mokili in congo: a biography of william millman and the yakusu mission

’Love with the urge in it’ For forty years William Millman, known in Congo as ’Mokili’, served the people of the Yakusu area amid trials and joys, disease, sadness, bereavements, failures, adventures, achievements, fun, laughter, and lifelong friendships. Missionary, teacher, self-taught medical practitioner, administrator of a rapidly expanding Mission, project manager and builder of houses, schools and a vast New Church that still survives today, Mokili devoted his life to his faith and to the people of Congo he had come to love. Mokili’s daughter, Litwasi, was born in the Congo but was brought home in 1912 at the age of three to live with foster parents in Rochdale. In 1937 she married James, known as Jim, Butterworth. Over the next twenty years Jim, a committed Christian and theologian, would develop a very deep respect for his wife’s parents and a strong mutual friendship developed. After Mokili’s death in 1956 Jim determined that Mokili’s immense achievements should be recorded forever and he commenced the intense research of this biography. In 1957 Litwasi and Jim journeyed to Yakusu to visit Litwasi’s birth place and the scene of her parents’ life work. Here they met Lititiyo whom Mokili had first met carrying home a human leg to eat. This young chief’s son had been converted by Mokili and had become a Christian pastor. As Mokili’s friend and colleague for over thirty years, Lititiyo was well suited to sum up for Litwasi and Jim the essence of Mokili’s service to the people of the Congo: ’Love with the urge in it’