Speaker 1: What you hear in this podcast does not implicate any
Speaker 1: individual or entity in any criminal activity. The views and
Speaker 1: opinions are solely those of the individuals participating in the podcast.
Speaker 1: Previously on the Missionary I founded Serving his Children, How
Speaker 1: old I was nineteen nineteen. Obviously the Lord really had
Speaker 1: a special plan for you. You were either pro Renee
Speaker 1: and going to stand up for her and you know,
Speaker 1: have her back, or you were very much against what
Speaker 1: she was doing and just kind of outraged by it.
Speaker 1: All and five children died at an unlicensed treatment center
Speaker 1: for malnourished kids in Uganda. I used to take the
Speaker 1: did Buddhist Renee is being sued and ugand in court
Speaker 1: every time a kid dies. You're writing a blog post,
Speaker 1: You're getting all its attention. You might become addicted. What
Speaker 1: leads Renee to go down this path? She thinks that's
Speaker 1: what God wants her to do. Ye Just two days before,
Speaker 1: I had heard a horror story. After driving all morning,
Speaker 1: I approached a small, half collapsing hut. The home was
Speaker 1: littered with trash, animal waste. My mind was reeling. As
Speaker 1: I walked closer and closer, a dread came over me,
Speaker 1: but also a strong desire to run as fast as
Speaker 1: I could to comfort those hurting to fix the problem
Speaker 1: at hand. I remained calm. I prayed. As my eyes
Speaker 1: adjusted to the dark, I saw a little skeleton of
Speaker 1: a child sitting on the dirt floor. Her name was
Speaker 1: Naba Cosa, and she wasn't a child. She was a
Speaker 1: woman in her twenties. And the woman telling this story
Speaker 1: is Renee Bach. She wrote about her encounter with Nabucoza
Speaker 1: and Vivid Deep Hill and her blog. We had an
Speaker 1: actor read the post and we edited them for clarity.
Speaker 1: But this is what Renee wrote back in August of two.
Speaker 1: When she saw a movement, she slowly lifted her eyes,
Speaker 1: and when I saw a fear, deathlike look in her eyes,
Speaker 1: I screamed inwardly. My heart stopped. No one was caring
Speaker 1: for her, no one was feeding her, no one was
Speaker 1: even looking at her. And that is how Napacosa has
Speaker 1: lived every day for the past twenty three years until now.
Speaker 1: Renee wasn't the only one in Napocosa has had that day.
Speaker 1: Her friend Ashley Laverty was there too. She smelt very
Speaker 1: foul and it was just it was horrible. It was really,
Speaker 1: really horrible. Okay, As Renee and actually walked closer, they
Speaker 1: heard a slow, continuous tapping. Napacosa was holding an empty
Speaker 1: mug and using the little energy she had to tap
Speaker 1: it on the ground. I feel like she was tapping
Speaker 1: that cup to signal that she wanted something to eat
Speaker 1: or drink. I had a flask like a travel mug
Speaker 1: of tea in the car. It was just black tea
Speaker 1: with maybe a little bit of honey or sugar in it,
Speaker 1: and I ran and got it and she just started
Speaker 1: like downing it, like just gulping it down. Renee and
Speaker 1: Ashley wanted to get her out of that hut immediately.
Speaker 1: She was a full grown adult woman, but I was
Speaker 1: able to like just scooper up in my two arms.
Speaker 1: According to her medical documents, Napocoza Wade only thirty seven pounds.
Speaker 1: But the needy will not be forgotten, nor the hope
Speaker 1: of the afflicted ever perish. Some seen outside, they cleaned her,
Speaker 1: wrapped her in a cloth, and held her tight as
Speaker 1: if she were a baby. I wanted her to know
Speaker 1: that she was loved not only by me, but by
Speaker 1: a great, big, huge God, and that he had not
Speaker 1: forgotten about her. I wanted her to know that he
Speaker 1: was coming to her rescue, but Napocosa wasn't rescued. Within
Speaker 1: a few days, Nabocsa would be dead. In the next
Speaker 1: few years, there would be one hundred five deaths according
Speaker 1: to Serving his Children's own records, but Nabokoza was the
Speaker 1: first to die under their roof an association with I
Speaker 1: Heart Media. I'm Hellymaca CONDI, I'm Roger Gola, I'm Malcolm Burnley.
