On the evening the rebels attacked Divine’s village, in June 2022, she and her parents were attending a prayer meeting at their village church in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC).
Divine, thought to now be eight years old, had moved to the village on the shores of Lake Albert with her parents a year earlier; her father worked as a fisherman on the lake. As committed Christians, the family soon became active members in their local church, despite the constant threat from rebel fighters.
During the prayer meeting that June evening, the congregation heard the commotion of insurgents firing guns and rounding up villagers. Then the attackers began setting fire to buildings throughout the village — including the church. “I remember fuel being poured and the flames coming closer,” Divine later told one of her doctors.
The morning after the attack, a woman searching through the ashes of the church discovered the bodies of Divine’s parents. Then — shocked to see the seemingly lifeless body of a badly burned young girl — the woman found Divine, unconscious but still breathing.
She rushed the child to the nearest medical facility. Not knowing the girl’s name, she called her Divine Grace, because she considered it a miracle that she was alive. None of the other survivors knew how to contact Divine’s extended family, and no one came to claim her.
Divine’s burns extended from her chin to below her waist, covering 48% of her body. With limited medical care available in that part of the DRC — the DRC being one of the world’s poorest countries — church leaders sought a specialist doctor to care for her burns.
A Christian paediatric surgeon, Dr Justin Mandaboy, volunteered his services. “When I saw her, I don’t know, but God gave me faith to trust,” he said. “I knew there wasn’t any other place where she would be able to be helped.”
Having served in an internship with a burns unit in Canada, he said children with burns to 50% of their body usually don’t survive. He told church leaders that Divine would require multiple surgeries and that the healing process would take years.
But her spiritual family did not abandon her. When area church leaders sought volunteers to care for Divine, a mother of two stepped forward to help. “I felt mercy,” said Lina. “I felt compassion in my spirit to come and help. I was just feeling like [she] is like a child of mine and I would have mercy on her. I would want someone to take care of my children the same way.”
While enduring the loss of her parents, six surgeries and countless hours of painful wound care and physiotherapy, Divine has found strength in the Lord. During her hospitalisation, she joined chapel services to pray every morning. Every day that she could, she sang worship songs.
“From the time I met Divine, she had joy and peace,” said Lina, who stayed with Divine throughout her hospitalisation and has cared for her ever since. “That hasn’t changed. Throughout the whole process, that same spirit of joy and peace has remained.”
Divine made a similar impression on her doctor. “She has an inner strength; that is how we express it,” said Dr Mandaboy. “I have a lot of faith for her in the future, [for] her life.”
The doctor said Divine will continue to require procedures to loosen her scar tissue. But he said the joy, courage and foundation in Christ she received from her parents have carried her through everything she has faced so far.
“She is a very positive little girl,” he said. “It is pretty easy to treat her because she is courageous, and she has a lot of strength.”
Though Divine skipped away singing joyfully after a recent checkup, Dr Mandaboy knows her inner wounds still need healing. She doesn’t seem to remember details of her life before the fire, even her given name. But her attitude, he said, gives her a favourable long-term prognosis.
“The family was in Jesus,” Dr Mandaboy said. “Because of her age, what she was saying from the Bible and going in the morning to pray, [you can tell this] is someone who had [discipleship] when she was at home.”
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