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 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 to the Lord as she saw him redeem her tragic circumstances. Her resolve to continue to serve as a career missionary only grew stronger. Bob and Carol responded to the Lord’s calling and moved to Zambia, eagerly awaiting the birth of their first child. Then tragedy struck again. Bob and Carol lost their baby, without any medical explanation for the death. As they cried in each other’s arms, they prayed, asking God why he had taken their child from them. The tragic events in their lives appeared meaningless and unfair. Why would God do this? Carol wondered.

A few years later, God again redeemed her suffering for good, and she finally understood why he had allowed such sorrow in her life. The village had a mortuary near the hospital, and according to Zambian custom, if someone died, those close to the family would gather around and wail loudly. Whenever she heard the wailing, Carol picked up her Bible and hymn book and walked over to the mortuary to sit with them. If a mother mourned the loss of a child, Carol could put her arms around the woman and say, “I know.” And the grieving mother believed her, because everyone knew about the baby Carol had lost only a few years ago.

The Wenningers also saw this lived out in other missionaries. Those who faced significant losses were able to minister in deeper ways than they could have without the suffering they endured. They modeled Paul’s words to the Corinthians, “that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God” (2 Cor. 1:4). Furthermore, the trials they endured showed that the servants of God were no different from locals who lost friends and family members to diseases, injuries, or accidents. Those experiences opened the doors to wonderful conversations about God’s love with those who most needed to hear it.

Because of the Lord’s faithfulness, both in provision and in redeeming tragic events for good use, the Wenningers trusted God enough to obey his call for their ministry. For 32 years, including brief periods of furlough in the States, the Wenningers served faithfully. There were many advantages to staying in Zambia for so long. A short-term trip could never be as impactful as a long-term career. This was partly because the local residents showed more interest in the missionaries who made it clear they had no intention of leaving.

One morning, Carol went to visit some friends in the village. “I see you’ve brought in a new doctor,” they said. “How long is he staying?”

“Two weeks,” Carol answered.

The village residents looked silently at each other for a moment, then at Carol, and said, “He doesn’t have anything to say.” But those same villagers listened when Carol and Bob talked to them about Jesus. They saw the daily lives of these missionaries—their humility, service and love—and they knew that if their message was important enough to be worth dedicating a lifetime to share, it must be worth hearing. And so, they listened, and the Lord spoke to many through Bob and Carol.

Staying for so long also gave the Wenningers the opportunity to see visible evidence that their work bore fruit. Near the beginning of their time at Mukinge Hospital, a young man named Alan Sondashi came in with a large tumor on his jaw, convinced he would die. Bob and the other doctors managed to remove the tumor, and they used a piece of Alan’s rib to replace the missing portion of his jaw. During his stay at the hospital, Alan was introduced to Christ, and he became a believer. Not only did he have a new jaw, but also a new heart. Sondashi went into Bible school after that and became a chaplain, then eventually a church planter and pastor. Even 40 years later, he was still preaching the gospel. The Wenningers were thrilled to see the transformation from a frightened teenager to a confident church leader.

After 32 years of faithful service together in Zambia, Bob and Carol retired, returning to the United States. After sitting down with them to listen to their stories, however, I could tell that the effects of their ministry are far from over. In addition to Alan Sondashi, other patients whose lives Bob had saved—or whose eyes he had healed—became believers or even missionaries, sharing the gospel with countless others. One Christian nurse who had trained at Mukinge Hospital took a stand against abortion that cost her her job, providing a shocking testimony to others who knew how valuable employment was in a place like Zambia. Bob and Carol’s daughter Becky and her husband, Bob, became missionaries in Bulgaria, sharing in the legacy of the global mission for Christ.

Bob and Carol’s stories of tragedy and danger amazed me. The trials they faced were certainly more serious and numerous than the average Christian in America, so I was shocked when Carol said, “Being a missionary can be lots of fun. Sometimes I’m afraid we don’t state things clearly enough for young people to realize that if God’s calling you somewhere and you don’t go, you’re missing out!” Even after giving up basic comforts and enduring heartbreaking loss, Carol believed firmly that her career was marked by blessing more than sacrifice, by adventure more than pain. If the question of missions is, Is it worth it? the answer is obvious. The rich lives and fruitful ministry of Bob and Carol Wenninger are a wonderful testimony that a life of service, even to the extreme of the mission field in Zambia, is more than worth it, because of the Lord’s unfailing faithfulness. In every case of material need or emotional trauma, the Lord provided, proving his mercy and sovereignty. For Bob and Carol, constant dependence on the Lord was not a worry, but an adventure, and it made their service to Christ as fulfilling as any career could ever be.