Speaker 1: This is the Missionary episode two thirty seven pounds. Renee
Speaker 1: and Ashley brought Napocoza back to Serving His Children to
Speaker 1: try and nurse her back to health. As always, Renee
Speaker 1: was hopeful, determined. Renee just started feeding her bryson beans, water.
Speaker 1: She would eat as much as she could and drink
Speaker 1: as much as she could, and she started to perk
Speaker 1: up and like gain more energy. Ashley went home for
Speaker 1: the night and left Renee with Nabucoza and a new
Speaker 1: volunteer named Shanna, who declined an interview. But according to
Speaker 1: Renee's blog, it wasn't long before things got worse. I
Speaker 1: felt sure that Nabacosa was going to be with Jesus,
Speaker 1: that at any moment she would leave this earth headed
Speaker 1: to heaven, where a heavenly host would welcome her with
Speaker 1: open arms. Renee wasn't going to let that happen without
Speaker 1: a fight. She bundled Nabucoza in a blanket, loaded her
Speaker 1: into a van and took her to the hospital, but
Speaker 1: they were turned away. We were driving frantically through the
Speaker 1: city of Kampala in the middle of the night, searching
Speaker 1: for anyone who would give her a second glance. I
Speaker 1: was terrified, hysterical, sad, angry. They tried three more hospitals
Speaker 1: but were turned away again and again. In one of
Speaker 1: our last attempts, I ran into a hospital barefoot, carrying
Speaker 1: Nabucoza in my arms like a small infant. No one
Speaker 1: even looked up, and after sitting on a cold floor
Speaker 1: for over an hour, the doctor told me to leave
Speaker 1: her existing ivy in and take her home. Take her home.
Speaker 1: They were out of options, so that's what they did.
Speaker 1: They got back to serving his children in the middle
Speaker 1: of the night and laid Nabucosa in bed with hot
Speaker 1: water bottles. Renee slept by her side to keep her warm,
Speaker 1: and then a small miracle happened. Today, Navacosa is awake,
Speaker 1: she can sit up, she's eating small amounts of food
Speaker 1: and keeping it down, and she can move a little
Speaker 1: bit and make noises in response. Today, Nabucosa is very
Speaker 1: much alive. Renee and I started off as friends, and
Speaker 1: we had similar passions or interests in that, like I
Speaker 1: had worked with children suffering from malnutrition. Ashley and Renee
Speaker 1: were part of the same missionary community in Ginger. Ashley
Speaker 1: says she even volunteered at serving his children, but she
Speaker 1: saw herself as radically different from the other missionaries. She
Speaker 1: wasn't raised in an evangelical family, and she was well traveled.
