I understand that psychologists, who counsel people perceived to have undergone stress, recognize something called denial. I find scholarly articles offering briefing for the debriefing paradigm which talk about the transparency of denial. Were we in denial when we chose to swim in the Stough’s pool rather than traveling immediately to Kenya to join the debriefing session at RVA?

We certainly weren’t in control of events when we were asked to evacuate Congo the second time. We didn’t even fully understand the reasons behind the decision. We were absolutely certain, however, that God had not lost control, even though we had no idea what was next for us.

Swimming in the pool was a special privilege. Though Gregg Stough was away, they had given us their house to enjoy, a very special welcome after the evacuation from Congo. The Democratic Republic of Congo, with the threatening increase of tribal tensions in our part of the country, was in fact far from our minds. Jeff and the Lewis boys were having a great time in the pool. Was that denial?

Since we missed the meetings at Kijabe, the mission organization scheduled a special debriefing session, for the Lewises and us, at the Tumaini Counseling Center in Nairobi. Tumaini is a Swahili word meaning “hope” and the center had adopted as their mission “the provision of preventative and restorative mental health services and pastoral care in order to enhance missionary resilience and fruitfulness.” The hope that God gives and His involvement in our lives would certainly be the focus of their psychological counseling.

God had already provided the special place which we had just enjoyed in Kampala, and we had accepted an invitation to come to RVA to care for a dorm of primary school children, grades one to three. It was called the Tembo Dorm. The return of the dorm parents scheduled to care for the dorm had been delayed for at least the next three months. It wasn’t far from the Simba Dorm where Jeff Wilson and our daughter Laura were the dorm parents.

The Tumaini center was beautifully landscaped, as can only be done in the perpetually perfect climate of Nairobi, often referred to as the “green city in the sun.” Hedges, carefully clipped, surrounded the closely cut lawns. Curving paths, made of flat stones, led to cool resting places beneath the spreading thorn trees. The hand-hewn stone work of the buildings spoke of security as did the white painted decorative gratings reinforcing the windows. The big fish-tank with the lazily circling tropical fish was no doubt designed to promote a sense of peace.

What caught my eye when we entered the building was what Ellen called sticky buns. The cinnamon, butter, and brown sugar coating, that clung to the soft coiled rolls of bread, was plastered with pecans. Ellen gently reminded me not to get carried away with enjoying the refreshments.

The environment was perfect to console us in our losses and the crisis. Strangely, I recall very little of what was no doubt wise and Godly council to help us deal with our losses. What I do recall was Ellen’s response to a kind question intended to help us accept and deal with the loss of all our household goods. “Actually”, she said, “we didn’t lose much of anything since we replaced all we lost the first time, with stuff from yard sales.”

It was true. It was also true that we had just been called to join the RVA staff and live in a fully furnished dorm that even included dishes belonging to someone else! We were to participate in the program at the school. Our assignment was initially to care for the dorm kids for one three-month term until the Hendrix returned. Working in a dorm, caring for missionary children at a boarding school, was what we had done for thirty years at Rethy.

We grew to love those little boys. There were only seven of them but most were Korean! I especially remember one who knew absolutely no English. When he left our evening devotions time to go to his room, he was clearly distressed. I followed him and took Joo Young Park with me to interpret. Joseph Kim was silently looking at something in beautiful, perfectly, written Korean. I understood it to be something he was writing to his parents, some kind of dairy. Joseph was old enough to be in sixth grade but it had been decided to start him in fourth grade so he could learn English first, and not be faced with difficult academic material at the same time. Joo Young knew English well and was earnestly interacting with Joseph for us, as I tried to help him know that he was loved, and we wanted to do all we could to care for him. I remember Nur, whose dad was a Kenyan, Manraj, who had Indian parents, and several other Korean kids. The child of an American missionary was expected to arrive late.

Ellen arranged to have our boys eat with us once a week, though they normally ate in the cafeteria. She cooked rice and learned quickly what our Korean kids loved to eat. She got the special ingredients from Nakumat, the supermarket in Nairobi.

Ellen had been the cateress at Rethy for so many years that she was soon invited to give Mrs. Wilson, the RVA cateress a break by supervising the evening meals. Her husband, the art, pottery, and math teacher was pleased to have her home in the evenings.

Ellen was also soon helping in the laundry services, sorting and checking pockets before the men put everything in the huge machines. Everything that was found went in an envelope to be given to the student whose name was on the sewn in label. The child was probably more grateful to see his forgotten money than his Bic pen even though soggy money made much less of a mess in the machine than did melted ink from the pen! When clean and dry all the clothes for over three hundred boarding students needed to be sorted into all the named boxes. Ellen learned lots of names, even the children’s middle names!

