Burkina Faso: Octogenarian Missionary Held Captive for 7 years by Al-Qaeda Terrorists Says God helped him
by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) – An elderly Christian missionary doctor who was abducted and held captive by Al Qaeda-affiliated terrorists in Burkina Faso for seven years has said God alone helped him to survive the ordeal, Christian Today reports. An Australian national, 88-year-old Dr. Ken Elliott was abducted in 2016 and finally released last year.
Elliot was abducted together with his wife Joyeclyn, who was released a few weeks later. The couple founded a hospital in Burkina Faso in 1972 and spent the following decades treating thousands of patients from all over West Africa for little or no money.
“This earned them the respect of the Muslim majority making up their patients and saw them accepted as belonging to their community, rather than outsiders from the West trying to impose their ideas,” Christian Today explained in its report.
“Hence, when they were kidnapped locals of both faiths were outraged.”
When Jocelyn was released, Ken was left to share his captivity with a Romanian fellow hostage, Julian Ghergut. In an exclusive interview with ABC Australia, Ken said: “When I met [Julian] he had been a captive for nine months. ‘How can anyone stand this for nine months?’ I asked myself. I ended up being there for seven years and four months.”
Despite keeping him in brutal conditions amounting to torture, the terrorists’ efforts to turn Ken away from his faith in Christ and convert him to Islam were in vain.
“The Lord has been good to me. There’s no way I was going to dishonor Him by converting to Islam,” he told the ABC. “Or even pretending to convert.”
Asked by the ABC interviewer if he ever felt God had abandoned him, Ken replied: “Never. No. He was always there.”
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