Tortured by Fire

Dr. T is a missionary surgeon and author who has served at our hospital for the past 32 years. His wife, an RN, directs the hospital’s nursing school. The following is an adaptation of a recent special edition of their which details the trial by fire of three local Christians and an urgent call to prayer:

Dear Friends,

Today, I wept with my old friend, M, a retired pastor. We wept together as he told me the story about how people from his village, B, poured kerosene on his feet-and the feet of two men from his church-then lit them on fire.

I found M in the operating room this morning, so I put on a cap and mask, sat next to him, and wrote down the details of his ordeal as he described them to me. We talked while one of my surgery residents operated on his feet, cutting off the burned, dead skin, leaving a raw surface.

It will be a month, and will take numerous skin grafts, before my old friend will walk again.

Phantom of The Alliance

The trouble began one night in mid-September (2010) when 20 men and boys, ages 14-30, decided to undergo a spirit worship initiation by drinking a hallucinogenic drug made from the root of an indigenous plant. The next morning, several of the young men claimed that while under the influence of the drug, they had seen a phantom roaming through the village, causing people and children to become ill and die.

One of the group claimed that the phantom came from the local Alliance church.

Someone else said that he had seen a skull in “a deep hole” near a door of the church. This created a storm of alarm, and there was clamoring for the young men to dig it up. So the frenzied group crossed the road to the church and began digging around the front entrance, cutting down a palm tree and digging among its roots.

A Human Skull

When they found nothing, the group began to dig near the church’s side door. After tunneling down about a foot and finding a human skull, they stormed the 30 yards to M’s house, broke down the gate made of roofing tins, and dragged him outside. By this time it was late in the afternoon.

The men demanded that M explain how the skull had gotten where they found it. When he replied that he had no idea, they shouted, “That proves that you did it! Now tell us whose skull it is so we can stop the phantom!”

Bound for Burning

M continued to insist that he was completely innocent. When an elder, J, and an older gentlemen who is a Catholic, M, tried to defend the pastor, the gang tied the hands and feet of all three of men with electrical wire and dragged them across the road. They sat them down in a cleared area, in front of several mud-brick houses where some of the ringleaders lived.

People from both ends of the village gathered to see what would happen. Some young women spoke up, saying that they had dreamed the night before that Pastor M was the person who had called the phantom to the village by burying the skull at the entrance to the church.

At about 8 p.m., one of the young men brought a plastic jerry can filled with kerosene and began sloshing it on the three men. M and the two others shouted with alarm, and some of the people urged the group not to pour the kerosene on their clothes. When they continued to do this, one young man grabbed the kerosene can and ran to the edge of the clearing, saying that he would not allow them to burn the three to death. The gang members threatened to beat the man before retrieving the can; in the end they sloshed kerosene only on the men’s feet, before lighting their feet on fire.

“Lord, Save Us!”

M began to weep as he told the story, and I wept with him. “I cried out as loud as I could, ‘Lord Jesus, save us! Please save us!’” he said. “We were crying and screaming in pain; they told us they would keep doing it until we confessed, but we hadn’t done it!”

For the next hour, the gang of young men and boys poured kerosene on their prisoners’ feet three times and burned them. When they ran out of kerosene they held burning torches to their feet. The three men screamed until they were exhausted.

Eventually, the crowd grew tired of its interrogation, untied the three, went to their homes, and closed their doors. Fearing they might be next, not one person from the Alliance church helped the men get back to their houses.

Meanwhile, M’s wife was crying and praying in their home because she didn’t know where he was. It took her husband an hour to crawl 50 yards across the road and up to his house.

About a week after they were burned, M and J managed to hire a pickup truck to deliver them to the hospital late one night. N had no money to pay the driver, so he was left behind; the other two were hospitalized and received immediate care. Both underwent surgery on their feet the next morning.

Alone

When M told me in the operating room that N was still in their town because he had no money to pay for his medical care, two of our chaplains and I immediately drove the nearly 20 miles through the mountains to the town of B. I found him lying in his tiny wooden house. His wife had died some time ago, so he was alone, lying in bed with flies covering his feet, waiting to die.

N has now had surgery on both of his burned feet and is hospitalized with his two brothers in the faith. It seemed only right that the hospital treat all three of these courageous men for free-it is an honor for us to serve them.

The police were informed of the crime, but said they will wait until the men are healed and discharged from the hospital before carrying out an investigation.

Meanwhile, the Christians in the Miotsogo villages of B and G are fearful of further attacks. The pastors in the town of G, about six miles up the road from B, report that many Christians are afraid and have left the church. Most of the men in both villages are now involved in demon worship.

Since their hospitalization, all three men have undergone multiple operations and skin grafting to their feet.

Until Jesus Comes,

Dr. T

“Please Pray,” Dr. T: “For M, J, and N-they face weeks, and possibly months, of hospitalization and multiple operations to recover the bottoms of their feet with skin.

“Pray also for God’s mercy for the people of the town of B and G. At one time, more than half of the villagers were Christians, but in the decades since their grandparents turned away from the tree root drug and spirit worship to embrace Jesus, two generations have grown up and chosen to return to the old ways.”