Introduction: The Swiss Protestant Reformation

Authors

Abstract

On November 28th , 2002 the innocent family Lieu awoke to begin another day of prayer, devotion and work in their hometown of Danane in the Ivory Coast, West Africa. However, at 9 AM gunfire erupted and rebel forces began dropping bombs on the town, announcing that the current civil war in the Ivory Coast had reached Danane, terrifying the citizens and traumatizing the Lieu family to such an extent that they and many of their neighbors resolved to flee, with literally just the shirts on their backs, into the jungle. For months they lived like animals in the wilderness until they were finally given asylum in a refugee camp in neighboring Guinea, under the protection of the United Nations High Commission for Refugees. The only thing which stood between the Lieu family and disaster at this dreadful time was the help they received from Swiss and United Nations humanitarian organizations. The family's impoverished father, Mr. Dea Lieu, a farmer and a pastor, has made his way here to Hiwassee College in Madisonville, Tennessee, where he studies theology and agriculture and continues to work with the High Commission for Refugees in Geneva in order to find a way to bring his beleaguered family to America and, like so many emigrants before him, to find the American dream.

Recommended Citation

(2004) "Introduction: The Swiss Protestant Reformation," Swiss American Historical Society Review: Vol. 40: No. 3, Article 3.
Available at: https://scholarsarchive.byu.edu/sahs_review/vol40/iss3/3