Would You Take A Trip With Me?
Would You Take A Trip With Me?
Would you take a trip with me
to the edge of the high plateau
dividing the north from the south
in the land of Nigeria?
A plateau ridged by stark yet
boldly beautiful giant stones
tossed about by volcanoes as
if giants were playing ball.
Such stones as serve as stronger walls
anchoring houses on sloping
hills where garden patches grow
along with green cacti . . .
where often the winds blow clean and
cool and the skies above appear bright
and blue until harmattan
winds sometimes hide the hills.
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Proverbs 3:5-6
Trust in the Lord with all your heart,
and do not lean on your own understanding.
In all your ways acknowledge him,
and he will make straight your paths.
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Baptist High School, Jos, classrooms provided me
with a great setting for beginning God’s missionary calling on my life.
Well designed with so many louvered windows, for all of the pleasantly warm weather we experienced on the edge of the Jos Plateau in the middle of Nigeria, these classrooms were usually filled to overflowing with thirty to forty students from throughout the country. In my first years of teaching I taught Form One English, which meant that young, sometimes very young brand new secondary school students filled the classroom so full, I had to carefully walk up and down narrow aisles to oversee my students’ work. Discipline issues hardly ever arose—the culture strongly enforced respect for authority, so teachers rarely had to raise their voices. As it worked out, I taught about half of the first-year students, and a dear colleague from Pennsylvania taught the others. Well, by the end of the year, my students tended to sound like any seventh grader in Alabama, while hers sounded more like Pennsylvanians. That set up a dynamic, competitive yet fun relationship among our first year students. At the heart of my memories though, are the joy I found in teaching students who were so eager to learn. They were determined to succeed in English and in all of their subjects as they prepared for their future. Most of all I found myself amazed at their hearts full of desire for God. Almost every student energetically sought to discover all God had to offer them in finding Christ as their Savior. So, He provided us many opportunities to experience together His loving involvement in all of our lives.
Since students needed to hear standard English, my colleague and I read each day from the C.S. Lewis book, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. I still remember eager faces as we followed Lucy, Susan, Peter and Edmund through their adventures in Narnia; as they met talking animals, an evil and cruel queen, and most of all, the powerful, good, and noble, lion King, and Christ figure, Aslan. I recall watching these young boys and girls while their eyes grew large, when Edmund fell under the spell of Turkish Delight, which fed his uncontrollable and selfish hunger for pleasure until he deserted his own brother and sisters, and fled to join the evil queen. Only Aslan could save him, but in order to do so, he had to lay down his life in place of Edmund’s. I remember as I read about Lucy and Susan watching Aslan’s sacrifice. So many of my students were crying. They felt deeply the truth we were reading. Aslan was giving his life, even as Jesus did for each of us. But, when Aslan rose up again, there were cheers in that classroom, as these same students spontaneously celebrated the power of his resurrection. During our years together with these students at Baptist High School, I rejoiced as many found Christ as their Savior and grew steadily in their faith. Even today forty-four years later, I hear testimonies from among them about the faithfulness of God in their lives. Praise be to HIs Holy Name!
2 Corinthians 5:17
If any man be in Christ
he is a new creation,
old things are passed away,
behold, all things are become new.
If I had needed more than these eager, spiritually hungry students to encourage me while God led me through my years there, He provided more blessings than I could count to assure me. He had led me to the perfect place, and among the perfect people where I could serve Him. Not that there were no challenges, nor disappointments, nor anxieties nor fears. Those accompany us wherever God takes us in life, but as we trust and follow Him, He really does make our paths straight. One incident still speaks to my heart as one of many miraculous events which inspired my heart with faith and trust. I was teaching in one of those classrooms one day when I looked out those banks of windows to see a sight that almost stopped my heart. It was a veritable swarm (or kaleidoscope or flutter or rabble or flight) of butterflies dancing their way before our eyes as it seemed they were headed on their way toward the lowlands past the edge of the plateau. As I recall that beautiful, visible miracle of encouragement from God, I could not help but recognize that God was speaking to our hearts, my students and myself, His redemptive, His resurrecting love for each of us so beautifully embodied by the butterflies who were celebrating their metamorphosis. If you go looking for me in Heaven, you might look out for me joyfully busy among the flower gardens and butterflies—where I’m likely to be somewhere busy amidst the glory of our Lord.
Wherever you might find me, be assured I would be gladly doing whatever my loving Savior, Jesus has planned for me. My introduction to a longtime calling to mission work in Nigeria, and then in Nigeria, certainly introduced me to the wonders of discovering how good God’s Way is—how invigorating and redemptive His path is, even if He leads me faraway from home and those I have known as family and friends. When He called me into missions in Ludowici, Georgia, He knew what He had in store—and though I had several steps to to take along His path, before He had me ready to serve Him at Baptist High School, Jos. In fact, I had a year of studies at Jacksonville State, earning the required M.A. in English so that I would be qualified for teaching. I had the opportunity to work for my home association of churches, the Etowah Baptist Association, preparing for and leading in the Summer Missions Program. Then I found great fulfillment in working alongside some faithful Moms in my home church, Glencoe First Baptist Church, in carrying on a children’s worship program. He even treated me to four years in St. Marys, Georgia among the Heaven Bound Youth Group and their wonderful parents, where he demonstrated over and over again how good it is to work among good and godly folks who love the Lord. Always, He was teaching me to trust Him with all my heart, and even now, so many years after my journey with Him began, He continues to delight me with new opportunities for service, new examples of His wonderful people—and more and more of His glory in the person of our loving Savior, Jesus. Praise God!
St. Mary’s, are these the people that provided us with those beautiful T-shirts red and yellow colours back in the day? I remember writing you a letter back then. Oh we loved those shirts. Blessings to all at St. Mary’s.