Karen:     This visit, David and I are taking you back in time some 36 years to the Chapel of the Air interview. My sister Valerie Bell did with missionary doctor Helen Roseveare.

David:     36 years, it’s a long time ago. Back then Karen, we characterized our daily radio visits as an insistent call to significant Christianity. I like it.

Karen:     Yeah, not a bad model. Yeah.

Intro:      Welcome to the Before We Go Podcast featuring Dr. David Mains and his wife noted author Karen Mains. Here’s David and Karen Mains.

David:     Dr. Helen Roseveare died in December of 2016. She was truly a remarkable believer as you will soon hear. But Karen, let’s also update people on your sister Valerie Bell who’s doing the interviewing of these programs. I believe many listeners will remember Valerie and the parts she played on the broadcast.

Karen:     Valerie and her husband Steve.

David:     Sure.

Karen:     Well, I’m proud of my sister. She’s just in her early 70s and she has been made the CEO of Awana International Ministry. She was on the board, and they needed someone to step in, in an interim position and she’s done such a bang-up job that they’ve asked her to stay on, which I just think is great. We, Burton women, just keep on plugging.

David:     It’s a huge responsibility. The Awana is big here in the States, but she’s in charge of the international.

Karen:     And I think it’s actually bigger internationally than it is here at home.

David:     Yeah. It’s absolutely amazing. Well, thank you for the update.

I believe testimonies from believers who lived their lives well, even though it wasn’t easy to do so are always helpful and inspiring to hear. And that’s what these interviews are. And friend, I sense these programs from the past could be exactly what some of you listening right now will benefit from. Let’s face it, we’re living in stressful times and our future could be very difficult ahead. So, listen very closely.

Dr. Helen Roseveare was a missionary in the Congo, now Zaire, when the Simba rebellion erupted in 1964. Captured and cruelly beaten by a rebel soldier, she was a prisoner for five months and saw several colleagues murdered. Eventually rescued by foreign mercenary troops, Dr. Helen later returned to Zaire to help restore medical services and to aid in establishing a new intermission medical center.

This is David Mains welcoming you, my good friend, and also introducing Valerie Bell, Steve’s wife. You’ve heard Valerie before, but not as an interviewer. I think you’ll find that she does very well in the role and continues the chapel tradition of seeing that an insistent call to significant Christianity is voiced.

Valerie:    Several weeks ago, I attended a conference where Dr. Helen Roseveare was speaking. I was deeply touched by her story. Today I’m pleased to have her as our special guest.

Dr. Roseveare, people probably know you best through your books. Share what the title “He Gave Us A Valley” means.

Helen:     Well, my first book, “Give Me This Mountain,” was really an objection to that. That I always wanted a mountaintop experience, but God had to teach me that the work that we do for him is usually down in the valleys where people live. And when I went back after the rebellion in the 1960s in Africa, we had to start all over again to rebuild everything that had been destroyed, and it really was for me a valley experience.

Valerie:    That was the Simba rebellion. Now some of our people won’t remember that. Would you explain it briefly for us?

Helen:     In 1960, many of the countries in Africa got their independence from colonial powers, and many of them were very ill-equipped for that moment. And Congo, as it then was, was one of those that got into great difficulties. And eventually in 1964, four years after independence, there was a civil war. And one political party fought the other political party for power.

The Civil War, Black vs. Black, and the guerrilla soldiers were called the Simbas, which is just Swahili for lions, and they fought to take over the country from the corrupt government.

Valerie:    How old were you at this time?

Helen:     Oh, dear me. 39.

Valerie:    Now how did this uprising affect mission work, and how did it affect Helen Roseveare personally?

