Erickson, Mark

Skoog Grave Marker (Fall/Winter 2010)

USAID and the Covenant church’s mission (Summer/Fall 2026)

As I eased into retirement, I chose to occupy my time with, among other activities, volunteering, working part-time, being a tourist, visiting “shut-ins,” and crafting special projects. Regarding the latter, I initially planned to immerse myself in archival boxes in the basement of Brandel Library on the campus of North Park University to focus on the Covenant denomination’s mission field in Congo, particularly the period surrounding the 1960 assassination of the democratically-elected Congolese President, Patrice Lumumba, as well as the 1964 murder of Covenant medical missionary, Paul Carlson. I had known that Carlson had been shot and killed after he followed God’s calling, and my eyes watered as I sat in the Covenant’s archives and actually held his New Testament with shrapnel holes.