By Rebecca Hurshman, Contributing Writer
Forty years ago, on April 19, Asbury University alumnus and missionary Dr. Glen Eschtruth was martyred in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Africa. According to the Detroit Free Press, Eschtruth and his team of seven other American missionaries faced threats to their lives during the invasion of the Congo by neighboring Angolan soldiers who planned to overthrow the government. It was these soldiers that captured and eventually killed Eschtruth.
Eschtruth directed a mission hospital, called L’hopital Samuteb, from 1960 until 1977. According to an Asbury Seminary chapel address he gave in 1965, he was the only surgeon in about 133,000 square miles in the Congo and performed an average of 350 major surgeries per year. But he was not only a surgeon. According to the Asbury Ambassador, Eschtruth created and maintained a vital communication network of radios for Methodist missionaries across the Congo.
Eschtruth was also known by those on his team as a dynamic preacher at the hospital chapel. “We would have about 200 people in that chapel every morning, and he would preach many times and give an altar call, and patients would raise their hands to receive Jesus,” recalls one of Eschtruth’s teammates, Randy Vinson. At 23 years old, Vinson lived with Eschtruth and his wife, serving in the hospital as a medical technologist.
Vinson hypothesizes that it was Eschtruth’s devotion to his ministry at L’Hopital Samuteb that made him a target to the rebel soldiers. “They were constantly asking for things, and he was constantly trying to save stuff so that when the war was over, L’hopital Samuteb could continue and he could continue ministering to the Lunda people…it was constant, and he put himself in front to be the point man,” Vinson said.
In his last moments with his team, Eschtruth gave a simple sermon, as reported by Randy Vinson: “He said, ‘The one thing that I am proud of, it’s not the hospital, it’s not my surgeries, it’s not the ham radios, it’s not any of that; it’s the church of Jesus Christ and the chapel services…that I’m leaving behind, because those the Communist soldiers can never take and the world will never rob them.’”
Indeed, the rebel soldiers could not inhibit the growth of the church. According to John D. Woodbridge’s book “Church History: Volume Two,” the population of Christians in Africa was 380 million in 2000. Despite the fact that Eschtruth was the third Asbury alumni martyred in Africa (Burliegh Law and Lilburn Adkins were previously martyred in the Congo and South Africa, respectively), Asburians continue to serve overseas. According to the Asbury Alumni data team, alumni serve in 80 countries worldwide. One recent Asbury alum and August 2017 chapel speaker (who must remain anonymous due to the sensitive nature of his work) serves as a medical missionary, as Eschtruth did, to the Muslim inhabitants of Northern Africa.
Asburians seem to have taken the closing of Eschtruth’s 1965 chapel address to heart: “The whirlwinds of the world will sweep down upon us and literally flatten our hopes and our desires; but let’s not kick around the rubble, let’s rebuild…rebuild the hearts of men.”