Helen:     Well, it was devastating in some ways. I mean, the outward, we were suddenly abruptly taken over by guerrilla soldiers. From the day they walked into my village, I did nothing after that except with two armed soldiers, one on either side of me day and night. So that they allowed me to go into church in the morning. I preached the gospel, but always with two guerrilla soldiers standing either side of me. I went on running the hospital and did operations still with guerrilla soldiers, so that our ordinary straightforward life ceased completely. There was nothing ordinary left. And we just went on living for the Lord Jesus, but under just totally different circumstances. And certainly as far as I personally was concerned, I learned to live with fear. Fear is a very dominant, very violent, physical factor that all the time you never knew when these wicked and evil men would slug you, kick you, evilly treat you. You didn’t know what lay ahead. Every moment was fraught with danger.

Valerie:    So, you lost your rights to privacy and comfort. Did you suffer personally during this time?

Helen:     Yes. During the first 10 weeks, it was privacy we lost, and they were always with us. We lost our possessions. They stole everything. And then I was taken captive by them personally as the first white woman to be taken by these men and very savagely treated, brutally kicked, and beaten up. I had broken nose, broken jaw, broken ribs, eyes in a very bad condition. And they violated as we were raped. They did everything you can think of. It was just a horrific and savage ordeal.

And from then on, when we were taken into deeper and deeper captivity from one prison to another, you just lived with this the whole time nobody ever knew when these men would come in again and drag somebody out.

Valerie:    Listening to your story and some of these offing, do you ever feel that God violated your willingness to serve him?

Helen:     No, I never doubted God at all. It never into my mind to doubt God. I never questioned his sovereignty. I was his servant, and he is right, and I had no rights. I’d accepted that before. There was a moment in that night when I just felt that God had kind of deserted me, left me to it alone. And I suppose if I’d prayed any prayer, I’d have prayed “My God, my God, why has that forsaken me?” And yet even in thinking like that, I knew instinctively that I was wrong to think like that. And immediately there was the overwhelming consciousness of God’s presence and that he was there, he was in charge, he did know what he was doing.

And it was almost as though he said to me, “They’re not beating you. These are not your sufferings. These are my sufferings.” He said, “All I’m asking of you is the loan of your body.” And with this came a tremendous sense. I can only word it is really of privilege that Almighty God had stooped to offer us the privilege of suffering in some little way with him in the edge of the fellowship of his sufferings.

And to me it just became an overwhelming factor that Almighty God trusted us enough to allow us to share in something that he wasn’t actually explaining. He actually gave me during that night another phrase. At the time, he didn’t speak to me in words. I didn’t hear a voice. He was like a concept. But over the years I’ve had to look back and ask him to put the concept into words for me. And really what he said to me that night was, “Can you thank me not for the evil?” God never ever asks us to thank him for evil. You only thank someone for what they give you. And God cannot give evil. That’s against his nature.

No, I don’t think God asks us to thank him for evil. What he asked me to do was he said, “Can you thank me for trusting you with this experience even if I never tell you why?”

I’ll just repeat that because it’s different from the way a lot of people put it, I think, that “Can you thank me for trusting you with this experience even if I never tell you why?” And I know that in that night, not the tomorrow of it, not looking back on it. Immediately, I was able to stretch and say, “God, I don’t understand you. I cannot see how this could ever benefit anybody.”

So, as I could see, I was going to be killed. And I couldn’t see any point in it. I said, “God, if this is in your plan and purpose, yes. I can thank you for trusting me with this, even if you never tell me why.” And that became for us a sort of, not a catchphrase by any manner of means, but it became a deep, deep truth that God was in charge and we didn’t have to be scared. We didn’t have to be afraid of it. We could trust him in whatever came.

Valerie:    As a younger woman, if you had anticipated having to experience some of these things, did you feel capable of handling them?

Helen:     I know that before the rebellion, I did independence. When we heard during the independence uprisings that a Baptist missionary down at the capital of our country in Kinshasa had been raped by mutinizing soldiers. I know at that time that most of the missionary personnel, well, all the whites in my mission is everybody, all the white women got out of the country. There’s a great exodus they fled.

