Page 29 - Unseen Hands by Nona Freeman

The Search
the village of Debre-Zeit, fifty kilometers away, he thought. I'll go into the woods and lie on the dew-wet grass all night and pray. Surely then, God will have mer cy and pour His Spirit on me.
Just as he situated himself face down on the grass in the night illumined by a pale moon, he heard a house owner load his gun. (The man had seen Tekle slipping in to the woods and thought that he must be a thief.) At that very moment the glint of a moonbeam revealed an enor mous python slithering through the grass toward him. If the python swallows me, there'll be nothing for my relatives to bury, he thought, but if the man shoots me, they can claim my dead body.
Having chosen his course of action, he jumped up and ran. Trying to get away, he fell into a huge pit that had been dug for a latrine. He had eluded his pursuer, but he now faced the difficult task of getting out of the straight- sided hole. After several futile efforts—bruised, but without broken bones—he managed to scale the walls. Covered with mud and stinking filth, he found a hill of refuge emd water to wash himselfand his soiled clothing. In the early morning he waited under the trees until his clothing "drip-dried."
Tekle returned to Addis by bus on September 10, 1964. He had fasted three days by this time. While stand ing near the university gate in the afternoon, he heard a commanding voice say, "Run!" He hesitated, looked around, but saw no one. "Rim!" the imperative voice came the second time. "Run to the Finnish Pentecostal Church."
A strong desire to run overwhelmed him. As he ran he thought. If I meet an acquaintance and he asks, "Why
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