Archive | October 2016

Stories of Missionary Life in Africa for Children (#6) (part 2 of 2) “The Thief”

Oct29

mk-story-coversThis story is the SIXTH in the Missionary Kids Stories about the Matthews family who live in Malawi, Africa.

This story is PART TWO of two, begun in the previous story – “Crime in Old Town.” It is immediately below this story.

Each story is written in the form of a letter from one of the Matthews’ children. There are seven children, (but the baby can’t write yet!).

I write these stories so young readers can learn about missionary life in Africa. The MKs (Missionary Kids) will tell stories about cultural differences (and similarities) such as eating DEAD MICE in the first MK story, or why guard dogs are necessary in Malawi as in BIG BLACK DOGS (the second story). They will also show how they face the same temptations, emotions, and problems that all kids everywhere do. I hope to entertain and inform the children, but mostly I want to quietly teach them truths from the Bible, God’s Word, as it pertains to their everyday lives.

So, here is the next story!  (If you are new here, scroll down, or check the list on the side bar to begin the with the FIRST story and meet the kids and their idiosyncrasies in order.)

 

The Thief!

Hi kids!

This is Marshall again. I’m back with the REST of my story. (Sorry it is so long! This part will be shorter. I promise. I hope!)

Last time I told you about catching that boy in Old Town who was stealing Mom’s cell phone?  I ran after him a long way… saved him from a bad beating (or worse) by some men… twisted my ankle… and FINALLY caught him… only to discover that it was… Maya (MY-yah).

I also told you about when I was almost seven years old that my parents decided to become missionaries and move us all to Malawi (well, God told them to) and how I was really mad about it?

I stopped that story on the day we arrived in Lilongwe (lee-LONG-way) and I fell asleep on the couch at Pastor B.’s house at the African Bible College (ABC), where he was a professor.

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Okay…. Mom woke me up from that nap to eat lunch.  By that time I was really hungry, and it smelled very good.  Mrs. B (Mom called her Anita) had cooked some chicken, and some rice with a very yummy sauce, and made orange Jell-O with tiny pieces of carrot and celery in it.  For desert there were soft and gooey brownies. 

I think I ate more than her kids, Amy and Bradley, together!

(By the way, Amy is the same age as Julie, and they became friends right away. This is very unusual for Julie because even now, 8 years later, she is still pretty shy.)

After lunch, Pastor B took Mom and Dad and me to see the house where we would live.  Julie stayed to play with Amy and Mrs. B promised to watch the twins who were sleeping. It turns out she had a baby the same age as Melody and June.

We drove out of the beautiful ABC through the iron gates that the gateman opened and closed, and out into the dirty, dusty, country.  We drove a little way past some yellowish-green corn fields – oops, I mean maize fields – and turned down a lane that had old rusty car parts lying around. But then the road changed and got prettier with a few plants and flowers and trees.

You couldn’t see any houses – they were all behind huge tall walls that had barbed wire circles on top. They looked like forts! We stopped in front of one with a solid metal gate and Pastor B. tooted the horn.

After a while a door in the gate opened a peek and a dark face looked out.  Then it closed and the big gate starting rolling off to one side.  And there was our house.

I gotta tell you kids, it looked awful!  It was painted an ugly bright turquoise-blue with peach-colored trim. A lot of the paint was coming off.  There was no grass or pretty plants inside the wall, just red dirt and dried weeds. The screens on the windows looked old and torn. In the back, was a garage, but the door hung at a crooked angle.

“Oh, my,” said Mom.

“Hmmm,” said Dad. “Needs some work.”

“Yes, well, okay. Let’s go inside,” said Pastor B, getting out the keys.

All my old mad feelings started coming back. I sat hunched in the car till they said I had to come in. When I got to the cement steps, everyone was inside already. I jerked the screen door and one of the hinges broke.  “Serves it right!” I thought.

They were all in the “kitchen” and I heard Mom say, “Oh, dear.” 

It was pretty awful. Some of the cupboards didn’t have doors. The counter top sagged in one direction. There were dirt and dry leaves blown into one corner because one window and screen was missing. Something wiggled the leaves and I stepped back?  Was there a snake in the house??? 

“It’s a Chop-chop,” Pastor B said, and started kicking the huge, thick spider toward the door. Mom’s eyes were wide and her hand was over her mouth.

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Actually, I thought it looked kind of cool, as long as it wasn’t poisonous.  I decided to go outside and see what it did.  Mom was at the sink, turning the faucet when I went out the door.  I heard her say, “There’s no water….”

 

I watched the spider for a while then decided to look around. The yard was pretty big and went back a long ways from the street.  It was dirt, but there was a lot of room to kick around a soccer ball.  There was a little house in the back that I was going to go see, but everyone was getting back into the Range Rover, and Dad called me.

“Don’t worry, Audrey,” Pastor B was saying. “We’ll hire some workers to start fixing up the place. It won’t be long, maybe a month or six weeks tops. You will be staying with us meanwhile.

Well, we did stay with them at the ABC for almost two months.  Sometimes the workers did not show up. Sometimes they made mistakes and had to redo stuff. The windows and screens got fixed, new toilets were put in, most of the cupboards in the kitchen got doors, and the outside was painted a nice tan that matched the red dirt.

I found out that there were a lot of rooms inside – five bedrooms, a big living area, a room for Dad’s office; a long narrow room that Mom said would be used for our pantry. They fixed the screened porch into a “breakfast room,” Mom called it.

The room I picked out for my bedroom got painted purple by mistake. YUCK!  It had to be redone. There were three bathrooms…. but when we moved in, there was still no water.  We got big bottles of water to drink.  Mom was very glad that after two days, the water tank up on a tall tower was hooked up and we could take baths.

By then (after a week of very bad throwing up…ACK!), I remembered to never, never, NEVER drink or even taste any of the water out of the faucets.  We were to drink only the water in the bottles or from the big jug purifier on the counter. In the shower I pressed my lips together tightly so none of it would get in. I used bottled water in a glass to brush my teeth.

~

Ah- oh…. Melody just came in where I am writing this. “No, I am NOT writing the history of the world!  I think they want to know how it was when we first moved here…. right kids?”

“Mel, you can leave now. You don’t have to stand and read over my shoulder. Isn’t Mom calling you or something?  Okay, okay, I’ll tell them how I first met Maya.”

She’s right. I do describe way too much!

~

Anyway…. after we moved into the house and got settled, it wasn’t too bad. I hung my Angels Baseball Team posters and cap on the wall, and laid out my small collection of baseballs on one book shelf. 

We had to learn to always put down the mosquito net around our bed before we went to sleep at night… absolutely a MUST!   During the day, the net was pulled up and tied out of the way. Mosquitoes mostly fly and bite you from when the sun starts to go down at night, till after it comes up in the morning.  (The picture is of Julie’s and April’s beds. Mine is way too messy.)

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We met a lot of people at our new church – both “ex-pats” (people from other countries) and “nationals” (people from Malawi).  I made some friends, but not like Caleb and Jake back home.

Then Mom started helping Mrs. Molenaar, who went to a village out in the bush every Thursday to teach Bible stories to the village kids. Julie and I went too. Mrs. Molenaar took flannel boards and paper figures (with strips of flannel on the back so they would stick), and told stories that way. 

