Telling a little known story of Ray and Lillian Byers Eldred who served at Longa in the early 1900’s. Ray Eldred’s death in 1913 was memorialized in the poem “Congo” by Vachel Lindsay. In a sermon in Lindsay’s home church in Springfield, IL, Congo missionary A.F. Hensey told of his friend’s death by drowning. Vachel Lindsay’s flamboyant performing of his poem “Congo” was the highlight of his public appearances across the U.S. The epitaph on the Eldreds’ tombstone was translated from the Lonkundo as reading “Witnesses to the Resurrection”.
Lokoleyacongo 