Ambushed in Africa

Ambushed in Africa is the third in a series of novels titled “Kids on a Mission.” This is the first volume in the series that I have read.

Matt Williams and his sister Emily are awakened one night by a loud sound. They venture outside to see, in a nearby shack, a faint aura. It isn’t clear in this volume whether they are missionaries in training or that they simply live near the MTC. I suspect the latter, as they are depicted as being a bit too young to be in training for missionary work. However, the Lord has clearly chosen them out to do exciting, and sometimes dangerous, work in foreign lands.

Although it isn’t made clear, it seems that contact with this aura, this light, transports them to lands where they are needed. In this volume, the place is Nigeria. The situation — President Spencer W. Kimball has just announced that priesthood is now open to all worthy males. There is a missionary couple in Nigeria who have been waiting anxiously for this announcement. Now that it’s come, the missionary couple, Elder and Sister Hansen, along with the Williams children, must find their way to the village of Umuelem. It is known that there is a community of believers in the Restored Gospel waiting for someone to come and baptize and confirm them.

Along the way there are many hazards — a roving gang of thieves takes their vehicle and some of their belongings. But they find help in a young native girl who is able to guide them, with the help of others, to that town.

This book is, I think, pretty typical of young adult fiction. There isn’t a word wasted, and the action keeps coming at a breathtaking pace. At times I was a bit uncomfortable with the way the story is told. For example, I thought that the Hansens calling the children “Brother and Sister Williams” was a bit awkward. Aren’t children routinely called by their first names? And sometimed the plot seemed too predicatable and easily resolved.

But I have to remember that the likely audience for this series is the younger reader. I was thinking back to some of the classic literature for youth — in my case, the Hardy Boys mysteries — and I realized that children enjoy an exciting and edifying story. This book offers both.

While the main characters are fictional, the main story line — establishing a mission in Nigeria, etc. — is based on fact. Children reading this will likely get a new view of what the lifting of the priesthood ban meant to so many people outside the U.S. None of the controversy that accompanied this event is mentioned. And, I think, this is the right way to do this. Let the kids have this view, and depend on them, as they mature, to confront some of the deeper issues.

As I began reading, I realized immediately that I would suffer for not having read the first two. The idea of the light that transported the children to Nigeria, brief mentions of the previous two adventures, and the mention of them living near the grounds of the MTC, may have been more fully fleshed out in the earlier volumes. For the sake of new readers, all of this deserved more space in the current volume.