A Former Missionary Finds God

A Former Missionary Finds God

By Tobin Crenshaw

David Flood and Aggie Hurst's story of redemption is a picture of unending grace that has captured hearts for decades. In the early 1900's David and Svea Flood entered the mission field in Africa. Another missionary couple joined them. After little success at reaching the people around them, the other missionary couple gave up and returned home. The only contact the Flood's had was with a little boy who sold fruit.

Svea Flood gave birth on the mission field to a daughter, but died from malaria shortly thereafter. It was then that David gave up as well, gave up the mission field, gave up his faith, and gave up his newborn daughter. Feeling abandoned by God, he left the baby at the mission station and returned to his home, broken hearted. The people that adopted her named her Aggie.

For as long as Aggie Hurst had been alive, her father David Flood had remained on the other side of the ocean, ignoring her attempts at reconciliation. Years later she found out he was deathly ill. She was determined to see him. When father and daughter met for the first time since she was an infant, he tearfully told her he never wanted things to end up like they did.

Aggie attempted to comfort him by sharing that God had been there through it all, working faithfully behind the scenes. David erupted in anger and told her not to mention God in his presence. Forty years a widower, forty years since the mission field, forty years an alcoholic had left him filled with bitterness at the thought of a creator.

Then Aggie showed him an article, it showed a picture of a cross, a memorial to his former wife Svea. She told him about the revival that happened in the Congo after he left the mission field in disgust. She told him about the little boy that sold fruit that became a preacher and led the village to Christ.

Forty years was a long time to wait for healing. But David Flood experienced it that day, turning his heart back to the one with the nail pierced hands.

It was not long after Aggie's visit that David died, finally at peace with God. But the Flood's story was far from over.

Years passed and Aggie and her husband were in London at a conference listening to a preacher from the Congo. After the conference they approached him and asked if he knew David and Svea Flood. "I am the little boy that sold your family fruit," he proclaimed!

Then he told her that Svea Flood was one of the most famous people in the Congo. Then he told her that after the village was converted, the gospel spread like wildfire. He was now in London as a representative of over 120,000 believers in the Congo who traced their spiritual foundation back to Flood's. Their story is a picture of grace, amazing grace indeed.

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