Speaker 1: Her father was an American diplomat. From the time I
Speaker 1: was a little girl, like, I always had dreamt of
Speaker 1: coming to Africa. And I don't know if it's because
Speaker 1: like I had been to all these other you know,
Speaker 1: countries and continents. Um, this is gonna really silly. But
Speaker 1: as a child, I really think it's because I was
Speaker 1: such an animal lover and like idolized women like Jane
Speaker 1: Goodall and Diane Fosse, and like it was the wildlife
Speaker 1: that initially attracted me and like the nature. In college,
Speaker 1: actually studied health sciences and worked with disabled children before
Speaker 1: moving to Uganda was like, but it made her nervous
Speaker 1: to see what little experience her peers had. She was
Speaker 1: surrounded by young women who felt called to do service
Speaker 1: but had never actually studied or worked in these fields,
Speaker 1: and felt like they could just figure it out as
Speaker 1: they went along. And Yeah, a lot of young girls,
Speaker 1: you know, late teens, early twenties, generally not educated beyond
Speaker 1: secondary school or high school, never having any work experience
Speaker 1: like none, but would then graduate and come over here
Speaker 1: to set up their own organization. I'm going to come
Speaker 1: and do my own thing so i can be my
Speaker 1: own boss and run my own show. That was very, very,
Speaker 1: very much a trend, I'll be honest, though. One thing
Speaker 1: that I found a bit ironic about this story is
Speaker 1: how many of these relatively young white American missionaries were
Speaker 1: ready to criticize each other but think of themselves as
Speaker 1: the one white person doing it right in Africa. I mean,
Speaker 1: how did these young women without any medical training end
Speaker 1: up taking care of an incredibly sick woman in the
Speaker 1: first place. Back then, in missionary communities like Ginger, experience
Speaker 1: was often overlooked. What mattered most was your compassion, your piety,
Speaker 1: and your it meant in two thousand ten, serving his
Speaker 1: children was feeding hundreds of children every week, sometimes as
Speaker 1: many as a thousand. It was also around this time
Speaker 1: that Renee started doing more than feeding kids. She began
Speaker 1: taking them in. Children who were sick with tuberculosis or
Speaker 1: malaria now nutrition. Renee's team would bring them back and
Speaker 1: forth to the hospital for treatment, while letting the kids
Speaker 1: in their families stay at the center for free. Here's
Speaker 1: how Katie Davis, one of Renee's old friends, described her
Speaker 1: in a blog back in two thousand ten. We had
Speaker 1: a voice actor read this too. Renee lives with purpose.
Speaker 1: She is intentional about loving people with the love of Christ.
Speaker 1: She stops for one person and loves that person as
Speaker 1: if they were Christ himself. In her living room, she
Speaker 1: spends her day's nurturing children who we all swear will
Speaker 1: surely die back to health, preparing awful smelling high calorie milk,
Speaker 1: and mopping vomit off the floor and herself. And she
Speaker 1: doesn't complain because she knows she's doing it for Jesus.
Speaker 1: My childhood hero was Mother Teresa. By today hero is Renee,
Speaker 1: a modern Mother Teresa. That was her reputation back then,
Speaker 1: even people who had never met Renee were inspired by
Speaker 1: her and wanted to help her play a tiny role
Speaker 1: in her mission. In that same blog post, Katie asks
Speaker 1: people to help Renee buy a new car for work,
Speaker 1: a car that could be used to rescue more people
Speaker 1: like Naba Coosa. Renee needs a car, and a good one.
Speaker 1: The kind were looking for a cost between ten and
Speaker 1: twelve thousand dollars that serving his children currently just doesn't have,
Speaker 1: and people in the comments promised to donate. Weeks later,
Speaker 1: they got that car, a white Toyota land Cruiser. Navacosa
Speaker 1: is a proving tremendously. It is nothing short of a miracle,
Speaker 1: and no doubt, due to Renee and Shannon's devoted around
Speaker 1: the clock care and a God who is more awesome
Speaker 1: than I can fathom, Nabacosa's recovery wouldn't last. Within a
Speaker 1: couple of days, her health took a turn for the worse.
Speaker 1: I do remember coming back and she was lying in
Speaker 1: there hooked up to I v S that had been
Speaker 1: administered by Renee. She was very uncomfortable and she was groaning,
Speaker 1: and there was just like a very foul smell coming
Speaker 1: from her and that room. I just remember just being
Speaker 1: in shock by all of it. She wasn't in a
Speaker 1: medical facility, she was just being treated from the center.
Speaker 1: She wasn't getting any better despite having you know, a
Speaker 1: so called treatment plan and and food and water, and
Speaker 1: then just declined so rapidly. My friend Napocosa went to
Speaker 1: be with Jesus. God decided that it was time for
Speaker 1: her to come home, to leave her earthly pain behind
Speaker 1: and come worship Him for the rest of eternity. Now
Speaker 1: I have to say, this is not the way I
Speaker 1: wanted things to happen. I had other plans. I had
Speaker 1: a different end to her story and mind. But this
Speaker 1: is God's perfect end to her story, and the story
Speaker 1: is not mine to write. Renee told a moving story,
Speaker 1: and as we'll see, she'd keep telling it. But here's
Speaker 1: the thing. From the beginning, actually doubted Renee's version of events.
