Monganga Paul

By Lois Carlson

Subjects: Missions, Religious Missions, Christian martyrs, Evangelical Covenant Church of America, Biography, Missionaries, Church history

Description: Here is the electrifying story of Christian heroism that caught the world’s imagination – the story of the California surgeon who took his family into the steaming Congo, only to be gunned down by rebel Simbas, the “lion men.” The horror of Dr. Paul’s death on a side street in Stanleyville, as rescuers raced toward him, evoked shocked reactions all over the world. The full impact of that event is described in this book by Lois Carlson, Dr. Paul’s wife and helpmate who shared his years of preparation and struggle. Mrs. Carlson traces with moving simplicity and directness the story of the man as he grew and developed. Beginning with his boyhood in California, she tells of the direction of his life, and of the long years of schooling and preparation. Then she describes the struggle for both the Carlsons with the temptation to settle for the comforts of a wealthy suburban medical practice. The Carlsons turned their backs on that life and took their young children with them into the Congo, where they waged a new kind of struggle – to build a life founded not on material comfort but on service to hundreds of thousands in desperate need of the medical and spiritual ministry that the Carlsons conducted. The sights and sounds of daily life in the forgotten corner of the Ubangi plateau – Wasolo - spring from these pages, as do the tales of the real bonds of love that grew between the Carlsons and their African brethren. Finally, in the closing pages of this book, the reader will come to grasp the extraordinary moral force of the quiet heroism of Paul Carlson. In his final days, as thousands about him were losing their balance, he kept an inspiring calm. He went on serving in the jail cells of Stanleyville as he had in the steaming jungles of the Congo – as a witness for Christ, living his faith, and inspiring millions by his example.