A Malawian lady named Mercy, who was a church member too, came with her to translate her stories into Chichewa (Ch’- CHAY- wah) for the kids. There were A LOT OF KIDS!!!  Like maybe 250!!!!  Mrs. Molenaar divided them into younger kids and older kids. They all sat on grass mats on the ground.

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She had a guitar and taught them Sunday School songs in English and in Chichewa.  Her daughter, Rhoda – who was my age – played a guitar too.  After the lesson, the little kids would get a half sheet of paper with a coloring picture on it. They were given a half a crayon each.  They traded with each other if they wanted a different color. 

I’m telling you, when I saw that, I wanted to bring all my boxes of crayons and give to them!!

~

“I’m getting there, Mel.”  I can’t believe what a bossy sister I have!

~

It was there at the village that I first met Mayamiko. (MY-yah-MEE-ko)

After Mrs. Molenaar taught the Bible lesson and songs to the older kids, they all went out to a big flat dirt area and kicked around a ball, like they were playing soccer, but more like keep-away.  But – get this – the ball was not like anything I had seen.

It was made up of pieces of paper trash (probably from some of the coloring papers) rolled into a tight ball, then wrapped with pieces of plastic bags, around and around and then tied in knots.

You could kick it, and it would fly or roll, but it did NOT bounce. And after a while it started coming apart and had to be tied up again.

Mayamiko was a tall boy with brown skin, wearing faded, torn shorts and an inside-out blue shirt.  No shoes.  He had dark, dark, chocolate brown eyes, and flashing white teeth when he grinned, which was often.  His hair – like all Malawi kids – girl or boy – was clipped very short.

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Right away we became good friends. Don’t ask me why, because he only knew a few English words and I only knew a few words in Chichewa.  But boy, could we play soccer, or kick ball, or keep away, or whatever you called it. 

He had a good voice and taught me how to sing the songs in his language – there is a lot of repeating when Malawians sing. I think that is because they don’t have printed song books – or overhead screens. One person will call out the words, and the rest will repeat it, clapping and doing little dances around.  It was really cool!!

Every Thursday we found each other right away, put our arms around each others’ shoulders, and never left each other till the very last minute, when we walked down the trail, across the bridge over the stream and I got into the Range Rover that Mrs. Molenaar drove.

On other days, a few students from ABC came to the village to teach English classes, and Maya went every time so we could get better at talking.

Then Maya missed a Thursday.  I asked some of the other big kids and they just shrugged.  One boy got a scared look on his face and shook his head quickly.

Then another Thursday went by and I was worried and sad and really missed him.

When he finally came back, he didn’t run to meet me, or grin that big teeth-showing smile. He seemed to stand taller too.

Right away I noticed his chin was different. It was a little swollen and looked like he had scratched it or cut it on something.  When I got closer I saw that it WAS a cut that was healing, and that it was in the shape of a “W”.

When he saw me looking at it, he turned his head away. 

“What happened, Maya?” I asked him?  He shook his head and looked at the ground.

“C’mon, tell me!” I begged him and tried to softly punch him like we used to do.  He took a step back. His arms stayed straight down by his side.

“I cannot come to Bible study and singing again,” he said. “I cannot play games now.” He looked over his shoulder. “I cannot come here again.”

“But why?”

He looked at my eyes a long time – just like when I found him so many years later in Old Town after that chase – his dark, almost black eyes staring into my blue-green ones.

“I am next,” he said. Then he turned and walked away, his back upright and stiff. He never looked back, and I knew he didn’t want me to follow him. I watched him go through the bush and felt a stinging in my eyes.

It was a very sad day for me because he never came back to Mrs. Molenaar’s village ministry again.

I asked her what he meant by “I’m next,” and she shook her head sadly.  “It must be that he is in line for some duty in his village, and that he is in training to become a leader in that.”

“Wow!” I cried. “You mean Maya is going to be chief or something?”

She hesitated, then asked if he had any new marks on his body.  I told her about the “W” cut on his chin.  She took a big deep sad breath and let it out slowly. “Then he is in line to be a village medicine man, and we have lost him.”

2

Well, that last scene in the village was flashing though my mind in that alley in Old Town after I turned Maya over and saw who it was.  I had just tackled my old friend after he stole my Mom’s cell phone and ran away.  How did he get there?  What had he done?  Why had he become a thief??

I helped him up, and then I couldn’t help it – I grabbed him and hugged him real tight. He was so skinny!  I said some of our old Chichewa “friend” words to him. I heard him groan. Then I remembered his bruises and cuts and quickly let him lose.  For a minute I thought he was going to run again. His muscles got tight and he glanced down at the cell phone.

We both looked at it, frozen in our places. Then he sat down hard on the ground, pulled up his knees, put his dirty hands to his dirty blood-streaked face and began crying. Big huge sobs.

I started crying too, but I didn’t know why. I was fifteen after all.  Fifteen and a half.  I sat beside him and said nothing.  The cell phone was still lying in the dirt, forgotten. After a while Maya sniffed and wiped his face on the bottom of his tank top. It just smeared the red dirt and tears and snot and blood.

He looked at me. I grinned. He grinned back that wonderful white-teeth smile, except one tooth was missing off to the side.

Then the cell phone rang!

We both jumped. For another second, I thought Maya was going to bolt away.  If he did, I decided I would let him. I reached for the phone, holding my breath, but he didn’t go.

I looked at him as I swiped the screen. “Hello, Mom,” I said. “I got it. And have I got a story to tell you!”

Actually, it was Dad on the phone and I told him where I was. I told him I wasn’t alone, that I’d caught the thief, but that he was not to bring any police. I would explain when he got there.

Just a few minutes later he and Ngunda came into the alley and trotted over to where Maya and I sat. We got up to meet them.  Dad stopped about ten feet away and stared.

“Mr. Matthews,” Maya said softly, and waited.

Dad had only seen Maya twice when he came to the village with Mrs. Molenaar when the twins were sick and Mom couldn’t go. But he knew who he was, my best friend.

Ngunda stood a way off and frowned. He looked like he was ready to give chase if this thief took off again.

“Go get the Rover,” Dad said to him.

3

Well, we took Maya home with us. Mom recognized him right away and I could tell she wanted to “mother” him and make him “all better.”  How was that going to work out, I wondered.

April was afraid of him at first – after all he looked a little scary.  Dirty and bloody with torn clothes and no shoes.  She saw me chasing after him too.  But when she realized we all accepted him (except Ngunda) and Maya flashed her his great grin, she got over her fear.

Our housekeeper, Asala, jumped when she saw him come into the house, her eyes wide in fear or anger, staring at his chin. But when Maya bowed his head at her in respect, she eased up, and went to get some of my clean clothes for him as Mom suggested.

After Maya washed and ate a ton of the leftover rice casserole Mom had made the night before. And after he met Julie again, and Melody and June, and Gus who right away grabbed his hand and sat down beside him on the couch… and after he let Deek come up to him and gently put a finger on a cleaned-up-but –still-nasty-looking cut on his knee, Maya told his story.

He spoke pretty good street English and we could tell that he had been out of the village and in town for a while.

