Ps. 116:15
He was an inspiration to me. I consider myself blessed to have met him about 25 years ago. He came and addressed the workers in my group.
RIP
A very brave and resourceful man. I’m sure he is hearing the words, “Well done, good and faithful servant.”
[Died:]
Promoted to Heaven
Thanks for posting!
I remember reading about him years back. Wonderful brave man.
If I’m correct he also influenced Corrie ten Boom, a prominent spiritual heroine to me.
The Sherrills also wrote, with Corrie, The Hiding Place
That book, and her subsequent life of obedient service to God…….has been a mainstay for me for over 35 years.
She smuggled Bibles into other countries, as well.
The ‘telling’ of these two spiritual servants is more than encouraging.
How blessed you were to have met Brother Andrew!
Earlier in my life, my parish priest, Father David Oliver Barrett, a Holy Ghost Father from Ireland, smuggled food — and food for the soul, Bibles— in a VW Beetle across Nigeria. This was during the years of the Biafran War in the late 60’s.
Father Barrett brought Holy Communion to people in far-reaching villages. On more than one occasion, he was shot at. His pale Irish skin was covered with cancers, and he suffered recurrent bouts of malaria and other diseases.
One Thanksgiving, decades later, I offered him some sweet potatoes, which he couldn’t eat, having had almost no other food to survive on, but a type of roundish yam during the time of the naval embargo.
Then, at age 80, after all the dangers of Africa, he was almost murdered in his small Florida office by a thieving drug addict — a 300 lb. woman who beat him to a pulp with a cinder block from the shelf that held bibles, religious books and pamphlets he gave away. She also kicked his head with her steel-toed boots and left him for dead.
She stole the collection money from the weekend Mass. Police found the woman in a rental shack, passed out on a couch. The collection pouch with our church’s name on it, Father’s wallet, and alcohol and drugs were scattered on a table. Never mind Nigeria in the late 60’s. This happened on the streets of America. She came to my back gate, the day before, asking if I needed a maid. Her eyes were unable to focus and were rocking about in her head.
Father Barrett “recovered” in the hospital and rehab. A doctor told me the woman was stealing money for drugs to get high. Instead, by the grace of God, Father Barrett was the one living a perpetual state of joy! Just before he left for home, as I closed his door for the last time, he was making the Sign of the Cross over and over, happy tears in his eyes.
After six months, members of his order came to Florida and flew Father back to their Motherhouse in Dublin. A few months later, he passed away. The doctors told the DA his death was directly caused by the beating. The woman was tried and received 60 years without parole. The last time I looked online, she was still serving her time. Now she’s sinewy and muscular, very hard-looking; not the obese, tearful addict of 2002.
Rest in the eternal peace and joy of the Lord in heaven, Brother Andrew and Father Barrett. When you entered into His presence, we know your hands were full.
My brother smuggled bibles into China in the 80s.
..an Open Door in Heaven appeared to Andrew, and he heard a Voice say like a trumpet, “Come Up Here...”
I read God’s Smuggler in the 70’s as a teenager. The message to me then as is now is “Where God leads me, He will provide the means and the protection. Doesn’t mean no beatings or travails - but does mean His Grace will be sufficient in my obedience. And He will open doors no man can shut and close doors that no man can open”