The Big Surprise tells the story of the first 23 years of missionary work of the Christian and Missionary Alliance (C&MA) in what is today the Democratic Republic of the Congo. It is the moving story of missionaries embarking on a work for which they had no practical experience or training. They had no idea of what was waiting for them. It was the very first C&MA mission field. It is a story of unwarranted optimism and unwarranted pessimism, of inspiring heroism and dispiriting failures, of some paralyzed by fear and of others rising to the occasion. You want to know what missionary life is? Here it is.