By Dorothy Brotherton

"FORGIVENESS frees me from being an emotional slave to my attackers." So says Eloise Bergen -- and she has much more to forgive than most people. She and her husband John were attacked at their rural home in Kenya by a gang of nine men in July 2008. John was beaten, cut, choked and left for dead. Eloise was tortured and raped.

The story of their attack, escape, suffering and amazing recovery is told in a new book called Forgiveness in the Face of Terror. Within months of the ordeal, the couple was touring churches telling their story, and they are now touring with the book all over Canada and the United States. All proceeds from the book will go to help the orphans they left behind in Kenya.

The Bergens must have left their hearts in Africa too, for they've already been back to Kenya once and John plans to return again in January to further the work.

Even in the rawness of trauma, as Eloise was discharged from the Nairobi Hospital to return to Canada for recovery, she said, "Oh Africa, I'm going to miss you! I will carry you back home with me in my heart. Oh, Africa, I promise you, I will be back!"

Before they embarked on their mission to Africa, the Bergens lived in Vernon, BC, where John operated a business called Bergen's Renovations and Construction. Eloise worked as a nanny.

In 2007, they met Ralph Bromley, president of Hope for the Nations. He told them about Kenya's orphans, and after learning of their interest, asked pointedly, "So when are you coming to Kenya?"

The Bergens received support from their four grown children and all their families, even though the media at that time was filled with stories of bloodshed in Kenya.

The book chronicles the Bergens' early experiences in Kenya, with its deep poverty and extreme needs. Their hearts broke over the Kitale Show grounds that had become a temporary home to 4,000 internally displaced people, and the garbage dump where people lived in huts made of rags, sticks and pieces of plastic.

The Bergens quickly jumped into working with street kids and orphans in Kenya, focused on a 13-acre farm, where they started growing food for orphans. It was in this place of ministry that the brutal attack took place.

Their ordeal made headlines around the world, and in the book, they suggest that even the publicity was used by God.

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For example, a CBC news reporter visited them in the Nairobi hospital and asked what they would say to their attackers if they had the chance. John replied, "I would tell them that Jesus loves them, and that I love them. And that there is forgiveness for what they have done." Later a CBC staff member in Toronto told them the story of their forgiveness reverberated throughout the entire staff.

John says he has had "a lot of practice forgiving." Abuse in his past, a father whose actions when John was a child left him bitter and angry, relatives and friends who had betrayed him, all seemed to line up in his soul to be forgiven when Eloise nearly left him after 27 years of marriage. John realized he needed to deal with unforgiveness. Because of that practice, he says, it didn't feel like a struggle to forgive the attackers in Kenya.

Ryan Schumacher, who drove John to the Kitale Hospital, details that trip in the book and describes how John, only semiconscious, spoke of forgiveness even then. "This was possible because, for many years, he had been downloading intimacy with his heavenly Father into his spirit," says Schumacher.

John tells people today that forgiveness is easier when there are no unhealed emotional hurts to tap into. He asked friends in Kitale to visit the attackers in prison and share God's forgiveness with them.

Eloise also traces her ability to forgive to earlier practice. The Bergens went through deep emotional pain when their adopted daughter rejected them and turned to a dark side of life. After years of working through pain to extend love and forgiveness to her, they were reconciled.

"Today Amanda is one of my best friends," says Eloise. "This heartbreak and lesson in forgiveness helped prepare me for responding to the horror of the attack in Kenya with a healed heart."

John and Eloise are taking the message of forgiveness on their speaking and book promoting tours, finding it is deeply needed in churches in North America. "To forgive is not the same as to condone," says John. "We can't excuse evil, but we can forgive the evildoer. In this way we protect ourselves from the poison of anger."

Eloise adds: "When we go speaking, people relate on different levels. People who have gone through any kind of abuse can find solutions in the book."

John is hoping to jump-start a project to buy more land for the orphanage when he returns to Kenya in January. Meanwhile he and Eloise are travelling in a camper van, going wherever they are called across North America.

September 10/2009