Assignment Nigeria: Missionary Kids Book One

By Steve Stroble

When their parents feel called to Africa as missionaries, their two children react in different ways. Ten-year-old Jolie cooperates and does her best to adapt to a strange new land, Nigeria. But her older brother Derek rebels, angry at having to leave his friends and comfortable home in Prairie Lake, Minnesota. When Derek meets a native boy about his age, he learns more about life than he ever thought possible as they encounter a witch doctor who wants them dead and poachers who kidnap them.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Steve Stroble
• Release date: Sep 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9781005153540

Steve Stroble

Steve Stroble grew up as a military brat, which took him from South Dakota to South Carolina to Germany to Ohio to Southern California to Alabama to the Philippines to Northern California. Drafted into the Army, he returned to Germany.His stories classified as historical fiction often weave historical events, people, and data into them.His science fiction stories try to present feasible even if not yet known technology.His dystopian and futuristic stories feature ordinary heroes and heroines placed into extraordinary situations and ordinary villains who drain the life out of others' souls (their minds, wills, and emotions) by any means available.

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Assignment Nigeria

(Missionary Kids Book One)

Steve Stroble

Assignment Nigeria (Missionary Kids Book One), copyright © 2020 Stroble Family Trust. All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fiction. All people, places, events, and situations are the product of the writer’s imagination. Any resemblance of them to actual persons, living or dead, places, events, and situations is purely coincidental.

Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan Publishing House. All rights reserved. The NIV and New International Version trademarks are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office by International Bible Society. Use of either trademark requires the permission of International Bible Society.

To my brother Mark, who helped bring me into the Kingdom of God by telling me mysteries only a six-year-old destined to become a missionary kid for a short time could speak. One of them: The devil is zero, Jesus is infinity, and we’re all the numbers in between.

Table of Contents

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Acknowledgments

1

Prairie Lake, Minnesota, Thanksgiving Weekend 1984

But Dad, I don’t want to go to Africa. What about all of my friends here? twelve-year-old Derek Hope asked as he waved his arms above his angry face.

His father, Doug Hope, had to stifle a smile because his son reminded him of a helicopter, with Derek’s arms looking like the copter’s whirling blades.

I know it will be hard for you at first, said Doug Hope. But you will get used to it. Now I need to get going. Your mother and I have a lot of things left to do before we leave.

Doug turned and headed toward the front door of the Hope’s house, a tidy three-bedroom home located about 100 miles from Minneapolis St. Paul. His purposeful stride showed a man on a mission. This was Dad at his best.

But why did Dad’s plans have to be so upsetting? Besides, Doug’s father, who was Derek’s grandfather, had never done anything like this to his family. Derek turned to his ten-year-old sister Jolie for comfort.

But as usual, she seemed oblivious to anything, no matter how important, taking place right in front of her face. She continued to comb and fluff out her doll’s curly bright red hair. Jolie pretended to be a mother lecturing her wayward little one.

Derek hated whenever his sister talked to inanimate objects. Sometimes he thought she liked them better than she liked him.

Don’t you even care at all, Jolie? Derek asked. You act like you like having to move thousands of miles away from here. What’s wrong with you, anyways?

"Didn’t Dad say you would get used to it? Maybe you need to just chill out, dude like your friends are always telling you to do or trust in the Lord with all your heart like Mom and Dad always tell both of us to do."

She started to smooth the wrinkles on her doll’s blue satin dress. When she asked her doll what she thought about moving to Africa, Derek shrieked and stomped off. He pretended to pull his hair out by its roots. Then he pounded his forehead with the heels of both of his hands.

Girls are totally useless, Derek thought. Especially when they are your sister. Thank God that I only have one of them. Any more than that and I would have cracked up a long time ago.

He found his mother Bev in the basement, sorting through hundreds of possessions accumulated during thirteen years of married life, most of which would be donated to their church’s mission to the homeless. It was not so much the possessions that mattered to Bev. The memories attached to them carried value no one could place a price on. Trying to explain any of that to any male had proved fruitless.

Mom, do you really want to go running off to Africa too? Derek asked as he sat down on top of a half-filled box of his and Jolie’s old toys. Or is this just Dad’s idea? How come I don’t feel like I’m called to be a missionary kid?

Thirty-seven years old, but at times like this feeling twice her age, Bev sighed. As placid as Jolie usually behaved, Derek could be trying. Always questioning, testing any boundaries set for him. At times, her two children seemed to be polar opposites.

Your father and I have prayed for a really long time about it, honey. We both think it’s the Lord’s will for our family to be missionaries. You know we wouldn’t make such a drastic change to our lives otherwise.

Then how come I don’t feel that way, too? I can’t stand even thinking about moving away from Gary and Ron and Cory and… Derek’s voice faded when he noticed his mother had returned to sorting through what he considered junk so worthless it should have been thrown into the garbage can a long time ago. For Jolie it was dolls. For Mom, it was all of this stuff.

What’s the use? Derek asked in a low mutter to keep his objection to himself. Nobody ever cares what I think anyway.

After stomping up the stairs from the musty basement to the kitchen and grabbing his favorite, an ice-cold caffeinated and sugar filled soda from the refrigerator, Derek went to his room and slammed its door so hard that its frame shuddered. Then he pulled out the six drawers from his worn pine dresser and dumped their contents into a pile on the floor. Next, he added everything from his small desk to the growing mound. Lastly, he piled all of his clothes from the closet on top of the heap of his earthly possessions.

Maybe I should pour some gas from the can for the lawn mower on it to make it burn better, he thought. Nah, that’s overkill.

He was preparing to drop a lit match onto everything he owned but Jolie’s scream stopped his shaking hand from letting go of it until the flame burned his finger and thumb. Then his much louder scream harmonized with his sister’s second and third screams.

By the time their hysterics had faded into an uneasy silence, negotiations for the Mother of All Mutually Assured Destruction Peace Treaties between Siblings had begun.

I’m going to tell Mom how you tried to burn down the house, Jolie said as she turned toward the bedroom’s open door. Just wait until she tells Dad. He’ll tan your hide for sure. I can’t wait until you get what you deserve for being so foolish. You’re the most immature big brother in the whole world.

You can’t snitch on me. Derek put his arm across the doorway’s threshold to stop his sister’s exit. When she tried to sneak under the barrier, he lowered his arm and grabbed her sweat shirt with his free left hand.

Why not?

"Because if you do, I’ll tell everyone at school what I read that you wrote in your diary. Just wait until all of the kids you don’t like find out how you really feel about them. Some of them will