"I WILL STAY WITH YOU." Sophie Petronin

                                             "I will stay with you."

Sophie Petronin survived four years in captivity in Africa at the hands of jihadist militants.



A photograph on the Reuters website (October 9, 2020) shows a small woman walking beside French President Emmanuel Macron.They are at a military airport near Paris, France. The woman  is 75 year old Sophie Petronin. The story that accompanies the photograph is amazing. It tells how Sophie, a French aid worker, (along with three other hostages) was "released in Mali after negotiations led by the West African nation's security services and international partners." They were flown to the capital Bamako late on Thursday.

Mali, the eighth largest country in Africa, is landlocked.

Sophie Petronin ran a charity for malnourished and orphaned children in that country. On Christmas Eve 2016 she was abducted in Gao, a city on the river Niger, east-southeast of Timbuktu.

The story, written by Paul Lorgerie, tells how Sophie managed to survive the ordeal. Did she ever feel like giving up? Yes, she did.  At one point, he wrote, "She wandered into the desert, sat on the ground in the baking sun and wept."

But she had an experience that sustained her through the days, weeks, months and years of loneliness, uncertainty and hardship.

One day she recalled, "a small voice in her head spoke to her. "It said you mustn't cry or be sad. I will stay with you. And until today it hasn't left."

In the Holy Bible, 1 Kings 19:12 there is the story of the prophet Elijah and "a still small voice", "a delicate whispering voice".

Was this the same voice that Sophie heard?

Sophie Petronin said she tried not to think of death and dying while she was held captive.You don't know when, where and how death will come, so just don't think about it, she said. That helped her to overcome fear.

Sophie was the last French citizen to be held hostage anywhere in the world. 

Her son Sebastian Chadaud-Petroni was at the airport at Bamako to greet her. He lifted her off the ground as soon as he met her.

Now the woman held hostage for four years "by Ismalic extremists in Mali has arrived in France."

What does she hope to do now? She plans to: "Return to her aid work with malnourished children in West Africa despite the ordeal."

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