The Man Who Overcame Discouragement

The beginnings of Sudan Interior Mission (SIM) were marked by failure, discouragement, death, and despair. Yet one man, Rowland Bingham, would not give up. In 1893, Bingham along with Walter Gowans and Thomas Kent arrived in Lagos with a passion to evangelize Sub-Saharan Africa. But they were told, “Young men, ====◊==== you will never see the Sudan; your children will never see the No Christian Sudan; your grandchildren may.”

They nevertheless began an Despondency 800-mile trek into the interior, but in less than a year Gowans When omniscience has wst and Kent were both dead. Bingham returned to England, its eyesight, and omnipotence stunned and uncertain. “My faith was being shaken to the very foils back impotent . . . then foundation,” he later wrote.

“Why should those most anxious the Church of Jesus Christ to carry out the Lord’s commands and to give His gospel to can afford to be despondent) millions in darkness be cut off right at the beginning of their but never until then. career? Many questions faced me.” -T. DEWITT TALMAGE Seven years passed, but eventually Rowland Bingham es- ====◊==== tablished the Sudan Interior Mission, and in 1900 he once again started for Africa.

This time he was stopped by a life-threatening bout of malaria. His companions, daunted, sailed back home, and Rowland himself had no choice but to return to England.

It would have been easier for me, perhaps, had I died in Africa, for on the homeward journey I died another death. Everything seemed to have failed . ... I went through the darkest period of my whole life. But he wouldn’t give up.

In 1901, he made his third attempt. This one was more successful, and it resulted in the first SIM station in Africa. Today SIM is an international mission organization with more than 1,800 missionaries serving in more than forty-three countries on five continents and three islands in the Indian Ocean.2 1 Mary Drewery, William Carey: A Biography (Chicago: Moody Press, 1978), 7 4 2Tucker, From Jerusalem to Irian Jaya, 295-300.