And I remember talking over with two senior missionaries with me, three of us had stayed there and I said, “Look, I need to look at this thing and I need someone to talk it over with me. Why do we react like this to the word rape? Why does this word make us all run? Why are we more scared of that than any other sin? It’s only sin when all is said and done and we’re being sinned against.”

So, in a sense we had, coldly and calmly looked at the word, looked at what was involved in the situation. And I think at that time I had said to God, “God, this should ever be part of your program. I am your servant. I’m willing for anything you choose if it comes from your hands.”

So, in a way we had previously geared our minds to accept that God had the right to demand anything of us that fitted his program.

Valerie:    But the actual resolve of these emotions and this thought process came in the midst right in the center of your experience.

Helen:     Yes.

Valerie:    You became well known Dr. Roseveare as a result of your books. Would you have felt the same about God had you remained an unknown missionary?

Helen:     I honestly don’t think the question, I just can’t touch that question. It has no meaning to me. My love for God and whether I’m known or unknown is utterly out of the question. When I first knew that Jesus Christ, God’s Son had died for me, all I can say is I fell in love with Jesus then and I never ever felt anything different. He loves me and I love him. I couldn’t care less in one sense what other people think or don’t think and what they know or don’t know. That has absolutely nothing to do with God’s love for me.

Valerie:    I thought you might say that. That’s why I asked that question. Looking back on your life, what lessons did you learn during those years?

Helen:     I think the first and foremost lesson we learned was that God is always present tense. When he gave us his name in Exodus chapter 3 to Moses, he said, “I am, I am.” That his name was “I am.” He’s the ever-present God. He’s not I will be. He’s not I was. When he says, “My grace is sufficient,” he means it. It’s not my grace will be sufficient for tomorrow’s problems. It’s not my grace was sufficient for yesterday’s problems. It’s entirely my grace is sufficient for your immediate present tense needs.

I think we learned to live in that total present tense concept of God that he was always present tense with us. And that instant always his grace was sufficient. Before the rebellion, if anybody had ever asked me if I would ever be a martyr, I’d have said most certainly not. I’m not built in that mold. But when the moment came, we stood before a firing squad. We were actually singing the praises of Jesus. We suddenly knew the fantastic joy we were going out to be with the Lord. And he just swept fear out of the way. We knew we were in his purposes. And this present tenseness of his grace is something intensely real to me, along with what I’ve just said, that we can always thank God for trusting us with each experience, even if he doesn’t explain to us the why.

Valerie:    Are these lessons unique to missionaries? Are they truths God is trying to get all of us to understand?

Helen:     I’m sure it’s the latter. Maybe because I was stubborn and wouldn’t have learned them in Britain. He took me out to Africa to learn them in Africa. Their lessons we’ve got to learn is simply part of walking with Jesus. And he said to every single one of us, he wants us walking in the light where he is in the light. And it’s part of that wonderful fellowship that he offers to every born again Christian to walk with him. And this is his whole program for every Christian.

Valerie:    How would Helen Roseveare be different today had she shipped home before the uprising?

Helen:     Again, quite honestly, I don’t ask those sort of questions, because you can’t talk about ifs when you’re talking about God. You have to take it as it is. And it doesn’t really make sense to say that. If God is trying to do something in a person, God’s going to go on and on until He’s done it. If he didn’t do it one way, he’ll do it another way. He knows what he’s trying to make of us. He wants to make each one of us more like Jesus and then make us available to feed that on to others.

What it says in 2 Corinthians chapter 1, with the comfort where we have been comforted, we go out to comfort one another. And he’s going to teach us the lessons that have to be learned whatever means he takes to do it.

Valerie:    Let’s go back in time. It’s 1964. You’re a prisoner. Where are you? Who’s holding you and what’s happening?

Helen:     We were taken prisoners by guerrilla soldiers in the Civil War of what was then Belgian Congo became the Republic of Congo. Just a fight between two political parties. And we were not held prisoners because we were missionaries. We were held prisoners because we were white. We were hostages. It was convenient to them to have somebody with whom to barter for what they wanted.

