Birth:19-03-1813
Death: 01-05-1873
Homeland: Scotland
Place of Vision: Africa
David Livingstone was a Scottish missionary, physician, and explorer in Africa. His childhood was spent working hard in cotton mills, followed by attending evening schools. The missionary stories he read and the teachings of his Sunday school teacher had a significant spiritual influence on young Livingstone. He was captivated by an appeal for medical missionaries to China and pursued medicine and theology in Glasgow. However, his encounter with Robert Moffat, another pioneer missionary in Africa, made him commit himself to the ministry in Africa. Followed by his ordination in London, he set sail for Cape Town in 1841.
Livingstone initially served for a time under Robert Moffat among the Tswana and then moved north to take the Gospel to places like Zambia and Mozambique. After a brief furlough in Britain, he again embarked on a missionary journey to take the Gospel to the lands of Zambezi River and Lake Malawi. It was during this time that he lost his beloved wife, Mary Moffat. Nevertheless, he continued on his mission. His priority in life was to open a “Missionary Road,” or so he called “God’s Highway,” that would take the Gospel to the most interior parts of Africa to bring “Christianity and civilization” to unreached people.
Livingstone explored various regions, reached the coasts, went about preaching, teaching, and healing, and then made careful observations of its geographical features. He drew and redrew maps of several countries that were invaluable for the later missionary explorers. His opening up of the interior of the continent to bring Christianity to those native people was met with horrors of cannibalism, brutalities, and other cruelties of slavery. However, he patiently endured everything and never took his sight off the ‘author and perfecter of our faith’ despite many distractions. After spending 30 years of his life in an unwearied effort to evangelize the native races and abolish the slave trade in Africa, Livingstone entered into God’s rest in 1873.