He put his finger on the W scar on his chin and looked at me.  “If you do not know, when I left you and Mrs. Molenaar and the Bible study, I was to become one day the medicine man of our village.

“Is that like a doctor?” asked Gus.

“Shhhh!” June said.

Maya shook his head. “No, not THAT kind of medicine.  In our village, there is a chief who looks after the people and tries to make things good for them. There is also a medicine man who is just as strong as the chief in the eyes of the people. Maybe he is even stronger than the chief when they disagree on something.”

“How can he be stronger than the chief?” interrupted Gus again.

“August,” said Mom, “Let’s let Maya tell his story.”  Gus frowned at the use of his full name and sat back with his arms crossed.  Soon he was leaning forward and “into” the story again.

“That is because village medicine men use “bad” medicine. We… they…. are trained to know about plants and tree bark that can make people feel better…. or make them feel worse, even die. The village people are afraid of medicine men.  And those men like that, and sometimes do evil things, like burn down a hut, or a maize field, or kidnap a child and take him away, to keep the people afraid of them.”

“Wow! That’s awful!” It was Julie who said that. She was biting her lower lip, and Mom put her hand on Julie’s arm to remind her to stop.

I noticed that Deek had toddled over to sit on Melody’s lap on the floor and she was rocking him. His eyes were drooping, and his stuffed bunny fell out of his hand.

April, the avid reader in our family was staring at Maya wide eyed, as if he was telling  the most interesting story ever.  I guess he was.

Maya went on, “I remembered the stories that Mrs. Molenaar told us from the Bible, about how good Jesus was… how he healed people and never hurt them. As I was learning about the plants and tree bark I thought about these stories. I wanted to make people well, like Jesus did, not make them sick… or die.

“The old medicine man I was learning from tried to make me do bad tricks on the people when they didn’t pay him enough for his “good” medicine. I had to do it, but I didn’t want to.”  Maya hung his head when he remembered.

“I saw an old woman crying when all she had was burned up. I tried to help her get more food, but the medicine man found out and whipped me.

Asala, our housekeeper was looking around the doorway to the kitchen and listening. She was nodding her head like she knew what he was talking about.

“Well,” said Maya sitting up straight, “One night when I was supposed to put some poisonous beans into a family’s water pot because the father had been arguing with the medicine man, I went to the river instead and sat down.  I looked at the beans in my hand. I looked up at all the stars in the sky. I didn’t know what to do.

“Why didn’t you ask God what to do?” said our little April.

Maya grinned.  “That is exactly what I did, Miss April. I said to Jesus who was somewhere up there in heaven – like Mrs. Molenaar told us – that I did not want to hurt people. I wanted to be good like Him. I was sorry for the tricks I had played on the villagers to please the medicine man.  I asked Him to forgive me and be my friend, my forever friend. I said I wanted to obey the words in His book, the Bible.”

“And I asked him to show me what to do, even if it meant the medicine man would….. kill me.”

“What happened?” June wanted to know.  Was she thinking how her own life had changed after she was sorry for being so mean last Christmas and knew that Jesus had forgiven her?

Maya leaned forward. “Nothing.  I was sure Jesus had heard me – Mrs. Molenaar said He always did when we asked Him to forgive us.  But He hadn’t told me what to do.

“So I got up with the beans still in my hand.  I looked back to the medicine man’s hut where I lived too. Then I looked down the path to the family’s hut where I was supposed to poison them.

“One way, I would get praised by my “teacher” and maybe even get some reward, but I would become a killer.  The other way and I would have to run away from my village forever. The medicine man would probably send men after me to punish me or kill me. I would have to beg or…… steal…. to live.”  Here, he looked at Mom and bowed his head.

“What did you do?” asked Gus impatiently.  Of course we all knew – except maybe for him – because Maya was NOT an important medicine man. He was a thief.

“I couldn’t decide,” he said. “I was pulled one way and the other.  If I did this ONE thing, maybe I would never have to do it again. And I could help my village with all the good medicine I knew about. How could I help them if I was not there? I could become a GOOD medicine man!  It was just this ONE time……”

I’m telling you, kids, our room was silent right then and no one moved a hair.

“Well, I just called out His name. ‘Jesus! Help me!'”

“Then I heard a rustling sound in the leaves to my left in the direction where the family’s water pot would be.  I looked down, and with the starlight I could see a deadly black mamba snake, not this far away.”  He measured about four feet between his hands.

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“I threw the beans at the snake and took off running in the opposite way. I ran and ran and ran. I ran through the bush and even through the river which was not very high then. I ran and ran till I came to the road to Lilongwe.  I found a pile of old tires and hid behind them to rest.

“Before it got to be daytime, I started walking fast. It would seem strange to see someone running along the road – everyone else walks. I walked all day and I thought about what I had done.  Did Jesus bring that snake to show me not to go that way? Or did it just come by itself. Had I been foolish? Or could I trust Him?

I started looking around; thinking every man I saw was going to tell the medicine man where I was. I found a place to hide until it got dark. I was so hungry. ”

“Me too,” said Gus. “I’m hungry too!”  Everyone laughed at that and took a breath. We didn’t know we had been holding them.

“What did you do then?” asked Dad. “Did you pray again?”

Maya hung his head. “No,” he said softly. “I didn’t ask Jesus what to do. I was so afraid of the medicine man. I forgot the lessons Mrs. Molenaar taught about God supplying our needs if we would ask Him.  I didn’t see how that could happen. I didn’t trust Him.

Maya took a deep breath. “So I became a thief.  At first I took only food that I ate right then.  I got chased away, but never got caught. I slept in alleys. Then I took some clothes I saw drying on the rocks by the river. Not a lot!  Only what I needed.  Right then, I didn’t think I was SO bad.

“Stealing is stealing,” said June. “Even if you NEED it. God would have given you something to wear, I know it!”

“That is the truth, Miss June. But after that, it got easier and easier to take things. I started stealing bigger things and selling them for kwacha (Malawi money). Sometimes I went alone. Sometimes, like today, another boy and I did it together and shared what we got.”

Here, he looked right at Mom. “Mrs. Matthews, I am so, so sorry!  I was not hungry. I didn’t take your cell phone so I could eat. I just saw it sticking out and took it.  Jesus will never forgive me now!  I should be in Maula Prison.  I do not blame you if you take me there… or… even back to the village. It would be the same thing for me.”

Mom looked over to Dad and he nodded.  He stood up and said, “C’mon Maya.”

“WHAT??” I cried. Was Dad going to take my friend, my long-lost friend, to prison or back to the medicine man? “No, Dad. NO!”

Maya got up, looking scared. “Just so,” he said, his shoulders slumping.

But dad took Maya only as far as his office. He left the door open so we could see. He talked quietly to my friend for a while, although we couldn’t hear the words.  Maya nodded. Then nodded again, and covered his face with his hands.  Then both he and Dad knelt down beside a chair.

Dad put his arm over Maya’s thin shoulders and then looked up to heaven and prayed.

I’m telling you, we ALL prayed right then.  And when Dad and Maya were done and came out, we all could see his bright, happy, shining face.  Forgiveness will do that to you!

 

And that’s my story!  It got long again, I know.  I promised, but… you didn’t want to have a Part THREE, did you???