Speaker 1: A blog of her running through these hospitals barefoot. I
Speaker 1: feel like that was maybe for exaggeration purposes. Ashley wasn't
Speaker 1: with Rani that night, but she did know about Ugandan hospitals.
Speaker 1: She had fostered dozens of kids and often had to
Speaker 1: navigate Uganda's complex health care system, so actually doubted that
Speaker 1: Renee Nabucoza would be turned away like that again and again.
Speaker 1: The details just felt off to her. I don't know
Speaker 1: what kind of doctor would prescribe treatment for somebody that's sick,
Speaker 1: send them home and say you can just continue this
Speaker 1: treatment from home, you who has no medical training. Like
Speaker 1: that is shocking to me. I mean, it would be
Speaker 1: one thing if all she needed was a dose of antibiotics.
Speaker 1: But like when somebody is dying, starting to death and
Speaker 1: rotting from a host of infections, you don't just give
Speaker 1: a list of instruction to say, take her on home.
Speaker 1: She can be managed for him home. As Renee tells it,
Speaker 1: Nabokoza fought to live until the very end until God
Speaker 1: decided it was her time to go. But Ashley says
Speaker 1: she was there when Napocosa died, and she remembers a
Speaker 1: completely different version where Nabacosa's death wasn't dignified, wasn't peaceful
Speaker 1: at all. At this point, she had been allowed to
Speaker 1: go outside and she was sitting on the veranda, and
Speaker 1: I believe she had been eating lunch, and all of
Speaker 1: a sudden she took a turn for the worst. She
Speaker 1: just like the eyes started rolling back in her head,
Speaker 1: gurgling as if she was like gonna, you know, possibly
Speaker 1: faint or honestly die. And Renee ran into the house.
Speaker 1: She had her own little pharmacy set up, and she
Speaker 1: grabbed a medication, came outside and injected her with it,
Speaker 1: and then she died, but fell backwards. In Ashley's description
Speaker 1: is so alarming and almost violent. We were left wondering
Speaker 1: how much had Renee's faith blinded her. Did Renee call
Speaker 1: us the death of the woman she set out to save.
Speaker 1: It's not like she was held by Renee As she
Speaker 1: peacefully slipped away. It was like, oh my gosh, like
Speaker 1: something is happening with her. I'm going to run inside,
Speaker 1: come back out, jabber, and then bool, she's dead. Nama
Speaker 1: Coosa's death spelled the end of Ashley and Renee's friendship.
Speaker 1: Nine years later, Ashley would write an affidavit against Renee,
Speaker 1: accusing her of illegally practicing medicine in and she would
Speaker 1: use Nabokoza as her primary example. You get it, y'all.
Speaker 1: Get Missionaries weren't just something I read about in history books.
Speaker 1: They were something I grew up hearing about for years.
Speaker 1: My family comes from a place called Tuntumu, a two
Speaker 1: hour drive from Nairobi. Yeah, it's a beautiful town, nestled
Speaker 1: in the rolling hills and highlands of central Tania. I
Speaker 1: live in the US now, but when I first heard
Speaker 1: about Renee, I was living in Kenya. I moved there
Speaker 1: back into I was and eighteen, mostly to be a
Speaker 1: freelance reporter. But I also wanted to travel the country
Speaker 1: with my cousins and spend time with my grandmother or
Speaker 1: show show, as we say in cuckoo you or native language.