There were quite a large number. I mean, there were sort of two or three thousand white people taken captive at that time in the northeast of what is today Zaire.

Valerie:    Now you were rescued. How did this come about?

Helen:     Well, we’d been held for five months, been moved from one prison to another. And then in the last three days, actually on Christmas Day itself, a group of us were moved out into a small house way out in forest land. And we suffered a terrible three days of someone described it as hell on earth. It was very, very vicious and frightening. And suddenly we began hearing different noises, far distant noises. We didn’t know what they meant. We didn’t know what was going to happen.

And then we heard approaching us what appeared to be gun firing. The rebels drove us back into a small inner room in the house we were held in. We were locked in. And then in great drama very rapidly, mercenary soldiers, 25 soldier boys, took over the village where we were held captive. There was tremendous fighting. There was bloodshed everywhere. And we were just swept into the trucks and driven off into safety. And it was so fast and so dramatic you really haven’t time to really know just what did happen. And that day those 25 soldier boys rescued about 130 white people from different places where we were held captive and rushed us back to a center that they had by then made safe for us.

Valerie:    And then what happened?

Helen:     Well, the Americans actually sent up a big transport plane for us the next day into the interior of the forest land. We were flown down to Kinshasa and the folk were terribly good to us. We were clothed. We were fed, put on a KLM flight back to Amsterdam in Holland. And then a small flight took us over to Heathrow, London where we were met by a barrage of television cameras, reporters and all such like.

Valerie:    And when the reporters met you and interviewed you, they asked you a question. And how did you respond?

Helen:     Yes, I get very annoyed with reporters as you doubt as I’ve heard me say before. They asked me the sort of question they always ask everybody, “Will you go back?”

I’m one of those types of my feet on the ground and the Simba rebel soldiers, Simba means lions. And I just said rather caustically to them “You don’t get rescued out of the lion’s den at lunchtime and offer yourself back for dessert.” I must confess my fellow missionaries wished I hadn’t answered like that. This is the headlines of all the newspapers the next day.

Valerie:    And yet you did return.

Helen:     Yes, I think for me part of that answer actually comes in what I was saying yesterday that God’s grace is always present tense. When I was in the rebellion God’s grace was sufficient. When we came out of it even the very day, we were rescued out of it, looking back on it I knew I couldn’t go through it again. That’s where His grace is not sufficient for yesterday. It’s always present tense.

Well, then when the way opened up for us to go back and we began getting letters from our Africans telling of the terrible slaughter, the destruction, and the sudden realization they wanted us back. There’s a job to be done. There was needs there. Suddenly overwhelmingly I don’t honestly think we really prayed about it. We just knew overwhelmingly we had to go back and help our African friends to start again.

Valerie:    That’s amazing part of your story. Is there a book about this time period or maybe you could just straighten us out about your books?

Helen:     Well yes, the first book I wrote “Give Me This Mountain” was written during that period just after I’d been rescued. So, it ends on the note of the rebellion and our rescue.

And then the next book I wrote “He Gave Us a Valley” takes it up from then it starts with that introduction of what happened in the rebellion and the thought processes we went through as to whether we would or would not go back when the door opened up. And then some of what matters when we got back kind of it, didn’t look quite the same as we expected. And when I got back to Africa the overwhelming suffering of a people who had lost absolutely everything and we were not declared a disaster area. Nobody flew in lots of food, stuff and clothing for us. And the sheer overwhelming sense of nothingness everywhere. No food. No medicines for the hospital. No equipment. No, we’d no access to cut down trees to build new houses. You really had to start from scratch. So, the second book He Gave Us A Valley tries to deal with that era.

Valerie:    You actually helped build the hospital with your hands during this time, isn’t that, right?

