David L. Allen

David L. Allen, a United Methodist minister, was a missionary in the Democratic Republic of Congo from 1961 to 1973. He studied French in Belgium and Swahili in Elisabethville (Lubumbashi). He experienced firsthand the political and military turmoil that followed the Katanga province’s declaration of independence separation from the Congo. The resulting civil war would continue for several years until United Nations troops forced a reunification.

David served three terms In Congo, both in the interior or “bush”, and in the expanding urban areas, especially Elisabethville. His Congo experience included four years as a high school teacher before being assigned to found and direct a pastoral training school at Jadotville, a large mining town. During his final three years, he served as a community developer in the numerous “Squatter Villages” that sprang up around Elisabethville as thousands of Congolese moved from the rural to the urban areas. During this time he became acquainted with many of the “Street Boys”, many of whom had become homeless and parentless by the violence and rapid social change.

For medical and personal reasons, David returned to the United States in 1973 with his wife (now deceased) and three children in 1973. A native of Kentucky, he then served as an inner-city urban minister in Louisville, then as administrator of a large mission and superintendent of mission churches in the mountains of eastern Kentucky. He remarried in 2008 and now lives in a retirement community for ministers and missionaries in north Florida.