Speaker 1: I wanted to know her and record her history my
Speaker 1: never days like me. When I wasn't practicing my cuckoo you,
Speaker 1: I was walking in the family farm, picking mangoes and
Speaker 1: avocados straight from the trees, or playing fetch with the
Speaker 1: dogs and saying hide my uncle's cows path. But whenever
Speaker 1: I walked through it, I also felt like I could
Speaker 1: feel the weight of history on my shoulders. Britain has
Speaker 1: brought much good to Kenya. A standards of living are
Speaker 1: growing still higher as more of her people learn the
Speaker 1: lessons that the white man has to teach. More than
Speaker 1: a hundred years ago, Tumutumu became one of the very
Speaker 1: first missionary outposts of the Church of Scotland and across
Speaker 1: the ridge from our home, that's where the Catholic missionary
Speaker 1: set up. Down the street were the Anglicans. Mister Littleton
Speaker 1: lens of the maumas threats on the lives of Catholic missionaries,
Speaker 1: and in the Nyanza province he talks with elders of
Speaker 1: the Kukuyo tribe from which the Maumau drew hundreds of recruits,
Speaker 1: many of whom have not been arrested. You can see
Speaker 1: the presence of missionaries everywhere. They established one of the
Speaker 1: very first hospitals in the region to Mutumu Hospital, and
Speaker 1: one of the best schools to Mutumu Primary School where
Speaker 1: my father went. He The one thing my grandmother would
Speaker 1: talk about proudly was her lifelong membership in the church
Speaker 1: as women's Guild. It was a point of pride for
Speaker 1: her and in our town. It made her a respectable woman.
Speaker 1: What does she want us to remember? I might remember then,
Speaker 1: which it tell us about the women's guild? He give them.
Speaker 1: On the day I recorded her, she was wearing her
Speaker 1: favorite light blue bandanna. It read p C E A
Speaker 1: Presbyterian Church of East Africa and If you ask some
Speaker 1: of the older Kenyons about missionaries, this is what they
Speaker 1: talk about. The good things. For her generation. The church
Speaker 1: represented a new Africa with a brand new set of opportunities.
Speaker 1: When my grandmother died last year, dozens of women from
Speaker 1: the guild came to the church. They wore the same
Speaker 1: blue bandana that my grandmother always wore. Together, they carried
Speaker 1: my grandmother's coffin out of the church, her bandanna draped
Speaker 1: over it. To me, you can't talk about missionaries without
Speaker 1: talking about colonialism. The missionaries had come with promises to
Speaker 1: educate and convert Kenyon's, but they were also complicit in
Speaker 1: the theft of their land and their resources. But whenever
Speaker 1: I asked her about the other side of that history,
Speaker 1: the dark side, how the British detained tens of thousands
Speaker 1: of cuku Are tribe and forcibly relocated people to barbed
Speaker 1: wire camps, burned down homes, set up curfews, all to
Speaker 1: keep them down. I always had the sense that my
Speaker 1: grandmother just didn't want to speak about those things. To her.
Speaker 1: The British had done terrible things, but the missionaries had
Speaker 1: done God's work. They brought hospital is to save children, schools,
Speaker 1: to bring opportunities, and I get that when I think
Speaker 1: about Renee Boch. The question isn't whether or not all
Speaker 1: missionaries are bad, but I do wonder what would the
Speaker 1: you Gonde and she encountered say. That's what has driven
Speaker 1: me throughout this entire podcast actually hearing the you Gonde
Speaker 1: on side of the story. Would they see her as
Speaker 1: my grandmother did, doing God's work by bringing hospitals and schools,
Speaker 1: or would they see her as a harbinger of something darker,
Speaker 1: an enabler of something more dangerous, something so terrible that
Speaker 1: no one could speak about it now. A lot of
Speaker 1: things Renee wrote in her blog are hard to believe.
Speaker 1: Did she really run barefoot through a hospital? Did a
Speaker 1: doctor actually tell her to manage a patient herself? But
Speaker 1: what grabs my attention the most is something that Renee
Speaker 1: implies again and again in her blogs, this idea that
Speaker 1: you Gondan families didn't care enough and that was why
Speaker 1: their children were starving, as if love could heal any
Speaker 1: amount of poverty. After Nabacosa died, Renee wrote this, you
Speaker 1: should know that thousands of people are praying for you
Speaker 1: and your family. I know your mom is feeling so
Speaker 1: sad about the past twenty three years. I told her
Speaker 1: you forgave her. One of the only things Renee and
Speaker 1: Ashley agree on is that Naubakoza was neglected, had been starved.
