels chewed, no electricity, and limited water. And HOT. Burt and Ruth had agreed to open the hospital in Galmi as a channel for the gospel and a beacon of hope in a seemingly godforsaken place. Thousands of people lived in scattered villages of the Sahel with no access to medical help and no knowledge of a Savior who offers forgiveness of sins and eternal salvation.

Others had come before them. Two houses and a few other buildings, built with rocks, mud, cement, and tin-pan roofs stood ready to receive the first permanent mission workers. Way down the path from the houses stood the completely empty T-shaped hospital, with cement floors and metal shutters over screened windows.

Galmi became an oasis in the desert after a lake of water was discovered under the property in 1980. God knew the value of the French gift!

You can read the rest of the story in A Family Living under the Sahara Sun, by Sue’s mother Ruth Long, available on Amazon.

Debbie: I’ve just ordered the book. Imagine those thirty years of faithful love and service by the Long family before the underground lake was discovered. Sue says her roots grew down deep into Galmi’s hard soil. Even there, she discovered God’s wonderful love, which propelled her and her husband Terry into a lifetime of service in Nigeria.

Does the soil of your heart feel hard? Your roots growing into his love will make you strong.

Blessings by Laura Story