(RNS) — For nearly four decades, Ken Isaacs has led the disaster relief efforts for Samaritan’s Purse across the world, earning a reputation as a swashbuckling Christian fixer ready to swoop in to any global hotspot to orchestrate the delivery of aid.
Now Isaacs has written a memoir of his travels to the ends of the earth to help alleviate emergencies, among them the Rwandan genocide, the Haiti earthquake, the Japanese tsunami, the Sudanese civil war or the Liberian Ebola outbreak.
In “Running to the Fire: Helping in Jesus’ Name,” Isaacs recounts his humble beginnings as a North Carolina well driller and his hiring by Franklin Graham, the head of Samaritan’s Purse, to help oversee a well-drilling project that an Ethiopian church was undertaking. Isaacs, who was raised as a Baptist and began drilling wells for his wife’s family business, recalls a mission trip he took to Togo as a lay person and how, while there, he felt “called to the world.”
“So that led to me beginning a very dedicated prayer cycle of, ‘God, if you’ll open a door, I’ll go through it,’” Isaacs told RNS.
“Running to the fire” is the humanitarian ethos Isaacs developed over the years. As he explains, “Samaritan’s Purse has always intentionally gone into dangerous places, while also trying to re …