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Marilyn Christman was born in Guinea, West Africa to parents (Ralph and Marion Shellrude) who were missionaries with the Christian and Missionary Alliance. She attended Mamou Alliance Academy in Guinea for eight years, from 1961 to 1970. Being away from parents for nine months a year was lonely. Mamou was a harsh, violent place to grow up. As an adult she began integrating the harsh realities of Mamou. She felt isolated in her story, feeling she was the only MK who had ever been abused at a boarding school. The isolation of her story was broken as she networked with her peers from Mamou. In 1991 she began to tell the C&MA what had happened to her, thinking they would embrace my story with compassion and mercy. That did not happen. As a group of five alumni, they called on the denomination to investigate the abuses at Mamou. After years of being proactive, there was an independent commission of inquiry (ICI) formed to hear the stories of 80 alumni from Mamou. Some of people from the original five alumni then formed a formal entity called MK Safety Net. Her ongoing passion is that every former MK has a place to tell his or her stories - the good stories and the painful ones. She continues to hope that mission boards will be lovingly proactive to the survivors of their boarding schools, thus promoting healing for both the former MK and the church body. |