03/09/2024
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 finally broadcast with the family’s approval last week.
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.
Continue reading on the Vision Christian Media app or at https://vision.org.au/faith/miraculous-survival-of-missionary-hostage/
