wfn.org | ELCA missionary Robert Wandersee killed in Nigeria

[FRANK_IMHOFF.parti@ecunet.org (FRANK IMHOFF)]

Ministered to the Fulani people in seven countries

CHICAGO, U.S.A./GENEVA, 20 August 1998 (lwi/elca) -The Rev. Robert E.
Wandersee, a missionary of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
(ELCA), was killed in a robbery-related attack Friday, August 7, on a
highway outside Jos, Nigeria. Wandersee was struck by bullets when the car
in which he and two Nigerian passengers were traveling was attacked. The
attackers have not been apprehended.

The passengers, Isuwa Haniel and Falaka Ya'u, co-workers from the Lutheran
Church of Christ in Nigeria, were hospitalized with gun shot wounds and
cuts from broken glass.

Wandersee, 46, served in Jos beginning in 1992. He was secretary of the
Joint Christian Ministry for West Africa, a ministry of ecumenical mission
agencies and churches working among the Fulani people in seven countries.

The Rev. Daniel W. Olson of the ELCA's Division for Global Mission said,
"Bob Wandersee brought creativity, sincerity, and humor to his life and
work in west Africa. He was greatly loved and appreciated by African
colleagues for his humble spirit and dedication to proclaiming the gospel
among Fulani people through the Joint Christian Ministry in West Africa
network."

Wandersee provided pastoral leadership to Hillcrest School and the Jos
community in central Nigeria, according to Olson. He was the author of
several booklets for Christian training and taught a course on
Christian-Muslim dialogue at the Theological College of Northern Nigeria. 

Before going to Nigeria, Wandersee had served for six years in Madagascar.
In the United States he had worked in camping and retreat ministries at
Camp Koinonia, Highland Lake, N.Y.  Wandersee was ordained in 1980. He was
a graduate of Northwestern Seminary (now Luther Seminary), St Paul, and
North Dakota State University, Fargo, N.D. He studied Christian-Muslim
dialogue at Hartford Seminary in Connecticut and at Luther Seminary.

Olson, until recently the ELCA's area director for west and southern
Africa, said Wandersee was "energetically preparing for the biennial
assembly of the Joint Christian Ministry in west Africa in November, which
will bring together more than 100 people engaged in ministry among the
nomadic and semi-nomadic Fulani people from Senegal to the Central African
Republic."

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