Hey!  Melody just came in and hugged me.  I guess that means I’m forgiven too, even though I had to take a lot of her scolding along the way.

Maybe April will write to you next.  I don’t know what she will say…. all she knows are books, books…. and more books!

See ya!  Marshall

 

“Come, my young friends and listen to me. And I will teach you to honor the Lord.”  ~~~ Psalm 34:11   Good News Bible

Stories of Missionary Life in Africa for Children (#5) (part 1 of 2) “Crime in Old Town”

Oct29

mk-story-covers

This story is the FIFTH in the Missionary Kids Stories about the Matthews family who live in Malawi, Africa.

This story is part ONE of two, continued in the SIXTH story – “The Thief”

Each story is written in the form of a letter from one of the Matthews’ children. There are seven children, (but the baby can’t write yet!).

I write these stories so young readers can learn about missionary life in Africa. The MKs (Missionary Kids) will tell stories about cultural differences (and similarities) such as eating DEAD MICE in the first MK story, or why guard dogs are necessary in Malawi as in BIG BLACK DOGS (the second story). They will also show how they face the same temptations, emotions, and problems that all kids everywhere do. I hope to entertain and inform the children, but mostly I want to quietly teach them truths from the Bible, God’s Word, as it pertains to their everyday lives.

So, here is the next story!  (If you are new here, scroll down, or check the list on the side bar to begin the with the FIRST story and meet the kids and their idiosyncrasies in order.)

 

Crime in Old Town

Hi kids!

Melody told me you are getting to know all of us Matthews’ clan (family).  Already you have heard from her twin sister June, and from Julie, and from Gus-sy,

“Hey, stop punching me, AUGUST!  Or maybe I should say, Gussssssssss, like you say!  Oooof!  Oww!  Okay, okay, little brother I’m just kidding!  I love ya, you know it!”

Sorry, kids. I was just teasing him – not in a mean way, just a brotherly tussle, like having a pillow fight but without the pillows!

Anyway, I’m the oldest kid in this family. I’m fifteen and a half. I was born in….what month? Can you guess? My name is Marshall, so….?

I am where it ALL started, the first born Matthews kid in the family. I don’t think Mom really meant to start the “month-name” thing, but I was born in…. well, THAT month (Have you guessed it?), and she already wanted to call me Marshall.

I would have been Catherine, if I’d been a girl, so you see she wasn’t thinking of months then. Do you want to know what she WAS thinking about?

When Mom was a teenager she read a book about an amazing preacher from Scotland.  He wanted to be like David Livingstone – who brought the Gospel to Malawi, or he wanted to be like Erik Liddell who became a missionary to China. (Did you ever see the movie, “Chariots of Fire”? That was about Erik Liddell).

But God wanted this preacher to go to America as a “home missionary.”  America? That sounds totally weird, right? But I know there are places in America that need a “missionary” to tell people about Jesus too. Can you think of any place or people?

This man preached everywhere, starting in the state of Alabama.  When he went to Washington D.C., the people loved him so much that he was appointed as Chaplain (that’s sort of like a pastor) to the United States Senate.  The senators loved his prayers so much they would come early to work to hear him pray!

mk-stories-man-peterAnyway, his wife Catherine wrote a book about him after he died. “A Man Called Peter” was the title. His name was Peter Marshall. My Mom loved his story, and even cried at the end of the book. She decided to name her first son after him – IF she ever got married and had kids.

And that’s how I got MY name. It wasn’t because I was born in a certain month.  But when Julie came along in July, the tradition was started.

Oh, yeah!  My middle name is…. Saint. I know, I know!!!!  Don’t laugh!  I was teased about that name a lot of times.  Kids would call me “Saint Matthews!”

mk-stories-nate-saintLike I said, Mom loved to read Christian biographies (stories about real people), and another one she read before I was born was “Jungle Pilot,” the story of Nate Saint. Nate Saint flew missionaries into Ecuador in small planes.

Nate Saint wanted to tell the Gospel to the Auca Indians (a very dangerous tribe of head hunters), but before he could, they killed him with their SPEARS!  They also killed Jim Elliot and three other missionaries who were with him.  Later his sister bravely went back to Ecuador, and DID tell them the Good News about Jesus, and they were sorry for what they had done.

So, that’s how I got to be Marshall Saint Matthews. It’s a pretty big name to live up to, I gotta tell ya – two outstanding missionary men, and I’m just a kid. Well, a 15 and a half year old kid. (Gus thinks I’m a man already because I am as tall as Dad.)

As you can see, our Mom was very missionary minded. But that’s not saying she wanted to BE a missionary back then. Especially not a missionary to AFRICA!  It started way back when I was about Gus’s age and we still lived in America…..

1

At first Mom didn’t want to leave everything she loved – her friends, her nice home, her church, her SUV car, going to a pool, or going to the beach, or going to a shopping mall, or having an air conditioner, and not having to worry about mosquitoes and very bad diseases.

She and Dad had some long talks – I could hear them sometimes when I couldn’t sleep and came out of my room and listened at the top of the stairs.

Dad told Mom how God was leading him to go to Africa to teach at the African Bible College and help with a small church that was just getting started there. Remember when June told her story, you read about Dad’s parents being missionaries to Borneo.  He had grown up in a jungle and it didn’t scare him to think about going to Africa. But it was different with Mom.

‘What about the children, Hudson?” Mom asked. “What if they get sick or…?” (Back then, there was only me and Julie and the twins, who were one year old.)   

“If God wants our family to go, Audrey, He will protect the children.” Dad said it quietly, but you could tell there were no “ifs” about it. He knew that God DID want him to go to Africa. To Malawi.

I could tell Dad was trying to help Mom get over being afraid, so he said, “I grew up in Borneo, don’t you remember? We lived with natives all around us. In Malawi, we will not be living in a village, but in a house. People speak English in Malawi too, so we won’t have to learn another language unless we want to.”

“But Melody and June are only one year old!” her voice was very shaky.

“Honey,” he said in a real soft voice, “Remember when we gave each of the children into the Lord’s care when they were born?” 

Mom was quiet because she knew that was true.

After a few minutes, when I think I heard her sniff, she said, “But can’t we be “home missionaries” right here where we live, like Peter Marshall?  We could go to the poor areas of our city, even learn Spanish. Or to hospitals. Or help the homeless. There is a LOT of hopeless people around….” 

(Mom asked all these questions, but she told me later she was really thinking about herself and about all her THINGS. She didn’t want to give them up. Maybe she was also scared about giving up her LIFE, like Nate Saint did.)

The more they talked down there in the kitchen, the more I thought about things that “I” would have to give up too. Things like my skateboard and big Lego sets and my new bike. And what about my friends? Jake and Caleb were my best friends! They would keep on being best friends, only “I” wouldn’t be there!  They’d do stuff that I wanted to do but “I” wouldn’t be able to do it with them if I was in dumb old Ma-loooowwww-eee. 

I was just starting T-ball too, and found out I was great at it. I loved swimming lessons and going to the beach. My Uncle Will promised me a surf board on my eighth birthday, and that was only 19 months away!  

