WSJ.com - In Swaziland, U.S. Preacher Sees His Dream Vanish

WSJ.com - In Swaziland, U.S. Preacher Sees His Dream Vanish: "MBABANE, Swaziland -- In 2002 Bruce Wilkinson, a Georgia preacher whose self-help prayer book had made him a rich man, heard God's call, moved to Africa and announced his intention to save one million children left orphaned by the AIDS epidemic.

In October, Mr. Wilkinson resigned in a huff from the African charity he founded. He abandoned his plan to house 10,000 children in a facility that was to be an orphanage, bed-and-breakfast, game reserve, bible college, industrial park and Disneyesque tourist destination in the tiny kingdom of Swaziland.
What happened in between is a story of grand hopes and inexperience, divine inspiration and human foibles. Mr. Wilkinson won churchloads of followers in Swaziland, but left them bereft and confused. He gained access to top Swazi officials, but alienated them with his demands. And his departure left critics convinced he was just another in a long parade of outsiders who have come to Africa making big promises and quit the continent when local people didn't bend to their will.
The setback stunned Mr. Wilkinson, who had grown accustomed to operating on a larger-than-life scale, promising that God would enable him to achieve the impossible. 'We're going to see the largest humanitarian religious movement in the history of the world from the U.S. to Africa to help in this crisis,' Mr. Wilkinson predicted in June, when he believed his orphan village was about to sprout from the African bush.
Just a few months later, he found himself groping with his failure to make that happen. 'I'll put it down as one of the disappointments of my career,' he says.
Mr. Wilkinson's life has been all about miracles: He routinely asks God to perform them, and God, he s"