"Daniel" serves the Lord at an SIM center in East Africa. His oldest daughter’s face is marred beyond imagination, and her hands look as though all her fingers were chopped off. SIM worker Ben Skaggs tells the story:

Daniel spent hours talking about Jesus with his best friend. When his friend came to faith, the father became murderously angry. The new believer escaped to another country, but Daniel’s family paid a high price. One evening they smelled petrol and the roof of their hut burst into a huge fireball. Blazing straw poured down on them. Daniel beat out the flames that engulfed his infant daughter, then ran to the door and found it locked. He cried out to Jesus to save them even as he prepared to die. Suddenly the door flew open and they stumbled out of the smoky hut into the life-giving air. No one was nearby; Daniel calls the escape a miracle.

The daughter’s life was saved at the hospital, but she remained terribly scarred. After a year, one of the attackers, seeing the suffering he had caused, came to Daniel, confessed what he had done, and asked for forgiveness. Daniel gladly forgave him and led him to faith in Christ. The former persecutor is now in Bible school preparing for Christian leadership. (Ben says Jesus had “some of His money in Ben’s pocket,” which he gave to Daniel for medical expenses; later he helped arrange for surgical reconstruction for the daughter.)

Still the question echoes, "Why must they pay so high a price?" The answer might emerge years later, when a healthy church springs to life where the martyr's blood stained the ground.

 A partner in Asia, in response to a written threat, replied, "For us it’s business as usual. We who decided to obey God should consider ourselves dead and they can no longer kill us. The lion who roars looking for those he may devour has actually no more teeth—he was defeated two thousand years ago."