Speaker 1: In fact, in her affidavit, Renee says that one of
Speaker 1: Nabucoza's relatives told her they put her in a room
Speaker 1: to wait for her to die. Sweet Nabucosa lived a
Speaker 1: life full of incredible pain and suffering. She lived a
Speaker 1: life of neglect, a life of abuse. She was even
Speaker 1: denied the right to be loved by her own mother.
Speaker 1: Can you even begin to imagine what that would be, La,
Speaker 1: I can't. After Renee posted Navacosa's story, it spread like
Speaker 1: wildfire from one Christian blog to another, the parable of
Speaker 1: poor Nabacosa, who had never received love until the day
Speaker 1: she was rescued by these two young white women. Here's
Speaker 1: some of what they wrote. She was in her awful
Speaker 1: state only because no one had cared for her, No
Speaker 1: one had loved her, no one had even given her
Speaker 1: a second thought. That she survived as long as she
Speaker 1: did in the care of Anti Renee is a miracle
Speaker 1: in itself. I've never held a starving person in my arms,
Speaker 1: her dry skin warm against mine, and prayed she lived.
Speaker 1: Renee has it was just too easy, too convenient to
Speaker 1: cast off Nabacosa's family as these silent villains in Renee's
Speaker 1: heroic story, a cheap plot device that was eerily familiar,
Speaker 1: like the casual mention of fly is swarming around an
Speaker 1: African child's head. But what would Nabucoza's family say. We
Speaker 1: needed to hear in their words what happened. So Regiv
Speaker 1: went to go find them. I set out early one
Speaker 1: Sunday morning, all right. I headed north from Gina for
Speaker 1: about an hour, following the Nile downstream along the same
Speaker 1: dirt roads that Renee would have taken when she found
Speaker 1: Nabucoza ten years earlier. I'm on the back of a
Speaker 1: motorcycle with smy my translator, and fix her. I'm holding
Speaker 1: the recorder in one hand and the seat would together.
Speaker 1: So Mom and Nabokoza is still here. No, she's gone already, Okay.
Speaker 1: So May was a former employee of serving his children
Speaker 1: who had been fired back in over a pay dispute.
Speaker 1: Now he's a witness in the case against Renee. So
Speaker 1: he's not exactly a neutral party, but he knew the
Speaker 1: local language and where Navacoza's village was, and we had
Speaker 1: all his translations checked with the third party in full disclosure.
Speaker 1: Our team chose to pay some for this work. Anyway,
Speaker 1: we got to the village and asked around for Navacoza's mother.
Speaker 1: So where are we now? Yeah? Okay, And pretty quickly
Speaker 1: we found not her mother but her sister, Lydia. I'm
Speaker 1: she was outside of a small brick house cooking over
Speaker 1: a fire. Her kids were nearby sorting some nuts. Actually,
Speaker 1: does she know anything information? Litia's eyes got big as
Speaker 1: she told sam story Ginger masses vunteers in bazoong I
Speaker 1: recognized some words ginger Messungu. She's going to the term
Speaker 1: as so far as she's the sister to the little
Speaker 1: Navakosa and when Navakosa was sick, she's among the people
Speaker 1: who escorted Navacoza to the clinic in Gina suburb. In
Speaker 1: all of Renee's blog posts about Navocosa, she told the
Speaker 1: story of neglect, a story about a woman cast aside
Speaker 1: by her own family. She never once mentioned that Nabucoza's
Speaker 1: sister was by her side for four whole days did
Speaker 1: she believe that these missouis were doctors? Well, you kid,
Speaker 1: but no, it is this money. She said, she didn't
Speaker 1: know whether they were doctors, but she felt like a
Speaker 1: goat being dragged along. I met Navacosa's mom, Jane a
Speaker 1: week later at her farm. She had a bundle of
Speaker 1: corn husks on her head and wore a tied eye
Speaker 1: green tashiki and a long skirt. She sat down the
Speaker 1: corn husks and brought a few logs for us to
Speaker 1: sit on in her front yard. I wanted to hear
Speaker 1: about how Navacosa came to be the way she was.
Speaker 1: I brought along another interpreter, Sophie tell Us from Navocosa's birth.
Speaker 1: When was Navacasa born and was she healthy as a child? Oh?
Speaker 1: Yea as valubuality. Did I have my nine? It did
Speaker 1: two and she was a healthy baby, no problems. Jane
Speaker 1: said that at age three they noticed Novacosa's hands were
Speaker 1: different sizes. One hand was big, another one was small.
Speaker 1: That's how it started. And she was speaking normally like
Speaker 1: her brand developing like everybody else or how get a balloon?
Speaker 1: Jean going to nyog the okay, she could not speak.
Speaker 1: I learned that Nabucoza used to walk despite half her
Speaker 1: body being paralyzed, but she also regularly had seizures. Nevertheless,
Speaker 1: for twenty seven years they got by. When Jane spent
Speaker 1: time with her husband, Nabocoza would stay with her grandmother
Speaker 1: and they had always done their best to take care
Speaker 1: of her. The people, the Missoulus that found Navocosa, they're
Speaker 1: saying that she was neglected, that she was not eating,
Speaker 1: that they were trying to starve her. That's the way
Speaker 1: she's saying, you know, towards in that case, we are lying.
Speaker 1: Jane denied neglect. She said Navacosa had been closely cared
Speaker 1: for and NGO in the area had even been giving
Speaker 1: her anti Caesar medication with a warning never to stop
Speaker 1: taking them. Or as Jane put it, it would hit
Speaker 1: Navocosa so bad. But when Renee brought Nabucoza back to
Speaker 1: serving his children, that's exactly what they did. I can't
Speaker 1: a facigated real. They were told to stop the medication
Speaker 1: that she was on, so they started giving her that food.
Speaker 1: Then I asked Jane the question that had been on
Speaker 1: my mind for months. It was the whole reason that
Speaker 1: had come all this way to meet her in the
Speaker 1: first place, Um, how did Nabucosa pass away? At it?
Speaker 1: And I have found it? Went after bathing her, she
Speaker 1: was trying to give some food and then she saw
Speaker 1: that food was no longer going now carrying her to
Speaker 1: put down the bid, she went like that. The way
Speaker 1: that Jane spoke, she made it clear that Navocoza wasn't neglected.
Speaker 1: She was loved by her family. They were with her
Speaker 1: in her last days. That meant Renee had gotten the
Speaker 1: story wrong, or at the very least made it her own.
Speaker 1: I think Jane impacked my things, But just as I
Speaker 1: was about to leave, she asked if I had a
Speaker 1: photo of Navocosa. I pulled out my phone and sifted
Speaker 1: through Renee's blogs just for a second. Then I handed
Speaker 1: my phone to her. It was a photo of Navacosa
Speaker 1: lying in a bed with fresh, clean clothes on. Her
Speaker 1: eyes are wide open and she's looking right at the camera.
Speaker 1: M Jane spent a few quiet moments with a smile
Speaker 1: on her face, and I realized that for Jane, it
Speaker 1: might have been ten years since she even seen a
Speaker 1: photograph of her own daughter. Before Nabucoza died, a story
Speaker 1: was already being written about her life in Renee's blogs,
Speaker 1: it was a story of unimaginable neglect, of starvation, and
Speaker 1: ultimately the origin story of Renee's own heroism. Nine years later,
Speaker 1: Ashley uses Navacosa's story too in her case against Renee.
Speaker 1: Only this story is a victimization of Napacosa being injected,
Speaker 1: stabbed with a syringe by Renee, killed rather than saved.
Speaker 1: So why should we trust Ashley's version any more than Renee's.
Speaker 1: Of course, he might be thinking, well, what about the
Speaker 1: family who says they never abandoned not Pacosa, never neglected her,
Speaker 1: hadn't done their best even with few resources. Is it
Speaker 1: possible they might not be telling the truth. Yes, of course,
Speaker 1: but that's not really the point. The point is that Renee,
Speaker 1: in Ashley, and other missionaries in this case that are
Speaker 1: too often talking about what did or did not happen
Speaker 1: to Ugandan's But except for a few former employees, these
Speaker 1: Ugandan voices are largely absent. And keep in mind that
Speaker 1: most of the time these missionaries don't even speak any
Speaker 1: of the local languages. Who gets to tell the story matters,
Speaker 1: and how they tell it matters too. For Renee, not
Speaker 1: Beacosa's death could have been an early warning that she
Speaker 1: was in over her head, but Renee thought is something different,
Speaker 1: an opportunity, a rolling cry. Navacosa's life was not in vain.
Speaker 1: God is still using her even today. God has used
Speaker 1: her to put a beautiful face and name to the
Speaker 1: word starvation, to make the hunger crisis real for people
Speaker 1: all around the world. Navacosa's life mattered. Thousands have fallen
Speaker 1: in love with this precious woman, have cried over her
Speaker 1: pain and spent nights in prayer for her. There are
Speaker 1: thousands of navacosa Is all around the world. Now that
Speaker 1: you know about it, what are you going to do?
Speaker 1: Within two months of Napacosa's death, Renee was back in
Speaker 1: the United States, holding fundraising events at local churches from Chattanooga, Tennessee,
Speaker 1: to Miskogee, Oklahoma. She would hold silent auctions and sell
Speaker 1: beads and other handmade goods from Uganda, and even stage
Speaker 1: mock feedings where churchgoers would in their own bulls and
Speaker 1: line up for rice and beings, just like the children
Speaker 1: in Uganda. And she would tell stories like navacasas show
Speaker 1: pictures of children she had supposedly saved. Jackie Crawmlick is
Speaker 1: a nurse who volunteered at Serving His Children. She still
Speaker 1: remembers one of her name's presentations. She told the story
Speaker 1: of Navocosa, the whole story from beginning to end, like
Speaker 1: this girl and she was a sack of blaa and
Speaker 1: she was like stabbing and crying. The story was basically
Speaker 1: all about how this girl was so neglected and abused
Speaker 1: your whole life. She was neglected, neglected until you know
Speaker 1: Renee came in and saved her, and her fundraising took
Speaker 1: off on the back of that story. Navacasa's story was,
Speaker 1: no doubt a powerful one. Renee was a gifted storyteller
Speaker 1: doing something we do all the time as journalists describe
Speaker 1: and vivid details the harsh environments in which people are living,
Speaker 1: described their suffering and lyric crazings, and end with a
Speaker 1: glimmer of hope a call to action. Renee would continue
Speaker 1: to post countless stories and photos of sick children on
Speaker 1: her blog and on social media, all part of her
Speaker 1: campaign to end child malnutrition. In a few years, Serving
Speaker 1: His Children would go from a fledgling nonprofit to something
Speaker 1: bigger and NGO with outsized ambitions, collecting more than one
Speaker 1: point five million dollars in five years as the list
Speaker 1: of donors grew longer, but Nabokoza's name would just be
Speaker 1: the first in a different list, A long, somber one.
Speaker 1: Next time on the Missionary, we go looking for Renee
Speaker 1: Back and we find her sitting at home in Virginia,
Speaker 1: her life upside down, wondering why she's an outcast. I
Speaker 1: guess how you've been. Yeah, it's been challenging for sure.
Speaker 1: No one wants to be be said to be murder.
Speaker 1: People have forgotten that I'm a human, like in, a
Speaker 1: person with emotions and someone who has children that are
Speaker 1: going to grow up one day and google their mom's
Speaker 1: name and say, Wow, was my mom a serial killer?
Speaker 1: Did she start a genocide? Because that's what people said
Speaker 1: about her. The Missionaries produced an association with iHeart Media.
Speaker 1: It's written and reported by Roger Gola, Heleemage Condhi, and
Speaker 1: Malcolm Burnley. It's produced by Michelle Lands and Ryan Murdoch.
Speaker 1: Mark Lotto is our story editor. Our executive producer is
Speaker 1: Moi Thicketter. Our fact checker is Austin Thompson. Mixing by
Speaker 1: Josh Rogisson and voice acting by Taylor Kaufman.