Banana Plantation Crisis

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For Pauline and me, naturally our first years in the Congo were largely learning years, benefiting much from C.T. Studd—her father and my
father-in-law. After we acquired a working knowledge of the lingua franca language by which (lie various tribes could communicate, called
Bangala, we began journeyings among the villages. Staying in native huts, we would gather together those who wanted the Word of God and form small village groups. Also, we sought to train some to become teachers of
their own people.

But our first necessity was a full supply of our own spiritual and practical needs. If we were to supply the need of the Africans, we had to be able to transmit our very selves, not just mere words. We soon found we had such needs—of love, power, victory over the flesh, and a continued sense of completeness in Christ.

And now came to me personally, and to Pauline, the personal fulfillment of Paul’s word to the Colossians, that he had a ministry which would take them beyond their new birth experience. He called it the fulfilling of what the gospel had first imparted in a partial amount (Col. 1:23-29).

That, first gift was Christ for them; this second unfolding was Christ in them, and themselves completed persons as the manifesters of Him
(1:28). This Colossians truth, so vital and central to our lives and ministries, was the final establishment stage (like 1 Peter 5:10) for the full intercession to which God was to commission us.

Our personal crisis moment was a night spent in an African village, where the one convert of those days left us his cookhouse for setting up our
camp beds. But in our personal hunger for the fullness of union, we remained through most of the night on our camp chairs in the banana
plantation.