I didn’t think about getting sick, like Mom worried about. Nah, I would never get any of those awful diseases Mom talked about. I hardly ever get a cough or an ear ache or throw up.

I heard Mom talking and arguing, some more, “But Hudson, think of all the vaccinations the kids will need, and the twins are so little!  You know they are saying now that vaccinations can cause other diseases in children, like autism, or…”

Right then, when I heard the word “vaccinations,” my head shot up. WHOA! No way did I want to get shots!! I hated getting shots!  Malawi was getting worse to me with every word.

After that, I started getting into the conversations between Mom and Dad whenever I heard them talking about going to Malawi. I always sided with Mom. Nope, we didn’t want to be missionaries to Africa. We wanted to stay RIGHT HERE. We could talk about Jesus RIGHT HERE in our OWN city. 

Mom and Dad prayed a lot and read the Bible. Dad talked about so many people who didn’t know Jesus in Malawi. He told Mom that God was calling him to preach and teach the people of Malawi, and to teach pastors to go into the villages because they DID know the language.

At other times, he told her not to worry. There was a good clinic with doctors and nurses, and that another missionary family was already there, with one more coming after us.

“Things will be different in Malawi and it may be hard,” he told her. “But God is in Malawi too. He will be with us always. He promised he would never leave us or forsake us.”

Mom finally agreed. She cried a little. One night I heard them singing songs in bed and in the morning, she was smiling a special smile.

NO WAY!  She had betrayed me! 

 

And then, kids, I started acting really bad. I argued and yelled and sat down with my arms crossed, and my eyes scrunched up and my teeth locked together, and refused to do anything they asked me to do.

“No, I don’t want to!” I said.

“I won’t!” I said.

And then ….. “You can’t make me!”

Of course, you know what happened then!  Dad took me upstairs to my room and talked to me and then…… you know.  And it didn’t feel good at all.

 

In the end I realized that kids really don’t have a lot to say in such big decisions. I mean, who can argue against GOD?  I went along with all the giving away of things and packing things in big plastic boxes and sleeping on the floor the last week. But inside I was really mad. I didn’t say it out loud, because I didn’t want more discipline. But I was sure thinking mad and bad things inside.

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When they had a party for us at our church, everybody came up to say good bye. There was a lot of hugging and picture taking, and crying.  I didn’t hug or smile for pictures OR cry.

Caleb gave me a cool expanding flashlight “for when your power goes out,” he said.  Jake gave me a new hand-held video game with extra batteries. “Thanks, guys!” I said.  We looked at each other, then looked at the floor. Caleb’s mom called and he ran off. 

Jake looked after him, and then said to me. “Well, have fun in the jungle!” and ran to where Caleb was. Another kid came to them with a soccer ball and they all ran to the parking lot to kick it around.

It’s not fair! I thought.  I want to stay here with my friends!

“I don’t like you, God,” I said to myself as we drove back to our house for one last night. 

During the night, Julie crawled over to my sleeping bag and curled up beside me. “I don’t wanna go,” she whispered. 

“Me neither!” I said. 

In the morning the pillow we shared was a little wet. She must have been crying. I know I wasn’t. I’m sure of it.

2

The trip to Malawi was sooooooooooooooooo long.  At first, riding in a jet was fun. We ate meals right at our seats and watched movies with headphones on. We got pillows and blankets and the waitress lady gave me a plastic pin like the captain wears.

But it was hard to sleep, and Melody and June cried ALL the time. Julie was too scared to do anything but hold on tightly to the arm rests, especially when the plane bumped up and down. I noticed she was chewing her bottom lip real bad.  It got all red.

If you had to go to the bathroom, there was a long line to wait in, and then the bathroom was really small and I didn’t know how to flush it, and I almost got locked in. I pounded on the door and yelled. Someone pushed in the center of the door and it folded up.  What kind of dumb door is that!

Julie also got sick and had to use one of those paper bags from the pocket on the seat in front of her.  That almost made ME sick.  Dad held her on his lap and ordered a Sprite soda for her.  But when the jet started bumping around, a ding-ding-ding sound came on and he had to put her down and fasten the seatbelts.

We landed in a really hot and scary place. But at least we didn’t stay there very long. Then it was morning and I looked out the window. There was no city, just greenish bushes and grass and reddish roads. We flew beside a big lake for a long time. And then we landed.  We got off the plane way out in its parking lot and had to walk to the building.

“Oh, how pretty it is here,” Mom said. “It reminds me of Hawaii!  Look at those palm trees and all the flowers!  Take a deep breath kids, no smog.”  Dad smiled at her and put his arm around her for a quick hug.

It took another long, long time to get all our suitcases and wait for Pastor B. from the college to pack them all inside and on the roof of his Range Rover. 

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As we rode I looked outside. There was not much out there.  Old, dirty buildings with funny signs, people in old clothes selling funny stuff along the highway, and many, many, many rows of corn growing, except it was called maize, Pastor. B. said.

There were no MacDonald’s or Taco Bell or Yogurt Land shops, or pretty lawns or big schools. There were lots and lots of people walking along the road. A boy with a stick was making four cows move along by switching their backs.

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 Mothers didn’t push their kids in strollers. No, they… WORE THEM ON THEIR BACKS like back packs!!

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And they carried loads on their heads – baskets, tubs, water jugs. How did they DO that??

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Men carried gigantic loads of sticks on their rusty bicycles, or on donkeys. Sometimes there were stick cages with chickens packed inside, squawking and shedding feathers.

There were old people sitting by the road in dirty old torn clothes holding out their hands as we passed. One guy didn’t have legs. One old lady’s eyes were completely white.  It made me shiver.

I noticed that Julie wasn’t looking out the window anymore. She was squeezed down low beside me with her hands over her eyes. The twins? They were sleeping. I was very tired too, but I couldn’t stop looking at everything outside.

Finally we came up to a long and tall red brick wall with a black iron gate at the driveway.  A man in dark pants, a pink shirt and a wide tie came out of a tiny little square place in the wall where there was a stool and opened the gate for us. He closed it behind us.

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WOW!!  Inside this place, which I found out later was the African Bible College (ABC), it was so pretty. Nice houses and green lawns and flowers on the ground and in the trees, and new looking school buildings. A huge swimming pool and a big building Pastor B said was a gym.

We stopped in front of a house.  Pastor B. said, “Here’s where I live. You can rest here for a while. My wife has lunch ready for you, and then we will go to your place.”

Mrs. B. came out and welcomed us and hugged mom and us.  “Please come in,” she said.  She had glasses of orange drink for all of us.  It wasn’t cold with ice, but it was very nice to drink. I sat down on a long brown couch and….went to asleep.

~

Excuse me kids…… What?  What are you saying Melody? I can’t understand you with a banana in your mouth!  Hey, give me a bite. Mmm, yum, de–lish–ee-ous!  Thanks, Mel.  Now what did you want to tell me?  Ohhhh, right now?  Okay.

Well, Melody wants me to tell you about the crime I saw and the criminal who ran away. She says all this first day in Malawi stuff is boring. Well, she was just a baby then, so SHE doesn’t even remember it.

