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Excerpt from In Wembo-Nyama's Land: A Story of the Thrilling Experiences in Establishing the Methodist Mission Among the Atetela This little book has been written, first, with the purpose of giving a clear picture of the conditions, customs, and character of the Otetela Tribe, in Central Africa, among which the Methodist Episcopal Church, South, began missionary work during the first part of 1914; second, with the desire of setting forth the history, splendid success to date, and the great promise of the future usefulness of this mission; and, third, with the earnest prayer that many of its readers may be helped through it to yield their lives more fully to the leadership of God's Spirit and to the extension of his kingdom in all lands. It is also hoped that this simple story of those people in Central Africa and the mission work among them may be of great inspiration to the Epworth Leaguers especially, since almost from the very beginning they have assumed the entire responsibility for financing this mission and to a large extent for manning it with recruits from their ranks. Grateful acknowledgment is given to all those who have in numerous ways assisted in the preparation of this volume. Especial mention should be made of the various missionaries of the Methodist Episcopal Congo Mission, from whose articles and letters numerous quotations have been made, the use of which it has been requested be made with the writers' names held in reserve. We are deeply grateful to Prof. Garfield Evans, of Epworth League Central Office at Nashville, Tenn., for his timely suggestions as to certain parts and paragraphs, for corrections, proof reading, and the assuming of the practical responsibility of the editing. We are also largely indebted to him for the closing reflections, meditation, and prayer of each chapter. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

The New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice • A spellbinding work of history that reads like a Cold War spy thriller—about the U.S.-sanctioned plot to assassinate the democratically elected leader of the newly independent Congo A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR: The New Yorker, The Economist, Financial Times “This is one of the best books I have read in years . . . gripping, full of colorful characters, and strange plot twists.” —Fareed Zakaria, CNN host It was supposed to be a moment of great optimism, a cause for jubilation. The Congo was at last being set free from Belgium—one of seventeen countries to gain independence in 1960 from ruling European powers. At the helm as prime minister was charismatic nationalist Patrice Lumumba. Just days after the handover, however, the Congo’s new army mutinied, Belgian forces intervened, and Lumumba turned to the United Nations for help in saving his newborn nation from what the press was already calling “the Congo crisis.” Dag Hammarskjöld, the tidy Swede serving as UN secretary-general, quickly arranged the organization’s biggest peacekeeping mission in history. But chaos was still spreading. Frustrated with the fecklessness of the UN and spurned by the United States, Lumumba then approached the Soviets for help—an appeal that set off alarm bells at the CIA. To forestall the spread of Communism in Africa, the CIA sent word to its station chief in the Congo, Larry Devlin: Lumumba had to go. Within a year, everything would unravel. The CIA plot to murder Lumumba would fizzle out, but he would be deposed in a CIA-backed coup, transferred to enemy territory in a CIA-approved operation, and shot dead by Congolese assassins. Hammarskjöld, too, would die, in a mysterious plane crash en route to negotiate a cease-fire with the Congo’s rebellious southeast. And a young, ambitious military officer named Joseph Mobutu, who had once sworn fealty to Lumumba, would seize power with U.S. help and misrule the country for more than three decades. For the Congolese people, the events of 1960–61 represented the opening chapter of a long horror story. For the U.S. government, however, they provided a playbook for future interventions.

Based on interviews with former missionaries, archival records, and secondary sources, Kasongo, a Methodist minister of the Central Congo Conference, presents a history of the church in this region. He covers the origins of its mission in the Central Congo, 1912-22, to the decline and fall of the Central Congo Episcopal Area, 1960-96, with the intervening years marked by expansion and responses to the shifting political environment. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR