Skip to main content

Well-loved' American missionary was among Burkina Faso attack victims

A “well-loved and respected” American missionary was among the 29 people killed in the attack by al-Qaida fighters on a hotel and cafe in Burkina Faso’s capital of Ouagadougou.


Michael Riddering, 45, from Florida, died in the Cappuccino cafe in Friday’s attack, his mother-in-law Carol Boyle told Associated Press. He was meeting a group that was going to volunteer at the orphanage and women’s crisis center he ran with his wife, Ann Boyle-Riddering
Riddering arrived early and was in the cafe with a pastor. When the attack started they ran in different directions, Boyle said from her home in Weston, Florida.
The pastor had Riddering’s phone, and called Boyle-Riddering to say that they were at the cafe and there was gunfire, but then the line went dead. The pastor hid in the cafe and survived. It was not until a fellow Christian missionary found Riddering in the morgue on Saturday that they knew he was dead.
He leaves behind four children, two of whom were adopted from Burkina Faso.
“He was extremely well-loved and respected. He wasn’t a hypocrite, he wasn’t a two-face. He had his guiding light, and he followed it,” Boyle said.
Read the rest of the article HERE

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Getting Ready for Friday

Learn to know Christ and him crucified. Learn to sing to him, and say, "Lord Jesus, you are my righteousness, I am your sin. You have taken upon yourself what is mine and given me what is yours. You have become what you were not so that I might become what I was not." --Martin Luther
Post a Comment
Read more

Families' Fridays

From Focus on the Family 10 helpful tips for single parents Imagine this: you’re the sole parent for your children. You get them up, get them fed and send them to school. You do the housework, maybe you go to work yourself, you get home and you’re still the only adult there. There’s no one to relieve you. No one to pass the baton to while you take a shower or take a few minutes for yourself. You make dinner and gather the family around the table to eat. You play with them, read to them, give them baths, get them to bed and there’s no one there to sit with and process your day. There’s no one there to laugh with you or pray with you. Instead you keep working. You clean up the house again. You pack lunches for the next day. And you eventually crash into bed, knowing you’ll be doing the same thing tomorrow. For many, this is not an imagined scenario. When you parent alone – whether due to divorce, the loss of your spouse or having a spouse who works away from home for long periods of...
Post a Comment
Read more

Oops!

I can be a real klutz.  I have very few manual skills and I never grew out of the "tripping over my own feet" stage of life.  I have fumbled and dropped more than my fair share of balls. In other words, "oops" has been a regular part of my vocabulary. It is not only in the physical world that I have fumbled things.  I have messed up relationships.  I have prejudged people before ever getting to know them.  I have used and abused those who love me most in this world.  I have failed and sinned my way into more than one tight corner and created untold disasters.  Oops is not even sufficient for the ways that I have blown it. Perhaps that is why something Paul, our worship leader last Sunday, said resonated so deeply with me this week.  He said "Oops is never said in heaven."  Our God never is clumsy.  He never makes mistakes. His plans never go belly-up.  He never fails.  He never ever has to say oops - and that comforts me.
Post a Comment
Read more