Sunday again. For me it has always been the best day the week. Even as a kid I felt good going to church, learning, singing, being with those of like mind. Later it was serving in various ways: teaching, playing piano and organ, and finally preaching and leading worship.
At breakfast George and I talk over our prospects for the day over the porridge he has cooked. We are not much interested in food—anything will do.
George is going with Vundi for a conference for older people. He will have an hour to present the power point he has prepared about growing old with grace and power. A smashing presentation, I must admit. I want to pirate it!
And I? I get to preach here at the Mumbuni AIC church, invited by former student Nicodemus Musila, now pastor. I will take my text from Luke 15. “Jesus befriends sinners and even eats with them—horrors!” Then on to the prodigal son. It's a great story. It’s my story. It’s every Christian’s story.
After the service the feedback is positive. And I had a great time delivering it. No higher privilege; no greater satisfaction.
However, life is what happens in between the things you plan for. So I will tell you about Anna.
One of the most satisfying “living-in-the-past” memories for me regards my precious grand-children. (Oh, no, I hear you thinking, here goes another tedious “let-me-show-you-the-latest-photos-of-my-grandchildren” episode that these doting codgers corner you with! If so, just skip down a ways.) Even though I have great times with them now that several are in (even out of) college, I remember when Eric and Sue Beth, Rachel and Dale, Lee and Heidi all lived close enough to come for Sunday dinner most weekends. And we could visit them easily also.
As church organist, I would sit on the front pew during the sermon, listening to David Midwood preach his wonderful sermons. Many time I sat through both morning services.
Often a grandkid would creep up the aisle and sit beside me, snuggling up to “Bubba” or “Farfar” as the case may be. What a wonderful feeling to be in the house of the One who gives every good and perfect gift from above and enjoy the pleasure of these little ones wriggling at your side with paper and crayon or little picture book.
Today Kim and Gregg Okesson sit in the same pew with me, with 8 year old Isaiah and 6 year old Anna. They are adopted children. Anna has brown eyes, while Kim and Gregg have blue eyes and fair hair from their Scotch-Irish and Scandinavian heritage. Anna is a brunette with “tanned” skin as though she might have come from parents in India.
Gregg told me that Anna thinks it unfair that there are millions of people in the world she has not met yet. Every person is a treasure waiting to be exploited. I had read a Dr. Seuss book to her the other evening after dinner at Okesson’s. Now I’m one of her countless pals!
As the service progresses she keeps moving closer to me, showing me pictures in her “we read this in church” book. Soon she snuggles up and puts her little hand in mine during a prayer. I give her squeezes and she returns the same. I get a lot out of that service, with a youth choir and the tall girl who sings like a bird and the prayers and hymns and the welcoming of guests. (Many of the latter are new missionaries coming to Scott for two weeks of Orientation to African Cultures.) But the thing that touches me most is innocent, open-hearted little Anna who unwittingly gives a great gift to a man far from his own grandkids. Do you have an Anna in your life? I hope so.
After a light pick-up lunch with Chuck and Sue Lewis, I chat with Gregg and Kim about their work here. Gregg has great ideas about creating distance education in cooperation with sister schools here in Anglophone Africa and India so professors can get American degrees (the most respected thing here) without spending a fortune and perhaps never coming back. America ruins so many dedicated Kenyans who go to study there for three or more years. Their kids become Americans and have no interest in returning home. The love of money and its lifestyle is too strong a temptation to all but the truly dedicated. It reminds me of the WWI song my folks’ generation used to sing. “How Can You Keep ‘em Down on the Farm after They’ve Seen Paree?” (Paris, that is.)
I’m on the front porch now with the laptop plugged in. A nice breeze sings in the treetops, Ibises squawk aloft, while a dozen boys and girls play soccer on the green, using two trees as a goal. Happy sounds—although George said they yesterday when the older kids were playing he had to break up a brewing fracas as two tangled, taking the game much too seriously. Human nature is the same everywhere. It’s interesting how the kids blend two languages without realizing it.
We have dinner at Rachel’s, a young national staffer recently on the Scott faculty. Georgette, a wee woman from Scotland with blond wavy hair joins us. As usual in Kenyan homes, there is no dining room with a table and chairs. The food is placed on the coffee table and you sit in the easy chairs with your plate in your lap. More ugali, chapattis, rice, and stew/soup. Bananas make a dessert. They are the bright green kind even though they are fully ripe. Chai tops it off.
George and I pick a lull in the rain showers and make for home. He will burn the midnight oil grading his papers. I am going upstairs to saw wood.
I’ll drop off to sleep easily. It’s been a high-powered weekend.
I smile as eyelids close.
Anna.
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