Okay. The story she wants me to tell happened a week after she ate that mouse – remember that? – And it made Mom totally forget about what she did. That’s why she thought this story was cool. It wasn’t cool for me while it was happening, I can tell you!  I got a sprained ankle and some bruises and scrapes on my arms out of it.

This story happened on the day we went to “Old Town” Lilongwe (lee-LONG-way). Lilongwe is our capital city, but it’s NO WAY as big as any of your cities in America.

When you go to the oldest part of the city, you can see the Lilongwe River on the left side of the road. Down a long slope at the edge of the river there are Malawian women washing their clothes.  (Yeah, I know!! In that muddy water!)  They beat the clothes up and down in the water, wring them out and hang them over big rocks or bushes to dry. These women live in nearby villages, not in town.

At the top of the hill of this “laundry river place” is an open market, where many, many grass-thatched booths are all crowded together so tightly you can hardly walk between them.

Malawians sell all kinds of things here, from old clothes and shoes and tools and tires, to squash and mangos and sugar cane and peanuts, to live chickens and goats, and fresh fish and goat meat hanging from hooks. Some people cook nsima (nnnn-SEE-mah) in pots over open fires on the ground. (Remember, that is the white thick porridge stuff made from ground maize that Melody told you about.)

One time Dad brought a pair of shoes to this open market. They were still very new, but the soles were coming off. Right away two Malawi men ran up to him and offered him money. They could fix the soles and sell them for a big profit!

It is very dusty, smoky and noisy. There are a lot of people and kids and dogs walking around. Here’s how it looks from the road.  (The river is down past the left side of the picture.)

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When you drive past this open market on the road, you drive under a walking bridge from one side to the other. This is a safer way to cross the street and not get run over by traffic. You can see it in this picture.

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By the way, I took these pictures with the new camera I got from Grandpa and Grandma last Christmas.

These cars and old trucks and buses are NOT driving to that open market. No, mostly only village Malawians go there. They don’t have cars, so they walk and carry the things they sell or buy in baskets on their heads.

All these cars are heading right around the corner into Old Town which is nicknamed “India Town” because there are so many people from India living there. Yeah, I know, weird. Indians living in Africa! There are also two big UN-Christian churches there, called mosques, where people do NOT learn about the Gospel or worship God.

3

That day I’m going to tell you about, Mom went to Old Town to buy fabric to sew new sheets for us. The girls like bright colors in their rooms, such as purple, and yellow and blue stripes, and white with big red flowers. She brought April along this time too, so that Neema, a very good seamstress who works there, could measure her for some new dresses.

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A lot of tailors and seamstresses have shops along this road to take orders or to sell the shirts, and pants, and even coats that they make.

Dad was there to buy four huge bags of dog food (Gideon and Samson eat a ton of food every week!).  Ngunda needed a new garden rake.

And I went along to help Mom carry bags.

“Marshall, can you hold all this while I talk to Neema?”  Mom said. She handed me a big sack filled with colorful material.

I looked around and could see Dad and Ngunda going into a big hardware shop down the street.  When I turned back, Neema was measuring and talking to April, and Mom was talking to a boy in an old faded soccer shirt who was trying to sell her something…. jewelry, I think.

“No, I don’t need that,” she said politely, then more loudly when the boy would not go away, “I don’t want that. Go somewhere else, please.”

He kept holding it up in her face and talking in broken English, trying to make a deal. Mom stepped back, pushing his hand away. I frowned.

April laughed at something that Neema did right then – probably tickled her – and I looked away from Mom. When I looked back, I saw another kid whose back was to me, wiggle out Mom’s cell phone from the pouch on her purse which was hanging on her shoulder. She didn’t notice because the first boy was being really pushy now.

“Hey!” I yelled. “Stop that!  Mom, watch out!”  She whipped around, but it was too late, both the boys had taken off down the street running fast.  I dropped the sack I was holding near Neema and took off after them.

“Marshall, come back!” she called.

“They got your cell phone!” I yelled over my shoulder, and saw her look into her purse.

The boy who had been showing her the jewelry took off sideways down an alley, but I kept after the one in a dirty red tank shirt who had the cell phone. He zigged and zagged through the crowds and the cars in the street. He nearly got run over by a truck loaded with Malawians going out of town. I had to stop till it went by and lost him.

Then I thought I saw him again way down the street moving fast, and I ran after him again.  Then something happened – he disappeared into a mob of men and boys. When I caught up, I saw the boy on the ground curled up into a ball. The men were kicking him and beating him with sticks. What was this?

“Stop!” I yelled and tried to break through the mob.

“He a bad thief!” several men growled, and continued with the beating, locking me out of the circle with their shoulders and arms.

“Wait! I’ll take him away!” I shouted, but they pushed me farther out of the circle. I struggled back, trying to get to the boy, pushing in as hard as they were pushing me out.

While they were busy with me, the boy scrambled up, hunched over, and ducked through an opening in the crowd. He started hobbling away, limping pretty bad. I let him get a little ways away, and then broke from the men. “I’ll get him!” I said in as mean a voice as I could. “He will pay!”

This time they let me chase after the “very bad thief” and didn’t follow. When he saw I was still chasing him, he took off in a spurt of speed and went around a corner into another alley.  I raced after him, getting pretty mad myself.

I knew that thieves – even young ones like this boy looked to be – might end up in Maula prison for years, never having a trial. I was beginning to think that maybe he deserved it.  I stepped on a loose brick and twisted my ankle a little bit.  I was just about to quit, when I saw him up ahead behind a big pile of trash. He was bent over, with his hands on his knees. He was breathing very hard, but…. I could see he still held Mom’s cell phone in one hand.

I took a flying leap and tackled him. We both went down with a double “oof” onto the hard packed red Malawi dirt. It knocked the wind out of both of us. I leaned back, but stayed sitting on his legs, my hand pressing down hard on the middle of his back. Both of us were panting and gasping for air.

I could see big bruises already coming on his ribs and one shoulder. I could also see Mom’s cell phone in the dirt just inches beyond his outstretched arm.

A crowd of men started gathering at the opening of the alley, but I raised my fist and made a really mean face, like I was going to beat the boy myself, and they slowly moved away.

I had heard Dad talking about Malawi “mob justice” once, but I hadn’t seen it for myself. Dad said that because the police were never around, and when they were, they didn’t care about such things, the people would “take the law into their own hands” and punish the offenders themselves. They wanted to get even for being stolen from or hurt in some way.  But sometimes they went too far.

The boy moved under me, and I leaned forward on his back, putting more weight on him.  I didn’t want him beaten to death, but I really didn’t want him to go to prison either. It’s an overcrowded place with some really mean men, and a boy like this would just get forgotten for years. He would probably get beaten up or starve and die there.

Besides, Mom’s cell phone had been rescued. It didn’t look broke or anything.

Finally I slid off his legs and reached to turn him over. Red dirt was stuck to his face around his eyes and nose and mouth. He had been crying, and I could see a bloody lip. There was a strange scar on his chin that looked like the letter “W”.

Then our eyes locked on each other’s – his dark chocolate brown and my blue-green ones.  My mouth dropped open!  No!

