GLOBAL VOICES
Faithful Service to a Faithful God Alison Taylor
As Bob and Carol hugged their youngest daughter goodbye, they couldn’t help thinking the same question they had considered over and over again throughout their missions career: Is this really worth it? Sending their children across the continent for school never grew easier, even for the fifth child. But they had no choice—this was the cost of serving the Lord in Zambia. For more than three decades, the Wenningers remained in Africa. Bob worked as a surgeon at Mukinge Hospital, and Carol served as bookkeeper. Both led Bible studies, served with churches in the area, and occasionally entertained government officials. Whenever someone asked Bob if he ever wanted to give up, he answered, “Never more than twice a day.” In reality, despite the challenges for both parents and children, the Wenninger family never actually considered leaving the mission field. They had been called, and they intended to stick it out. Why? What made it worthwhile to face the unknowns of Zambia, the pain of separation from family and friends, and the exhaustion of long, difficult days? It was God’s proven faithfulness in every situation that enabled them to remain faithful to his work. It was November of 1985, and supplies were running out. When a nurse gathered materials for a blood transfusion, she reported that only one handful remained of the transfusion tubing. Worse, the staff had received no indication that new supplies were on their way. Mukinge Hospital had faced near-crises before, lacking necessary supplies, food, staff, or funding. But God had never yet failed to provide what they needed, precisely when they were most desperate. A few days passed, and the supply continued to dwindle. Believers turned to the Lord in prayer, asking for his provision. Finally, just before they ran out altogether, boxes arrived from Australia, full of transfusion tubes. They had been sent weeks ago, before anyone knew they would need them, entirely without the knowledge of the Mukinge staff. God had begun to answer their prayers before they even knew what to pray for. As they restocked the storage closets, they thanked the Lord for his faithfulness. Similar things happened frequently. It seemed to Bob that God was especially concerned with timing. Again and again, supplies ran low, deadlines approached, and there seemed to be no solution in sight. They turned to God in prayer, but as they wondered if this would be the moment when a precarious
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situation became a catastrophe. Then, at the last second, God provided. This amazing, even supernatural provisions encouraged all who saw it, and their faith grew stronger every time. Apart from the hospital’s material needs, the mission field held its own set of dangers. A nurse went to a picnic about a hundred miles away from the village on the Saturday before Easter of 1980. A group of elephants stampeded past, and she tripped as she tried to escape. Unfortunately, she was trampled to death. In April of 1988, a group of missionaries went fishing, and a teenage boy was thrown into the river in a boating accident. His family could only watch in horror as a crocodile swam close, captured the helpless boy, and killed him. Within that same year, the missionary team in Zambia lost three other members to malaria, a heart attack, and a car accident. “Some may wonder whether we are making up the stories of so many fatal losses among missionaries and church leaders in Zambia,” Bob wrote in their monthly prayer letter. In addition to the tragedy within Zambia, the Wenningers encountered losses in their own family. Before she married Bob, Carol lost her first husband, the father of her four oldest children, in a car accident in Panama. The death was shocking and devastating; Carol was left as the single mother of four in an unfamiliar country. Yet the Lord provided for her even then, in part through the friendship of another missionary in the area, Bob Wenninger. Eventually, he married the five of them—Carol and her children. Suffering became celebration, and Carol drew nearer
