Last month, IMB missionary Katee Sheppard was featured during the Week of Prayer for International Missions. As you learn more about her ministry and continue to pray, please remember the harsh reality of many who have no hope apart from the good news.
Yacouba couldn’t stop the tears from flowing.
He heard there had been an attack on his brother-in-law’s village by a terrorist group. They hadn’t been able to get in touch with him, so he and his wife went to the village to search for her brother.
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Yacouba found the village plundered. To his horror, he and his wife found her brother’s body. His head had been decapitated, but propped back up on the body, facing east toward Mecca, the Muslim holy city.
He couldn’t get the image out of his mind. He closed his eyes, and the scene was once again before him.
When Yacouba and his wife returned home, they couldn’t find their son, Saidou, who was around age six. They searched for several days before they found him, buried, but still alive.
Saidou buried himself under a pile of sand with his head sticking out so he could breathe. He said he was hiding from the terrorists.
Katee Sheppard didn’t make eye contact as she shared this story and other stories over Microsoft Teams as she sat in her car. Sheppard, a missionary with the International Mission Board, facilitates trauma healing workshops in West Africa. Sheppard said she can’t share the stories she’s heard without crying.
She looked up and over to one side and shared how she heard story after story about the women who witnessed the slaughter of their husbands and their worst nightmare becoming a reality when their children fled in fear. Many have not been reunited.
‘Horrific’ stories
“The stories are horrific,” Sheppard’s voice caught, and tears swelled. “They’ve seen their family literally killed in front of their eyes. They’ve lost their homes. They’ve lost whatever food they had. They lost whatever cattle they had. They have no place to live, no means to eat.”
Terrorists often enter villages and kill the men, leaving villages of widows and children. The attack on Yacouba’s brother-in-law’s village was just one such event. Male survivors opt to sleep in trees out of fear of the terrorists returning.
Sheppard is always amazed to hear participants say in trauma healing trainings, “Now we understand.” They state this after they’ve heard the stories of everything Joseph, from the Bible, endured in his life, and that God was still with him in every crisis.
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Some names changed for security.
EDITOR’S NOTE — This story was written by Tessa Sanchez and originally published by the International Mission Board.
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