It was Maya!

~~~~

That’s all I have time for today, kids. Next time I will go back to…. well, you will see. And you will see about Maya too (by the way, you say the name, MY-yah.)  and about that “W” scar on his chin.

Gotta go!  Dad’s calling me to help change the oil on his Land Rover and help him check the breaks. We want to go on a camping trip soon, and it has to be running in tip top shape.

See ya,  Marshall

~~~~

(If you want to think more about this story, and what God says in His Word, read Romans 12:14-21 and let me know how you think this story should turn out….)

“Come, my young friends and listen to me. And I will teach you to honor the Lord.”  ~~~ Psalm 34:11   Good News Bible

Stories of Missionary Life in Africa for Children (#4) “What’s In A Name?”

Oct23

mk-story-coversThis story is the FOURTH in the Missionary Kids Stories about the Matthews family who live in Malawi, Africa.

Each story is written in the form of a letter from one of the Matthews’ children. There are seven children, (but the baby can’t write yet!).

I write these stories so young readers can learn about missionary life in Africa. The MKs (Missionary Kids) will tell stories about cultural differences (and similarities) such as eating DEAD MICE in the first MK story, or why guard dogs are necessary in Malawi such as in BIG BLACK DOGS (the second story). They will also show how they face the same temptations, emotions, and problems that all kids everywhere do. I hope to entertain and inform the children, but mostly I want to quietly teach them truths from the Bible, God’s Word, as it pertains to their everyday lives.

So, here is the next story!  (Scroll down, or check the list on the side bar to begin the with the FIRST story and meet the kids and their idiosyncrasies in order.)

 

 

What’s In A Name?

Hi Kids,

It’s my turn to tell you a story. You already know from Melody that I am her twin sister. She is older than me by fifteen minutes, but we were born in two different months, May and June.

That’s how we got our names. Hers is Melody May and mine is Charity June. Being twins, we look alike, but we don’t act alike. She is friendly and daring and thinks of other people’s feelings. I’m not like that. Sometimes I get jealous and even mean.

Everyone calls her by her first name, but they call me by my second name.

I always wondered why.

One day, I complained to Mom, “Kids in Sunday School sing about my sister’s name, Making Melody in my Heart, to the King of Kings, why can’t they sing Making Charity in my Heart instead?”

(Charity means giving some of your old things to poor people who really need it. That’s a good thing, right?)

Mom looked off over my head, with a small smile on her mouth as if she was remembering something good, and then answered, “You’ll grow into it one day, June.”

What?? How do you grow into your name? Don’t you grow into it when you are born?

The story Julie Joy wants me to tell you started way back in December when it was Christmas time here in Malawi. It was also Deek’s second birthday.

Our Grandpa and Grandma Matthews came to visit us. Maybe because it was Christmas and Deek’s birthday or maybe they wanted to see how we were doing in Malawi. They were very tired at first. I takes thirty-five HOURS to travel here from America!

One thing I noticed right away was that they brought four extra suitcases of stuff for us – like clothes and school books and special shampoos for mom, and vitamins and first aid stuff, and a new computer battery for Dad’s laptop. There were also presents for Deek’s birthday, AND Christmas presents for all of us!

On Christmas morning we all had hot oatmeal with the toppings we each like best – three flavors of yogurt, raisins, granola, nuts, chocolate chips, and brown sugar (which Mom makes by mixing white sugar and molasses together because there is no such thing as brown sugar in Malawi! Weird, huh?).

We had a special Christmas service at our church, but this time Dad didn’t have a part. We sang Christmas carols, and then our regular pastor read the Christmas story from the Bible. He invited my Grandpa to pray, which kind of surprised me, until I found out that Grandpa and Grandma used to be a missionaries too, in some other place called Borneo.

(Do you know where that is?)

Some of the ladies at church gave us waxed paper wrapped packages of cookies and pumpkin bread. Mom gave them little baggies of her very special brownies.

We had a big Christmas lunch, with six small roasted chickens called “baby chickens” at the Chipiku (Ch’-PEE-koo) market in Lilongwe, our town. (They are actually Cornish Hens, my mom says.) We also had roasted potatoes, slices of red, red tomatoes, and canned peach halves. We had Jell-O that Grandma made in layers of red and green, and for dessert Mom made three apple pies. We ate all of them!!

Anyway…. we FINALLY got to the opening of presents. We sat in chairs in a big circle in our main room. The windows and doors were all open because it was hot and a cool wind was coming in because a storm was brewing.

(By the way, mosquito screens cover every opening in the house because those tiny flying bugs like to come inside and bite us and sometimes make us sick with malaria!)

It was darker than usual in the house with the storm clouds covering the sun, even though it wasn’t raining yet, so mom turned on the lights. We had a tiny little plastic Christmas tree that Grandpa and Grandma also brought. It had a flashlight battery inside, making the colored lights shine out.

After we opened our presents from Mom and Dad, Dad passed out all the ones from Grandpa and Grandma. We each got two. Marshall got a pocket camera and a really cool knife with lots of things that open up. Julie got a soft fuzzy blue bathrobe and slippers and a matching Disney “Frozen” hairbrush.

Melody got a new board game and a 1,500-piece jigsaw puzzle. April got a set of twelve kid’s books and a pen with her name on it. Gus got a miniature train set in two boxes. And Deek got a little tricycle, two coloring books, and a big box of “washable” markers. (Mom made sure they were washable.)

I got a plastic jar of Jelly Belly jelly beans! All flavors! My favorite candy!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Then I started to open the flat box on my lap. I was so excited. Was it a scrapbook or a giant book of crossword and word search puzzles? Was it game that took batteries and made noise?

Nope. It was none of those.

It was a picture in a frame with glass on the front. The frame didn’t even look new, but was worn and scratched in a lot of places. And, worse yet, the picture wasn’t even a picture. It was a bunch of words and designs in sewing, AND the glass looked foggy. It looked like something that someone didn’t want any more and gave to us “poor” missionary kids. It was like… like charity…. given to ME!

I dumped the old sewing picture on the floor and picked up my jar of Jelly Belly candies. I hugged them, looking around at my sisters and brothers. They were all “wow-ing” about their presents and trying them out, thanking Grandpa and Grandma, even giving them hugs.

Mom came over quietly and picked up the framed picture. She sat by me, holding it so I had to look at it. I did, for a minute, and then turned away.

“It’s a sampler,” she said. “People long ago made these to remember important sayings, often from the Bible. They did their very best stitchery on them, sometimes taking months to finish. This one was made by your –.”

“It’s ugly, and I don’t want it,” I cried in a mad whisper. I slapped it away, and it fell to the floor with a clunk.

Just then a huge, loud thunder sounded and the lights went out. Mom and Dad and Marshall stumbled around through all the furniture and wrapping paper to light the candles.

In Malawi, we are used to the electricity going out, especially in storms. Mom keeps a bunch of white candles with matches all over the house on high shelves for when this happens.

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Once they were all lit, we could see again, but not as well as before. The light was dim and yellowish and the flames wiggled back and forth from the wind.

It started to rain so Dad got up and closed a couple of the windows. Then it got more warm and humid. I noticed that the old picture on the floor got covered up by some torn wrapping paper. I was glad.

“How lovely!” said Grandma. “Perfect light and sound effects for singing some joyful Christmas songs!”

