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Resistance Fighter – God’s heart for the broken-hearted

Reviewed by Chris Skilton.

Susie Howe tells a remarkable personal story. As a child she remembers wanting to be a “resistance fighter” when she grew up and the book is an account of her journey (metaphorically and literally) to work with those on the margins of life and society, initially in Africa, and then through The Bethany Children’s Trust, which she founded, across the world.

Her story tells of her classic conversion, forsaking a potential career in dancing to train as a nurse in London, to work with those suffering with AIDS in the early 1980s, when the illness was a new and feared phenomenon, to her rededication to Christ and to work with her husband in Zimbabwe. It describes very movingly the weight of human suffering encountered and the circumstances that led to the founding of an orphanage, empowering the local community to take more and more responsibility for its running. Life then takes another turn as the Howes return to England and Susie works first for Scripture Gift Mission and then full time for the Bethany Children’s Trust, turning its attention most recently to the scandalous torture of children in  the Niger Delta and other places accused of witchcraft.

The book feels at times as breathless as the brief synopsis offered above and is actually one of those instances when another fifty pages of detached reflection on what was happening would have added to the book. It occasionally makes reference to the wider political horrors of Zimbabwe, but the reader will have to use their own knowledge of events to frame her narrative. However, it may well be that the relative silence is to protect those still working there.

In Susie Howe’s own words, this narrative is “the story of what can happen when an ordinary woman opens her heart and life to an extraordinary God and tries to live in intimacy with him and in simple obedience to his will”. The book tells exactly that story.