Helen:     Well, I had the privilege of working with a team of Africans and training them how you do bricklaying. I learned from a book how you make bricks and burn bricks and put bricks on bricks. To me, actually, that was quite a happy hobby. As a doctor, in all my time I spent with sick people and all the time I had the responsibility of life and death. So, to go out for an hour and work with the builders and teach them how to put a wall up straight was relaxation to me and I enjoyed that part.

Valerie:    I see a pattern in your life of denial to self-interest. Is this process easier for you now? Is this something we become more adept at as we get practice?

Helen:     I don’t know. I think that personally, the longer I live, the more convinced I am of what Paul said that in me there dwelleth no good thing. I know myself too well. The longer I live, the more I know myself. And I know how easily I fail and how easily my reactions are wrong ones and how quickly selfish I am and how quick I am to jump in with self-justification. And I come to long more and more as I go on with the law that it should be true what Paul said, that the old I, “I am crucified with Christ. Nevertheless, I live yet not I, but Christ liveth in me.” And I just have an ever-growing hunger that that would be true in fact and not merely in theory. Whether it grows easier, I think the hunger for it grows easier perhaps as you get more accustomed to realizing it and you cease to fight with the fact that in you there’s nothing good. Goodness is all in Jesus.

Valerie:    Let me rephrase this another way as you look back on your life. Have there been benefits to serving Christ and denying yourself?

Helen:     To me there’s something in the question that makes me react because I have a deep inside horror at the attitude that’s becoming terribly prevalent in the Christian church today that we look for benefits. The very thought of it makes me feel wrong. The Lord Jesus Christ, the very Son of our Almighty God, died on the cross to save me from sin. I don’t look for any other benefit than the fantastic fact that my sins are forgiven. That I have redemption; that I have pardon; that by His grace I have fellowship with Jesus. And that anything else in the Christian, I should give me benefit.

To me, this is the frightening thing of today’s stress in the Christian world is that when we’re saved we get something for it. Because this is the world’s attitude. The world says “What do I get out of it?” God’s attitude is what can I give into it? God’s love is the world that He gave, not He got. And I think more and more as we get gripped by the fact that Jesus wants to indwell us, then his mind in us and his whole self-giving in us, we want to give in. We want to think in terms of what do I get. The word benefit simply doesn’t fit a Christian’s vocabulary.

Valerie:    Those were the very benefits I was trying to get to: joy, peace and walking with Christ. Your basic message that I hear you proclaiming Dr. Roseveare, how popular do you think it will be with today’s contemporary Christians?

Helen:     I think a lot of people are afraid of it. And I think basically it is not popular. And yet I find with the student world a tremendous reception that I think a lot of folks have begun to see that to talk in terms of self-love and self-esteem and self-image, that they’re beginning to realize that this just hasn’t got a biblical basis to it. And somewhere along the line God’s got something much higher for us, much greater for us. And people are hungry to get into this real relationship which basically demands what I’ve always called the crossed out I, life. Saying to God, “God, I really don’t want it to be me, I want it to be you. I want you living in me and you reacting to situations.” And I just find that this is something used to go on with all the time every single day, asking God to take over the indwelling of your life and let it be Him and not yourself. And I know it’s not popular to the eye inside of me. No, I want it. It’s against the ego. Telling the ego that I’m no use but Christ in me could be.

Valerie:    How does a person go about crossing out that eye? What are the steps to follow in order to do that?

Helen:     Well, I remember an African pastor speaking to me and he said once to me, he said, “Helen, you know what’s wrong with you? We can see so much Helen, we cannot see Jesus.”

And then with his heel in the dirt ground, he drew a large capital I. He said, I think you know that person. I dominates you, me, my, mine, self. Everything reflects to you. And he gave me various illustrations which were very painful to me to accept from him. And then very lovingly he said to me, “I see you drink a lot of coffee, Helen.” He said, “Every time you receive a cup of coffee, you stand with it in your hands waiting for it to get cold enough to drink.” He said, “May I suggest you pray a short prayer every time you wait for a cup of coffee to get cold enough to drink.”

