It’s unlikely many elderly men aged over 80 would survive seven years and four months as a hostage in the unforgiving Sahara Desert with its boiling days and freezing nights, blinding sandstorms, a spartan diet that led to scurvy, and scorpion bites that caused excruciating pain. Australian missionary Dr. Ken Elliott did. A devout Christian, he gives all the glory for his miraculous survival to God. Very little was known about his story until he recently spoke to the ABC’s Foreign Correspondent program at his home in Perth. We knew that he and his wife Jocelyn were kidnapped by Islamic extremists in the West African nation of Burkina Faso in January 2016; that Jocelyn was released a few weeks later and returned to their base in Djibo – it’s unclear for how long; and that Ken was quietly freed without any fanfare last year at the age of 88. Until now, the Elliott family has maintained a dignified reluctance to expand on Ken and Jocelyn’s incredible story of real faith, trust in the Lord and unerring love for one of the poorest communities on the planet.
The Australian government and the family even pressured Foreign Correspondent to withhold its original story on the Elliotts soon after their capture, amid concerns it could have a negative impact on Ken’s fate. An updated version of that story was recently broadcast with the family’s approval several months ago. We learned that Ken and Jocelyn are devout Christians who agreed when they married that God’s purpose for them would not be fulfilled if Ken’s medical skills were restricted to Australia. “Australia was packed out with doctors more or less, at least it seemed to us,” said Ken. So, the Perth couple headed to West Africa and spent nearly half a century there before their kidnapping. They spent 44 of those years together in the dirt-poor backwater of Djibo in the north of Burkina Faso where the primary means of transport is the donkey and cart. When they arrived in the town with their small children in 1972, there was no hospital. Their self-declared mission was to open one — relying on prayer alone. They wouldn’t actively seek donations.
“It was just amazing how we got what we needed when we needed it,” Ken told Foreign Correspondent. Surgical equipment came from an unused Cold War emergency hospital that the American ambassador gave them as an unsolicited gift. Friends, relatives, churches in countries they had never visited and people they’d never met continually came through with donations. In Djibo, locals soon began referring to Ken Elliott as ‘The Doctor of The Poor’ for giving free treatment to his patients. He was a full-time surgeon performing obstetrics – “only the complicated cases that needed intervention” – hernias, cysts and tumours, broken bones, eye diseases. He was his own anaesthetist. When Foreign Correspondent visited the hospital in 2016 it was “stark and unadorned. There were no beds, because their patients were used to the floor, and in the heat preferred to sleep outside. Volunteers from Europe, North America and Australia came for a few months, or even years.” His surgical assistant said “Sometimes we would do eight operations between 8am and 2pm. Even when Ken was 80 years old, when he got into the theatre, he was like a machine.”
The amazing results of his surgery spread far and wide. It was so successful patients came to Ken Elliott’s surgery from neighbouring countries. He charged them very little or nothing. He treated thousands of patients. Nearly every family in Djibo was impacted by his kindness, generosity and surgical skill. News agency Agence France-Presse reported that ten months after his capture he was declared a Burkinabe, a citizen of Burkina Faso. Immediately after the Elliotts were taken away at gunpoint hundreds of people filled the main square, shouting “Free the Elliotts!” and “Down with Al Qaeda!” They even set up an internet petition. It’s believed they were held by Jama’at Nusrat al-Islam wal-Muslimin (JNIM), an umbrella terrorist group affiliated with al-Qaeda based in Mali where it is believed Mr. Elliott was held captive. He told Foreign Correspondent of the acute boredom he endured during his long captivity. He had nothing to read and nothing to listen to. His captors tried to convert him to Islam, but Ken Elliott was steadfast: “The Lord has been good to me. There’s no way I was going to dishonour Him by converting to Islam. Or even pretending to convert.”
Contrary to some reports he never treated any patients or medically trained any terrorists during his captivity. The Elliotts made a brief appearance at northern England’s Keswick Christian Convention in August last year. The Guardian quoted Ken as saying he recited memorised verses of Scripture because he was not permitted a Bible. “These were a great help, because I was able to meditate on these and pray for myself and for my captors,” he said. The Lord also helped him through an appalling, repetitive diet. Macaroni for breakfast, soggy bread for lunch, sticky rice for dinner which he couldn’t swallow. He contracted scurvy which meant he couldn’t use his legs and could barely crawl to get around. A senior leader among his captors eventually supplied him with Vitamin C tablets which rectified the problem. He was bitten by scorpions at least 20-times, leaving him in agonising pain — once moving up from one hand and across his shoulders and down to his other hand.
A reporter put to him: “Some might say that the Lord hadn’t been doing you any favours for this period of your life. Didn’t you ever feel that God had abandoned you?” “Never. No. He was always there. We believe that the only reason why we were released was because there were a few hundred, if not thousands of people praying for it. And we believe in prayer.” And prayer is now desperately needed for Burkina Faso and their former hometown of Djibo. Islamic insurgents now control around half the country and have effectively laid siege to Djibo which is facing famine. A Facebook website was set up to support efforts to free Ken Ellott which includes fascinating historic photos of his family, his clinic, his patients and multiple testimonies to his work as God’s “good and faithful servant.”
Source: Vision Christian Media
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