I wasn’t assigned any building projects or responsibilities at the Kijabe printing press, as there was no need for more missionary input. Competent Kenyan management and missionary men were working together. I was initially assigned to maintenance so I went to see how I might be able to help Chip Mann. I was soon in the mechanic’s shop and learned a lot from Willy and the other Kenyan mechanic there. I was given a Toyota Surf whose engine was in for a complete overhaul. I had lost all my mechanics tools in Zaire, but here was a shop far better equipped than I could ever imagine! My days were full and I enjoyed the work.

I was also given responsibility to supervise the night guards who made their rounds all night long. We met for devotions each evening before they took the German Shepherd dogs out with them on patrol. At first my Congo Swahili, Kingwana, must have sounded strange as I read the Daily Light and shared some thoughts with them.

Then there was a wood shop at RVA to teach wood working skills at the high-school level. I got permission to use the equipment as a staff member and soon made a table to use in the dining nook in the kitchen of our new home. We may have been in denial in the pool in Kampala, but I guess our debriefing was completed. God had blessed us indeed.

I soon discovered that Chris Mutai shared my burden to try to initiate Christian FM broadcasting in Kenya as we had done in Zaire. Mr. Mutai had received recording equipment from some large church in the States and had started building a radio studio at Kijabe. His vision was to reach all of Kenya. I had seen broadcast coverage patterns generated by HCJB computers for different locations and tried to convince him that from Kijabe he would reach only the Maasai living in the Rift Valley. His hearty greeting, “Jambo binadamu!”(hello sons of Adam) was already well known since he was the voice of the AIC church on VOK, the Voice of Kenya. I wanted to convince him to seek permission to broadcast from Nairobi

God had certainly taken care of us through what was perceived by the AIM crisis committee to be the kind of experience where immediate debriefing was necessary. Were we in denial, in the swimming pool in a different country? I don’t think so since there was plenty to help us accept that in fact we had been evacuated again. Some might have differing expectations of what God would have us do next, but God told us not to worry, but to ask Him and He would tell us.

Isn’t it important to come to God, as a child, when a crisis is encountered, having no doubt in His ability to help?

At RVA each staff member was also given the privilege of sharing in the daily chapel time. I often used stories from my own childhood as a boarding student at Rethy and concluded with a lesson from the Bible. I shared with our dorm children that I was once little and a went to school away from home.

When I was little, I told them, I wanted to be a Titchie at Rethy Academy, the boarding school for missionary kids in the Belgian Congo. The school was at Rethy, the same place we lived when my mom and dad first went to Africa to be missionaries. My mom and dad worked at the hospital to learn more about the weird diseases that exist in Africa. Since the school was a long distance away, on top of the next hill more than a mile away, I had to stay at home.

At a boarding school you get to go away from home to live with the other kids all the time. You get to eat there too. You even get to sleep there. You don’t have to come home at night. I think you have to go to school, but you don’t have to ask your mom for permission to go to the dorm to play.

My mom later told me that I was so eager to go that I even packed my cardboard suitcase and told her that I was all ready for school. She said, “I don’t think so. You are just five years old and too small to go away from home.”

I wasn’t so small. I was big enough to go hunting for birds with my bow and arrow. I had a special arrow. On the four-pointed tip of the arrow there was sticky gray stuff from the sap of the big old rubber tree behind the hospital. My little friend told me it was the very best arrow for shooting birds. The man who made it for me wrapped the split head with sisal string covered with sticky, cooked sap from that tree to make it strong and four times as good at getting birds. It would stick to the bird, and I might even get a pet bird. I might hit a bird in the tail making it unable to fly away carrying that heavy arrow. It would grow new tail feathers and be my very own pet.

I don’t think I ever did hit a bird, but I did lots of sneaking around, half crouched, my arrow ready on the string of my little bow. Black and white birds, called Wagtails, would keep running ahead of me then fly a little way, land, and bob their tails up and down. I don’t think my mom would be happy to know that I was hunting Wagtails. She said, “They are such friendly birds. Don’t bother them.” Because they were the easiest ones to sneak up on, I spent hours trying to shoot one. My arrow lost all its stickiness since it hit the dirt so often, but I didn’t lose it for a long time. I never did get a Wagtail that I can remember.

I thought I was big enough to go to boarding school, but I still had to get big. I guess you need to be pretty big to do lots of things, but I remembered the story my mom read that night from the Bible. She said, “Little children are never too small to come to Jesus.”

The people in the story were telling the children not to bother Jesus. I think my mom thought I was a bother sometimes because she would tell me to go outside to play and let her do her work.

Mom read in the story where Jesus said, “Let the little children to come to Me; do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of God. Truly I say to you, whoever does not receive the kingdom of God like a little child, he shall not enter into it.”

Mom said, “That means to let the little children come because He loves them.” I liked that. She said, “Jesus likes people to be like little children when they come to Him because they believe everything He says, and they know He can take care of anything.”

I was glad I wasn’t too small to come to Jesus. Wasn’t I now still His child?