And as he said the words of the prayer, he did it with his foot in the dirt ground. He said, “Just pray, please God, cross out the I.” And he did it with his foot in the ground and there in front of me was the cross. And he said, “That’s all it means. When Jesus says, ‘Deny yourself, take up your cross.’” And I find that this is to me a tremendous helpful attitude that several times a day, saying, “Please God, cross out the I.”

Valerie:    How long ago did that happen and for how long have you been doing this?

Helen:     It’s about 27 years ago that he spoke to me like that, and I still try as the Lord enables me. Probably several times a day to keep to that practice. “Please God, cross out the I.”

Valerie:    Dr. Roseveare, you seem almost bigger than life to many of us, nearly a modern-day saint.

Helen:     Horrors.

Valerie:    But before the highlight of meeting with you again today, I spent time folding socks from the laundry basket and wiping jelly from the kitchen countertops. How do I successfully exalt Christ and deny self in such a setting?

Helen:     Well, before I came on this tour to the States, I was living at home with a girlfriend and her mother, and I spent most of my time either doing the shopping or cooking meals or washing dishes. In fact, washing dishes, I had to learn quite a lot. As a doctor, I’ve led a strange sort of a life where I very rarely had to wash dishes. And I found I could wash dishes to please the Lord Jesus. And I found I quite enjoyed having a pile of plates, a pile of sauces, a pile of cups looking clean. And then I put him back on the shelves like that. My girlfriend’s mother said, “I don’t like it like that Helen. I like plates, saucer cup, plates, saucer cup, plates, saucer cup.”

And I thought that was stupid. I thought I’d waste the time and waste the space. And God had to say to me, “Who you’re doing it for?”

And then I found I didn’t mind putting them back in the way that mother liked to see them because it was pleasing to the Lord Jesus that I wanted to please her. And I found it very simple to put worship into the context of household work.

Valerie:    That’s great. Some of our people would just love to be able to do household work. Maybe they’re suffering from an illness, or they’ve been in an accident of some kind. Is there a relationship between self-denial and participating in Christ’s sufferings?

Helen:     I think when we talk of participating in Christ’s sufferings, you have to be very careful because sometimes when you’ve got a companion you have to live with, you don’t get on with them very well and you have to have your own thoughts with each other. You think your past is fearing Christ’s suffering whereas actual fact is just your own self in the way and you’re not really, it isn’t Christ’s suffering at all. You’re making it yourself. I think insofar as we really long that our lives should reflect the Lord Jesus to those around us, we have one heart longing that it should be Christ living in us. And him reacting to circumstances and him reacting to people, not ourselves. That wherever you are Christ indwells you and he has a purpose and a point. And he’s going to want to. In fact, I’ve often said to Christians, “Are you willing to become sick if there’s a patient sick in bed seven of ward four?” And the Lord says to you, “I want to make you sick to put you in bed six of ward four because somebody needs to talk to the patient in bed seven. Would you be willing?”

Why not? It’s all part of serving Christ and being willing to put wherever he wants to reflect him to the people around you.   

Valerie:    Now suppose we find ourselves sick in a hospital ward like you’ve suggested. How do we handle this? I’ve heard people suggest we should thank God for these illnesses and this type of thing. Do you agree with this?

Helen:     There’s a yes and a no. You don’t thank Christ for evil things. In the scriptures it tells us we’re to thank God in all circumstances. The only time it says for, the context definitely speaks about for our salvation, our redemption through the blood of Jesus. But it’s in.

I heard a little lady in Australia actually came to speak to me and she said that four months before her two-and-a-half-year-old son had been drowned in the family swimming pool. And I know in me I just tightened up. I could have wept. I just put an arm around. I just could feel all her pain. And then she said to me, “My Christian friends told me to praise the Lord.” And I personally felt a wave of anger. I just felt my heavenly Father would never speak like that.

