by Steve and Sherri Letchford, Kenya
20 June 2007
“Are you sure you understand?” the doctor asked. “Do you really want to follow Jesus?”

The doctor knew that men from "Ahmed’s" country rarely became Christians.

Weeks before, the head nurse in the ICU had chided Ahmed, “How can you not believe in Jesus? Don’t you see how much these Christians love you?”

Raised on Violence

Love wasn't in Ahmed’s vocabulary. Though he was 35 years old, a husband and a father, he had known little of love. And he knew nothing of the loving God that the Christians at this hospital spoke of.

He had grown up in a “closed country”—Jesus’ Gospel was disallowed, and it was violently repressed on a case-by-case basis.

He was raised in a “violent country”—AK 47’s were available for purchase on the street. Semi-automatic weapons were used liberally to settle local matters - just and unjust. Death and anger were the language he had known.

He had grown up in a “closed country”—Jesus’ Gospel was disallowed, and it was violently repressed on a case-by-case basis.

At age 35, Ahmed found himself separated from his family, huddled in a refugee camp on the Kenyan border, with a grotesque ulcerating mass eating away at his face. He kept his face covered 24 hours a day – both to hide his shame and to keep away the swarm of flies that seemed to be irresistibly drawn to the horrible growth on his face.

Alone, unable to eat and wasting away in the refugee camp, he was seemingly forgotten by both man and God.

Love and Hope at Kijabe

In desperation Ahmed accepted a visiting doctor’s offer of help. Carried to Kijabe Hospital, he emerged from surgery with the ugly half of his jaw removed. Surgery followed surgery as the doctors prepared to one-day reconstruct the missing half of his face. Hope began to grow in his heart.

Since Ahmed couldn’t talk, he had plenty of time to look and listen. It amazed him that so many people cared for him. They cleaned his wounds, changed his dressings, and fed him. They knew he had no money. They weren’t from his tribe, family or religion. They didn’t even speak his language. But their touch and attention gave him hope.

As he observed them, he began to understand that God was a God of love. This was not what he learned as a boy, but He could see it in their faces and feel it in their hands. Now, two and a half months after arriving at the hospital, one last surgery revealed that the cancer had returned with a vengeance. Facing death, he was ready to respond to God’s love.

God Made Him Whole

He listened one more time as they told him about Jesus. The doctor asked him, “Are you sure you understand? Do you really want to follow Jesus . . . ?”

“Yes, I am sure,” Ahmed answered.

Three days later his body gave out. He fell asleep, and he left his ‘old’ body with us at the hospital. Ahmed awoke in his Father’s house, with a new face and a new body, free of blemishes. One hundred days in the hospital, and we couldn’t fix his body. But God made him whole.

In the 1960’s, SIM was one of multiple missions working in Ahmed’s country, with almost 100 SIM missionaries working there. Since 1974, Christians have not been tolerated in that country. But God keeps his own windows open. Today, 30% of Kijabe’s inpatients are Ahmed’s countrymen. Like Ahmed, they see, feel, and hear Jesus’ good news daily. They cannot escape it in the faces, hands and words of the Kenyan church at Kijabe.