Land Bought Twice: Adult Mission Story for April 11, 2026

By Gina Wahlen

It was a dark day for a Seventh-day Adventist university in Africa.

On March 18, 2001, armed fighters entered the campus of the Adventist University of Lukanga in Lubero in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

The intruders belonged to the Mai-Mai, a militia led by warlords, village chiefs, and traditional tribal elders who had seized part of the country.

The Mai-Mai name comes from the Swahili word for water, maji. Militia members sprinkled themselves with water to shield themselves from bullets.

Mai-Mai fighters assaulted staff members and attacked students at the Adventist University of Lukanga.

They seized three students and marched them up Nyarusunzu Hill, where other fighters were waiting.

They interrogated the students, claiming that the university was occupying its land illegally.

Although the university had been established only three years earlier, in 1999, the Adventist Church had owned its land for decades.

The Zaïre Union had founded a co-educational institution called Institut Adventiste de Lukanga on the land in 1965, and students had studied there for the past 36 years.

Amid the interrogations, one of the Mai-Mai fighters threatened to shoot the three students at close range.

Then a heated discussion broke out between the Mai-Mai fighters, and chaos erupted.

Amid the confusion, the sky opened, and rain began to fall in torrents.

The Mai-Mai fighters, known for believing that sprinkled water shielded them from bullets, didn’t have any desire to stand in the downpour, and they scattered.

The three students escaped.

To this day, many people credit God for sending the rain to save the lives of those students.

But the story wasn’t over.

The events of March 18 and the claims about the land prompted the families of former land chiefs to assert that the Adventist university was occupying their land illegally.

Amid a growing chorus of voices, the university took steps to de-escalate the situation.

In May 2001, two months after the hillside incident, the Seventh-day Adventist Church agreed to pay the families for the land a second time.

The deal, which restored the peace, meant that the church paid twice for the same property.

It could say that the land belonged to it twice.

God also can say that humans belong to Him twice.

He created humans, and He redeemed humans. First Corinthians 6:20 says, “For you were bought at a price; therefore glorify God in your body and in your spirit, which are God’s” (NKJV).

Just like the university can say of the land, “You are mine twice,” God can say of us, “You are mine twice.”

Become part of the story of the Adventist University of Lukanga by contributing to this quarter’s Thirteenth Sabbath Offering, also known as the Quarterly Mission Project Offering. Currently, nursing school students are using the university clinic’s small laboratory for their research. This quarter’s offering will help construct a building for the university’s nursing school that will contain larger laboratories for its five fields of study: general nursing, midwifery, imaging, laboratory techniques, and pediatrics. Thank you for giving generously to this important project.