And then she went on and she said, “When I could not praise the Lord, they said to me, there must be sin in your life.” And I just turned to God inside my heart. I said “God quick please give me words. What am I to say right now?” I hadn’t time to think it through or pray it through. I just needed an immediate answer. And I looked back to that night when I myself has suffered at the hands of rebel soldiers in the Congo uprising of the 60s. I said, “God, what did you say to me that night so that I can share that with Val?” And his phrase to me simply was “Can you thank me for trusting you with this situation even if I don’t tell you why?”

And that’s where I found peace that I can thank him for trusting me with the situation. He didn’t make the situation. Situations, evil. Situations out of the evil world we live in. But God allows it to come into our life. He could stop it. He’s all-powerfully sovereign. But when he allows these things to come into our life, it is because he wants to work through it. To someone else it’s good.

Maybe you just let me explain a little bit what I meant by this. I illustrated it at that little lady Valerie in Australia. I told her that that night in Africa I suffered at the hands of rebel soldiers, rape. Now, God never sent rape. God never asked me to thank him for being raped. But he did ask me to thank him for trusting me with the situation. Ten years later, I was speaking to a university meeting over here in the United States. During the course of the meeting on a particular subject I’ve been given to speak on, God prompt me and said, “Would you tell them of that night in the rebellion?”

I hesitated. Up till then, I’d never spoken in public about rape. And yet God seemed to push it upon me. “I want you to tell them of that night.”

So, very briefly I told them. And I told them of this phrase God said to me. “Can you thank me for trusting you with this even if I never tell you why?”

I then went on with my message. I must confess I saw it once how exactly this did illustrate the point I was trying to make in the talk I was giving. At the end of the talk, I went to the back shook hands with people. And I went down to get my Bible. and there were two girls sitting in the auditorium. The older girl, a university student, came to me and said “Could you please speak to my sister? Five weeks ago. She was raped. Nobody’s been able to help her. The pastor, the doctor, her family. None of us can get through to her. For five weeks, she has not spoken a word to anyone.”

I turned. Looked at the younger girl in her early teens. She looked at me she began to come towards me. We ran at each other. She threw around her arms on my neck. We sat down and we wept, and we wept together. And then she burst out and she talked. She talked about two solid hours poured everything out. And at the end she said, “Nobody ever told me that I could thank him for trusting me with this even if he never told me why.”

Now that night, when I went to bed, I could look back and say, “God you didn’t have to tell me why, but thank you.” I believe that’s the way he can use anything if we can trust him. He has a why even if he doesn’t tell it to us. And he just asks us to trust him for the things that come into our lives.

Valerie:    That clarifies things so well. I know recently you’ve had a struggle with cancer. Would you mind giving us an update on that?

Helen:     Yes, I had surgery seven years ago now for a malignant breast cancer. And a lot of you look shocked and horrified and all the rest. But God literally said to me “Do you mind? It’s only body.” And at first, I was stunned. At first, I felt I said, “God, I mind a lot.”

But as I looked at it, I thought “Well, it’s true. It is only body. Okay, God.” And again, He said, “Can you trust me?” I said, “Sure I can trust you.”

And after when I went to follow-up clinics, I began to understand what he meant. In a follow-up clinic, every woman in the room I went on a Thursday morning, went nine o’clock for blood testing and X-rays and scanning and things, then we used to wait for a couple of hours for the surgeon to come. And I realized that every woman in that room was wrapped up with fear. We’d all had the same operation. We all knew that possibly seven out of ten of us were going to die. And we didn’t know which ones. And there was one lovely little woman of 38 with two beautiful children. Her husband had just left her. And she was wrapped up with fear. “Who will look after my children when I die.” Now, if the hospital chaplain had come into that room and talked to them about Jesus, would they have listened? I’ll tell you because I’ve been there the answers is “No.” We would have heard him, but we don’t listen. We simply say “What does he know about it?”

