The last year couple of years, the day after Thanksgiving has been tough for American retailers. Thanks to the lingering affects of a recession, "Black Friday" shoppers have been reluctant to spend as much as they did in years past.

But the stores' troubles were nothing compared to Dr. Sophie Warren's. The missionary-professor in Nigeria experienced a different sort of Black Friday: "[The blackness] was caused by smoke," she said, "not numbers in a ledger."

One day after contentious regional elections, violent riots broke out in the streets near her university campus. Hundreds of homes and churches were burned. Even worse, conservative estimates place the number of people killed by gun- and machete-wielding gangs at 300.

Meanwhile, the home Sophie shared with a missionary couple became a place of refuge for the community. "We cared for about 60 refugees in a house that has three bedrooms," she said. "I took 60 more children to another house. Then we had 20 or 30 people sleeping in cars in ...