 February 10, 1999
Missionary couple kidnapped
___By Mark Kelly
___SBC International Mission Board
___MORIJA, Lesotho (BP)--While millions of Americans watched the Super Bowl Jan. 31, a missionary couple in the southern African country of Lesotho were robbed at gunpoint and kidnapped by a gang of thieves.
___Gene and Jean Phillips, emeritus Southern Baptist missionaries serving a volunteer term in Morija, Lesotho, were awakened at 2 a.m. Monday (6 p.m. CST Sunday) by five armed men who had
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JEAN PHILLIPS
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GENE PHILLIPS
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___The men demanded money and forced the pair into the back of the couple's four-wheel-drive vehicle, which was parked in front of the house.
___As the kidnappers started the vehicle, they set off its theft alarm. The shriek awakened a neighbor, who looked out to see the vehicle pulling away. When a telephone call to the local police station went unanswered, other phone calls set in motion a chain of prayer that reached all the way back to the United States, including the couple's home congregation, First Baptist Church in Camden, S.C.
___"The chain of prayer started about 3 a.m.," said Wes Gestring, the Phillipses' son-in-law who serves with his wife, Elizabeth, as a Campus Crusade for Christ missionary in the nearby town of Roma. "While you guys were watching the Super Bowl, this was happening to them."
___As the thieves drove the couple into an isolated area in the mountains, they repeatedly threatened to kill them, Gestring said. But at 3 a.m.--just as fellow Christians began praying--the gang decided to leave the couple on the road, alive and unharmed.
___Officials at the Southern Baptist International Mission Board in Richmond, Va., were relieved to hear the couple had been released safely.
___"In similar circumstances in southern Africa, people are commonly killed because they can identify the kidnappers," said Clyde Berkley, associate director of the board's work in southern Africa. "There were a lot of people praying, and there's no doubt God answered those prayers."
___The Phillipses were appointed as missionaries to Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) in 1956 and served through a period of strife and revolution that resulted in the country's independence from the United Kingdom in 1980. They retired in 1996 and began the Lesotho assignment in discipleship and leadership training through the IMB's International Service Corps program in December.
___From 3 a.m. to 6 a.m., while emergency prayer networks spread the news of the kidnapping, the Phillipses wandered through darkened cornfields. As daylight dawned, they found a man who got help for them.
___A couple of hours later, they were safely back in Morija, where police agencies and other missionaries were mobilizing to mount a search.
___"When we heard people had been praying for us much of the night, we understood why we were not killed and why we had such strength to walk all those hours and why we found just the right people to help," said Jean Phillips. "We clung to verses from God's word as we committed ourselves to him, for him to be glorified by our life or our death.
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