But if I drew alongside a woman, said, “Can I share with you why I’m not afraid?” She looks up through tears and says “Do.” I start talking to her. A little group start listening. In a few minutes the whole room was listening why because I was one of them. And they would listen to me because they knew I have had the same operation. That’s what it’s all about. God just says “I needed someone to reach that group. Do you mind being the guinea pig if you like? Do you mind? It’s only body. I need to reach these people with the gospel.”

And again, you can say “Thank you God for trusting me with this even if you don’t tell me why.”

Valerie:    I know you’re going through another personal struggle. Would you feel open to share about your adopted daughter?

Helen:     Yes. This is one of the stories where I don’t know the end of the story. I adopted a little girl 30 years ago this March. She was dumped on my veranda out in Africa. Phoebe grew up and I poured everything I had on her. All my love. All her mother’s love. I brought up to know and love the Lord Jesus. Then the rebellion came. We were separated. We both went through much suffering. When I got back after the rebellion, there was a bitterness in her heart. She was a little 12-year-old and she felt that in her child’s logic I had chosen to be rescued and to leave her behind. And she couldn’t take it. She was bitter against me that I, her mother, had not taken her with me when I was rescued.

To try to win that child back was a long hard struggle. For two years, and then when she’s in her mid-teens, the headmaster of the school where she went came to see me. Told me that my daughter was on drugs. And it broke my heart. I had helped many other parents to face up to the problem of what you do when your kids are on drugs. I had a club for kids who were on drugs trying to help them to get free of drugs. But always when they went home at the end of the day, it was their problem. The problem went with them. But now it was my problem. It was in my home. And Phoebe and I walked a long and bitter path together. She became pregnant. We didn’t know who the father was. I saw her through that. I think we got her off drugs eventually.

Eventually, she married the father of her child. She had two other children. But she was embittered against God. She was embittered against me. And then suddenly she just walked out on us all. Walked out on her children. Walked out on her husband. Walked out on me. And since then, for the last 11 years, she’s lived as a downtown harlot. In all the wickedness and horror of downtown situation and all I can do as a mother is break my heart for her and pray for her. And all right, I can’t thank God at all my kids in that sort of situation. But somewhere on the line I stretched through and say, “God, I don’t understand. I don’t understand. It’s all right when it’s me that’s suffering. But when it’s my child suffering, it’s even harder. But there is a place where you can stretch through and say, “God, I don’t understand. I don’t know where the end of this is going to be. But I’ve got to thank you for trusting me with this too even though I can’t see the point and can’t see the reason. But God I’ve got no peace unless I can stretch through and say thank you God for trusting me with this sorrow too.”

Sometimes, I’m not willing to add the last bit even if you don’t tell me why I’m so desperate that he will ultimately tell me why and bring my youngster back to himself.

Karen:     David after these visit with Dr. Helen Roseveare here, I’m wondering what your takeaway is.

David:      Well, I have a lot of takeaways. I like her honesty. She doesn’t…

Karen:      …glamorize or she doesn’t have a need to put herself or yeah.

David:      What she says is what the facts are.

Karen:      Good and bad. Yeah.

David:     That’s unusual for today. People are very careful in what they say and then twist it some ways. You just get this great feeling of comfort. She’s telling me as it is. So obvious her focus on Jesus. Everything in life is brought back to, I’m his servant. Unfortunate to be, he’s a wonderful master.

She almost sounds outdated. You don’t hear people talk that way. But I’m going to stop and I’m not going to ask you what your takeaway is because I want people to wrestle with this. You’ve heard from an outstanding believer who went through just incredibly difficult experiences, stayed true to the Lord. What does this say to you? Process it pretend Karen ask you instead of asking me. All right?

Outgo:     You’ve been listening to the Before We Go podcast. And if you would like to write to us, please send us an email at the following address,  hosts@beforewego.show. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, please remember to rate, review, and share on whatever platform you listen. This podcast is copyright 2020 by Mainstay Ministries, Post Office Box 30, Wheaton, Illinois, 60187.