Sometimes you meet someone for the first time and in a matter of minutes you just know that he is something special. Such a person is Timothy Ukegbu. A Nigerian living in Athens, Timothy is a student in our school and a leader of men.

It was my (Lanny Partain) pleasure to have him in some of my classes while teaching there in 2006. I know him to be a God-seeker making the most of a very difficult situation, desperately seeking to serve God and provide for his family.

I didn't know "the rest of the story" until recently, when Ron Kretz, our Dean of the Athens school, shared the following incident:
I had a very interesting thing happen in my class yesterday. I am teaching Ezekiel on Tuesdays. We were taking a look at the vision of slaughter in the ninth chapter where the executioners of the city are turned loose on the people of Jerusalem. It is a very graphic and horrific scene as one reads it. I noticed that Timothy became very somber and quit during this discussion.

Finally he raised his hand and said that he had a very hard time whenever he studied this chapter of Ezekiel. When I asked him why he said that it always reminded him of his own experience of what happened to him when he was a young boy of 10 years old during the civil war in Nigeria in the 60s. He then told us the following story.

He was ten years old when the civil war broke out. At that time he was the oldest boy of five brothers and sisters. The youngest had just been born two months earlier.

When the civil war broke out the army fled in disarray and the insurgents started going through each of the villages slaughtering whoever got in their way, men, women and children.

Timothy’s father along with his second wife immediately fled with his other wife and their children, leaving Timothy’s mother alone with her five children. As the soldiers closed in on his village his mother also fled with his grandmother to the farms, leaving Timothy alone with his four brothers and sisters.

The solders entered the village and started wholesale slaughter of the people in the village. Everyone started fleeing for their lives. Timothy fled with his brothers and sisters in tow, him clutching his two month old brother in his arms. He remembers the fires the solders lit. He remembers the explosions of homes being blown up. He remembers the bullets flying over his head as he fled with his brothers and sisters. At one point he was huddled against a wall and a bullet struck inches from his head. He was almost killed. In the midst of the chaos of his village being destroyed he managed to escape with his brothers and sisters to the bush.

He and his brothers and sisters then lived in the bush for two years. There was no food. There was no safe water to drink. They had no shelter. They huddled together under tresses for protection from the rain and elements. They only had the clothes on their bodies. When they washed their clothes in whatever water they found, they had to be naked until their clothes dried. They didn’t own anything. They were starving and cold. He said that they ate like animals, grubbing for whatever they could find. Often bugs, grubs, small fish from ponds (minnows), and leaves from the trees were their food. In the course of those two years, he was finally reunited with his mother. Two of his siblings died in front of him, due to sickness and starvation. The other two have died since then.

He said it was terrible and that he can imagine the horror of what happened when Jerusalem was destroyed. Yes, the innocent, along with the guilty are destroyed when God brings his judgment upon the land. Timothy said we must be so thankful for the way God takes care of us. And it is important for us to do as He commands us. He will bring judgment when we don’t.

I dismissed the class for a break. I couldn’t talk anymore for awhile.

We can’t imagine what some of our students have gone through in order to be able to study God’s word. We can’t imagine the sacrifice they have made. I can’t imagine.