The Night the Angels Came: Miracles of Protection and Provision in Burundi

Chapman, an English nurse and midwife, has been working since 1990 in Burundi, a tiny, desperately poor African country bordering Rwanda and Tanzania. With breathless enthusiasm and simple faith, she tells of her nonstop efforts to care for the sick during a 2014 flare-up of civil unrest after nearly a decade of calm. She delivered babies in the middle of the night by the light of paraffin lamps, was held at gunpoint numerous times, stoically observed horrific acts of violence, struggled to feed and nourish endless streams of refugees, and eventually nurtured and educated more than 50 children orphaned and traumatized by AIDS and war. With prayer, persistence, and tremendous trust in miracles and the protection of angels, Chapman works tirelessly through unimaginably difficult circumstances. Though her citation of Bible verses and insistence that strong faith will spur change occasionally sound simplistic, Chapman's plain words reveal an unshakable commitment to her faith and her work that will show those in similarly dire situations a path through dark times. (Apr.)