1890. The Congo. Joseph Conrad steams up the Congo River. Later, he creates Marlowe, who travels the same river in search of someone ominous.

1928. A young man, Jonathan Ekong, travels from the bush country of Nigeria to America in search of someone wonderful.

1936. A missionary and his wife set sail for Africa.

2020. You journey back in time, join the missionary and his wife as they steam down the coast of western Africa. Soon you will be sailing the Bonny River, to a people who await you. 

What Other Travelers Have Said

All who read this thoroughly fascinating account of the founding of the Lutheran Church in Nigeria will agree with the author when he says in the first sentence of his preface: “This book is not a book of fiction, although some parts of it may read like fiction.”

The book is so full of the unusual, the strange, the dramatic—its style so pleasing, so clear, so engaging—that some parts of it do indeed grip the imagination of the reader as would a book of absorbing fiction.

Here is the first complete account of those eventful days in 1936 and 1937 when Lutheranism first came to the people of Nigeria—told by the man who himself blazed the trail and prepared the ground for what, since then, has proved to be one of Lutheranism’s most fertile mission fields.

To glance at the table of contents is to be tempted to set aside a whole week of evenings—and to spend them in the company of the author, as he re-tells the dramatic story of how the Gospel Light was brought to Africa.