Our children, since having arrived at
Rafiki, have only been taught that which is good. They do not know hate, or
prejudice, and very seldom anger or jealousy. They melt our hearts.
Barbara and I go to a bible study, with a
different family, each night. The children were full fledged prayer warriors,
for the most part. Some were still too young or shy to talk much. The mama led
the bible study, and we were always amazed when they could almost always answer
her questions.
We all sang hymns, they really got in to
it. When it came time to leave, they never wanted to let us go.
We were the only mini missionaries there
now, but there were normally several at a time. I told the kids how lucky they
were. They were surrounded by all these loving people, and I knew of none others
who had so many people come from so far away, just to be a part of their lives,
for a time.
On the way back to our guest house, the
sounds of hymns being sung by many children often filled the night air. That blissful
scene could sometimes be suddenly interrupted when, without a sound, a big man,
with a big club, face covered ninja like with a scarf, silently emerged from
the darkness, and was right there. Right at our elbow. Barbara always screamed.
That would be a guard. When I got to know the guards better, I asked,
"What's with the scarf over the face at night?"
"Our face is
cold." Barb and I were very comfortable in the cool African night in short
sleeves, but they had never known cold. If the temperature dropped close to 70
degrees, they started adding clothes.
The guards laughed at us, carefully
lighting up our pathway at night with our "torch." But I knew Black
Mambas thrived here. One had just recently been killed. The guards just laughed
that off. "Snakes don't crawl at night." They further asserted,
"You Americans have used torches so much, you have lost your night
vision." There may be some truth to that.
Emily, our only guest house mate, was
technically a mini-missionary like us, who usually don't stay longer that a
month. But she just could not seem to leave. We could often hear her, talking
to her parents on Scype, crying, in the privacy of her room. She missed them
greatly. But then she would come out, pull herself together, and go sign on for
two more months.
Emily once got a very large thorn embedded
deeply in the top of her foot while playing soccer. After some time, she
mentioned it to us. I told her, I was very good at digging thorns out with a
needle, as long as it was not in me. She finally agreed. I saw it was very deep.
As I dug deeper and deeper, she toughened up and never complained, other than
making wierd little Emily sounds.
This was not working. Too deep. Then I
thought to ask her how long it had been in there. She said weeks. That changed
things. Sooner or later, a thorn will just try to work its own way out. I
squeezed really hard all around it, and It just popped out.
There were two other young women
missionaries there, and they, also, were very brave. They thought nothing about
walking to a distant market in a rough looking area, alone. Or, they might hop
in a car and drive long distances alone to a church they had never been to. But
when a lizard got in her room, Emily totally came unglued.
Word was getting around that I worked with
wood pretty well, and Yeen Lan wanted me to build her a nice bench. Doug said,
just find whatever wood you need, and build it. I found some still rough dark
wood, and did it. It looked really good. Too good. When Doug saw it, he turned
pale. I had used his Mahogany, very hard to get, very expensive, that he had
brought to trim the lunch tables with. A very valuable bench.
Barbara was given the job of looking for
baptism records for the children. In looking at all their records, she had an
opportunity to see the first picture, taken when the child first came in,
beside a current picture. I think that affected her very deeply. In each case,
the first picture show a child with all hope gone, dullness in the eyes. In the
later photo, they were obviously happy, the light had been turned back on in
their eyes. That, as well as anything we saw, showed what was being
accomplished at Rafiki.
CONTINUED
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