The day it rained rocks
Bright and early the next morning, Samson and his daughter were just about to head back to the monastery. They had been called again for another meeting with the leaders of the village, so to prepare themselves for the meeting, their family prayed.
While they were praying, Samson heard voices. It was the village chief’s voice, and he wasn’t alone. “Kill him! Samson, ask your God to save you now!”
His family knelt together to pray, hand in cold, sweaty, hand. The shouts grew louder and louder, “KILL HIM!” Then there was silence – a whoosh, and a thud. The first rock.
Samson remembers, “They threw stone upon stone upon stone. All our windows and doors were open and they were stoning us nonstop. My granddaughter stood up and closed the windows. She was hit on her breast and was wounded. She gasped in pain, screaming ‘Jesus save me! Jesus save me!’ and placed her palm on her wound. Right then and there, it was miraculously healed!
“There was so much noise. They were shouting ‘Kill them, kill them!’ But we were still praying to God. We did not stop praying, even when they almost burned our house.
“They tried to destroy our three motorbikes and two bicycles. They tried to burn them. They covered them in petrol and they tried to burn them, but there was no fire.
“‘Oh you better die, or we will kill you. We will burn you!’ screamed the mob.
“We were crying and praying. They were still shouting at us: ‘If your God is alive, tell him to save you now! Still, we just prayed.”
The mob went for the fuse next. “They went to the back of our house and pulled down the fuse from the power cable post. They tried to make a fire. They tried to make electric shocks. By then we exclaimed, ‘Lord Jesus please help us! We are almost dying. If you don’t help us Lord, we will die soon!’”
As if on cue, the electricity died. The livewire and electric shocks stopped.
The mob didn’t give up easily. They were intent on harming Samson and his family. “They couldn’t burn our home so they went instead to my youngest daughter’s house, which is a few minutes’ walk from my place. They destroyed her house, the table, and the chairs. They attacked it for around 10 minutes and they came back again to my house, screaming: ‘Are you still alive? Has your God saved you or not?’
“While they were shouting outside, my other daughter called our pastor for help. Someone from church went to the police station and they came to get us. After an hour, the police officer finally came to our village. They couldn’t even enter because there were still a lot of people stoning us. I remember a Buddhist monk who came and asked, ‘Is there anyone here who is still alive? Come now out of the house.’”