CATCHING RICEBIRDS LET VENGE: A Story of Letting Vengeance Go

Born in Liberia, West Africa, in 1979, Doe’s earliest memory is of his brother Molley teaching him to catch birds in their yard, luring them into traps with grains of rice. When the country erupted in civil war, Molley took part in the chaos and violence that cost the life of their father and left Marcus an orphan and a refugee.

Reaching manhood, Marcus was held captive by a spirit of vengeance. Lured into bitterness and depression, his heart was imprisoned in plans to kill his father’s murderer. But God’s light reached him in this darkness. Where he had been filled with hatred, Marcus slowly learned to forgive. Now his mission is to bring the hope and the peace of Christ to others.

Marcus’s life unfolds in four movements: first as a young boy living in Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, during a period of growing unrest; second as a refugee fleeing from rebel forces that would kill him and his family without a second thought; third as a wanderer in foreign countries-Ghana, the United States-unable to return to his childhood home; and finally as an adult, coming to grips with the loss he experienced and longing to see his own healing extend to Molley and others still haunted by Liberia’s suffering.