You Must Hear About Voloungou

"He had come to Yaloke station as a stonecutter and bridge builder shortly before our party arrived on the field in May, 1925. Every morning he had listened to the Gospel, but without much inclination toward it. Then one day in December, when the other missionaries had left the station to go to a conference at Bassai, he heard a sermon preached by a novice [Mary L. Emmert] on the subject of the new birth and Nicodemus. It had not been clear how to say, 'You must be born again,' for there is no passive voice, properly speaking, in their language, but the LORD showed how to turn the phrase and He took it home to the hearer .... Others had sown, and one without skill or experience had been allowed to witness the miracle of sudden conversion....

"That the conversion was genuine was soon evident, for the 'babe in Christ' overturned his huge pots full of beer, broke the pottery, and refused to drink any more, although the sermon had not touched upon that subject....

"The miracle of the conversion is all the more evident through an incident that occurred in the converts' class the day this man accepted the LORD. I asked him some question in his native language, but he could not get what I was saying. He apologized politely by saying that he had talked Sango, the trade language, so much of late years that he scarcely understood his mother tongue! He should have added, 'as spoken by a new missionary!' So it was certainly not the messenger nor skill in presenting the message, but the Holy Spirit working in spite of all these handicaps that won this man to the Lord."

Source: The Brethren Encyclopedia
Adapted from M.L. Emmert, Some African Links