David Livingstone

David Livingstone is a Scottish missionary and physician. He spent most of his life exploring Africa. He helped Europeans learn a lot about the continent of Africa. Livingstone was born in Scotland. His parents were really religious so David followed his dad’s footsteps. David is a really hard working person, the reason why he would want to go to Africa was because he knew that there weren’t a lot of Christians there; he also knew that not many people there knew about Christ. At age ten he began working in the local cotton mill, he had to work long hours and he got too little pay for what he was doing. When he didn’t work, he would just stay at home to study, and in 1836 he entered Anderson's College in Glasgow. He was mainly interested in theology and medicine. In 1838 the London Missionary Society accepted him as a candidate, and two years later he received a medical degree from the University of Glasgow. The First War between Britain and China ruined his hopes of becoming a medical missionary to China, but the missionary society arranged a new placement for him in southern Africa. He was supposed to be preaching in the southern part of Africa; however, due to the fact that he wasn’t successful, he went to the north. While he was there, he worked with an individual named, Robert Moffat. Later on he married his daughter, Mary Moffat.

For the next 15 years, Livingstone was constantly moving into the African interior. He was strengthening his missionary determination he was also responding entirely to the delights of geographical discovery; he was building for himself a Christian, a courageous explorer, and a fervent antislavery advocate. As a missionary, David Livingstone quickly believed that what he was supposed to do is to not remain in one spot, preaching the gospel to the few local people willing to listen. Instead, he should keep on moving, reaching new groups and extending to them to be more familiar with what God wanted them to do with Christianity. Eventually he would expand this idea into a belief that his role was to open up Africa's interior to broader influences from Western civilization. Once that occurred, he would work hand in hand to end slave trading and uplift African peoples. Such motives drove Livingstone.

He worked really hard as a missionary but he still had the desire to keep on exploring. He explored the Nile and thought that he was really interesting; too bad his disease had overcome him. He eventually died In May 1873, at Chitambo in the Ilala district In order to embalm Livingstone's body, they removed his heart and viscera and buried them in African soil. In a difficult journey of nine months, they carried his body to the coast. It was taken to England and, in a great Victorian funeral, was buried in Westminster Abbey on April 18, 1874. Livingstone was found on his knees, dead in prayer. His body and his personal items and papers, were sent back to England. This journey took almost a full year.

David Livingstone really helped people in Africa to get to know Christ more and understand what God wanted them to do with their lives. Not only did he do that, he helped to get more geographers to that area to explore what he didn’t explore; in other words, he guided the geographers there. I would recommend this book to other people to show them that there are people out there that would do so much for God and to explore the world. This book is interesting but some parts were really boring but hey whose book is all-interesting?