NASHVILLE, TENN. - Medical missionary Dr. Robert Whittaker sat beside the hospital bed Tuesday morning, his Bible open.

But the physician was not counseling patients — he was the patient.

Shot in the back of his left arm as four young men kidnapped him last week from his home on the compound of Nigerian Christian Hospital, Whittaker was recovering from surgery at Vanderbilt Medical Center. The Welsh-born doctor has served in the mission hospital near the Nigerian city of Aba for 25 years, his work supported by Nashville’s West End Church of Christ.


During the Vanderbilt procedure, Dr. Jeff Watson, a specialist in hand and arm reconstructive surgery, inserted a stainless steel plate in Whittaker's arm between the elbow and shoulder, according to Jim Netterville, a Vanderbilt surgeon who has served on short-term medical missions at Nigerian Christian Hospital. The plate will steady the bone as pieces left fragmented by an entering bullet fuse themselves back together.

Dr. Bruce Shack, chairman of plastic surgery at Vanderbilt, also treated the missionary's wife, Annette Whittaker, on Tuesday morning, Netterville said. Shack extracted a bullet fragment embedded about two-and-a-half inches deep in the thigh. Annette was wounded when assailants fired downward at the family’s tile floor during the kidnapping.

As a medical tech changed his IV, Whittaker talked about the abduction and reflected on the event from the standpoint of faith.

The ordeal began when four men entered his home about 11 p.m. on Sunday, Aug. 2. He said the young kidnappers — their ages ranging from 17 to 25, he estimated — ordered him to lie down in the back seat of a Mercedes sedan as they took him.

The doctor felt a “sudden sting,” he said, his arm suddenly twisting out of shape. A stray bullet had pierced the rear of the car, puncturing the fuel tank and penetrating his arm. The kidnappers did not intend to shoot him, he said. In fact, they apologized for hurting him.

After they wounded him, the kidnappers decided to put him in the trunk. But as the “Keystone cops” — Whittaker's quip for his awkward assailants — couldn't open the trunk, they let him stay in the back seat, this time sitting up and able to see exactly where the car was going. When the Mercedes ran out of gas from the accidental hole in the fuel tank, the kidnappers got out and pushed, one leaning inside to steer as Whittaker stayed in the back.

The group eventually arrived at their destination — a bamboo thicket with a hollow space in the middle only seven or eight miles away from the doctor’s home. It was there that Whittaker waited two days as hospital personnel helped negotiate his release. Inside the thicket, Whittaker rested on top of a long Nigerian shirt provided by the kidnappers, who also served him three meals.

“I was totally relaxed,” Whittaker said. “I thought, ‘Well, I've always believed in God. I believe this world is a transient place.’ There was no need to worry. I just complied with whatever they asked me to do.”

With kidnappings a lucrative venture on the rise in Nigeria, Whittaker knew he could be a victim. “You've finally come at last for me,” he recalled thinking, adding that he had been robbed at gunpoint twice.

The doctor was grateful that his wound was from a stray shot instead of a direct one, underscoring the lethal power of the AK-47, a rapid-fire rifle of standard military issue in the former Soviet Union and its allies during the Cold War.

“These young men ... have these powerful weapons, and no wisdom to go with it,” Whittaker said. “They're deadly.”

Whittaker conversed with his captors, whom he described as desperate young people without opportunity. One, for example, had trained as a welder but as the child of a single parent didn’t have money for welding equipment.

Whittaker fears Christians have failed to communicate the true implications of the gospel to people. "They don't really perceive Jesus as a solution to their problems. Christianity is just a ... safety policy, insurance," he said.

As Whittaker talked with his captors, Christians in Nigeria, the United States and other nations around the globe prayed for his safety. The Nigerian Christian Hospital staff negotiated for his release.

After nearly 48 hours as a hostage, Whittaker became a patient at the hospital where he’s served as a physician for 25 years. Dr. Brian Camazine, a surgeon from Texas working at the hospital, cared for Whittaker and decided when his fellow doctor was stable enough for the trip to Nashville.

Before he left Nigeria, Whittaker assured his friends and colleagues he would return.

“I told them I didn't know when it would be,” he said. But the British-born doctor became teary-eyed as he thought about the mission he left behind. In Africa, he explained, one way missionaries show their love is by sacrificially toughing out difficult times with the people to whom God has sent them.

“Whatever happens, you never leave them, you never go from them permanently,” Whittaker said. With the bullet severing a key nerve in his arm and likely limiting his ability to do some surgical procedures, the doctor wondered if his role might change to allow more training of new physicians.

Despite the suffering, Whittaker said he sees God's hand at work.

“I've been saved. ... I could have died so easily,” he said.

“We can’t tie God down to our expectations,” he added. “He’s still there, and he’s still caring for me.”


Contributions for the Whittakers and letters of encouragement may be sent to:

International Health Care Foundation
102 N. Locust,
Searcy, AR 72143

Please note “Whittaker Fund” on checks.

Donate via PayPal at www.ihcf.net

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