I didn’t feel like singing songs. I didn’t feel joyful. I felt mad. Why didn’t I get fun presents like everybody else? I went over to where Melody and April were setting up the new game.

“Come play too,” said April, making room in all the wrapping paper on the floor for me to sit.

“I don’t want to play your stupid game. I pushed the game board with my foot and scattered all the pieces.

“Ju-une, why did you do that?” wailed Melody. I can’t find the other dice now in all these ribbons and papers. Mom, make June help us find the pieces.”

“It’s right there,” I said and kicked the little square with my toe. Are you blind or something!”

When I backed up, I tripped over an empty box and lost my balance. I fell with a thud on one of Gus’s little train engines.

“Owwww!” I yelled!

“Mo-om-m,” Gus yelled back. “She messed up my train!

Dad came over then and helped me up. But he didn’t let loose of my arm. Instead he marched me out to the kitchen.

“June, what’s the matter with you? Why are you being so mean?” he asked.

“Everybody got good presents, but I didn’t!” I cried back.

“What about the Jelly Belly candy? I thought those were your favorites.”

“They are,” I said in a small voice, my head bent over. When I looked up I was crying. Not sad tears but mad tears. “I wanted some puzzle books, or a new hair brush, or markers. I wanted a computer game or something, and all I got was an old picture! I hate it.”

“June,” said my dad. “You need to go to your room until you can come out with a happy face.”

That would be NEVER, I thought and stomped into the main room.

When I picked up my jar of Jelly Belly candy, I stepped on something under the wrapping paper. I heard a crack, but with so much noise, no one heard. I hoped it was a game piece or a toy train car.

In my room, I slammed the door shut, but everyone was singing, “Hark, The Herald Angles Sing” as loud as they could and didn’t hear me. It was raining hard now and thundering. I felt like that inside, like the storm.

I opened the Jelly Belly jar and ate a few green ones. I ate some red and red-spotted ones next. Then I poured a whole handful and popped them all into my mouth all at once and chewed.

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They sang “The First Noel” and I ate white jelly beans. They sang “Angels We have Heard on High” and I ate yellow and orange jelly beans.

I was starting to feel sick when I heard a knock on my door. Everyone was singing “Silent Night” now, but I didn’t feel like eating any more candy, not even the blueberry ones. The big jar was half empty!!

I heard Grandpa call to me and crack open the door.

“Oh, good!” cried Grandpa. “There you are, June. Come out here and sit by me. I want you to help me with something.”

What could I do? Besides I didn’t really want to stay in my room alone any more. I put down the candy and followed him down the hall. When he sat down, I squeezed into his chair beside him.

“We were going to read the Christmas story again, but my old eyes can’t see very well in the candlelight. Would you read it for me from this very old Bible?” He lifted a big old book from the table beside him and set it in my lap. It was heavy and very thick and had gold writing on the front.

I sighed. I started to turn to Luke 2, but Grandpa said, “No, turn to Philippians 2 this time.

What? Everyone knows the Christmas story is in Luke. It tells about baby Jesus being born in a stable in Bethlehem, and the angels singing Peace on Earth, and the shepherds going to look at the baby. I was curious as I turned the old pages back to Philippians.

“Start right there, June.” He pointed to verse 5. “This Christmas story begins before Bethlehem. Before Nazareth. It begins… in Heaven.”

So, I read until he stopped me after verse 9.

 “For let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness of men, and in habit found as a man. He humbled himself, becoming obedient unto death, even to the death of the cross. For which cause God also hath exalted him, and hath given him a name which is above all names…”

“That’s not the Christmas story, Grandpa!” I said.

“It isn’t?” he asked.

I read it again, to myself.

Well… it did tell about Jesus coming, but it went way past that, to the Easter story. Actually… way past THAT too. To Jesus going back to heaven. And what was that about a new name. Wasn’t He going to be called Jesus anymore?

That made me think about my OWN name problem and I didn’t want to do that. I started to close the Bible, but Grandpa stopped me.

“Here, look up another verse or two for me, will you?” He told me where and I found 1 John 4 and started reading aloud at verse 9.

“By this hath the charity of God….”

My eyes stopped at the fifth word – Charity?

“Go on,” said Grandpa.

“By this hath the charity of God, appeared towards us, because God hath sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we may live by him. In this is charity: not as though we had loved God, but because he hath first loved us, and sent his Son to be a sacrifice for our sins.” 

I stared at those words. The reason God sent Jesus at Christmas was for….charity??? He gave something of His own – not an old throw away thing, but His very own Son – to the world because we were…what? Poor and needy? Like the Malawian villagers we sometimes take old clothes and food to?

It didn’t make sense.

“But…. we’re not poor and needy, Grandpa. We have a LOT of things. Why would God think we needed charity? Okay, okay, some people in the world need it…..”

Grandpa looked at me with his kind eyes.

“Sweetheart,” he said softly. “We ALL need very much what God is giving. Without it we are all lost. You remember in the Bible where it says we ALL have done bad things against God and other people… even our family. We couldn’t even come close to God’s high standard. We all have hearts that make us want to do bad. God is perfectly good (we call that being holy) and he can’t be with people who aren’t perfectly good too.

The Bible says we deserve God’s punishment for living that way. It’s only fair, don’t you think?”

My mind flashed to how I always tell Mom about the bad things my sisters and brothers do so they will get in trouble and get disciplined. Well, they should get punished, right? They did bad things! Yes, THAT was fair, I knew. But… God’s punishment…that was too scary to think about.

Grandpa went on, “We need God’s forgiveness for all those things we’ve done. He could just ignore them or erase them, but would that be fair to Him or to the ones we’ve sinned against? Would it be fair for someone to get off completely free from any punishment?

I shook my head no.

“The Bible says that God is just. That means He is fair.”

I never thought about God being fair, only that He loved us.

“All people, including Grandma and me, and your Dad and Mom and everyone – all people have broken God’s good laws and disobeyed His Word. We deserve his punishment. Don’t you think?”

I nodded, but it was hard to think about.

“That’s where Jesus comes in,” Grandpa said with a big smile. “He is God’s precious son, but God sent him from heaven to earth – yes as a baby in a stable – to get punished for us, punished for all the disobedience and sin we have done. Yes, He did this because He loved us so much, but also because He is just. He’s fair.”

It all didn’t seem fair to me. How could it be fair for Jesus who was perfect, to get punished for people who were sinful? And yet, He did it. I know all the Bible stories from Sunday School.

“We need something else too, June,” Grandpa said. “We need God’s perfect goodness. You see, we really ARE “poor and needy” after all! We need His…. charity…. as you call it.”

He smiled and patted my knee. “We don’t have anything to pay God for His goodness. (The Bible calls it righteousness.) What could we give Him? Even if we lived perfectly for the rest of our lives – and we couldn’t – it wouldn’t be enough.”

I was beginning to feel really bad listening to Grandpa. I was thinking of the mean things I had said and done to my sisters and brothers, how I always wanted to have the things THEY had and maybe made up stories to get them in trouble because I was jealous… and how I always wanted to make myself look really good and them really bad… and how I never admitted I did anything wrong even when I did sometimes.

I wondered how could I ever get this goodness from God that I needed, like Grandpa was talking about. So I asked him. “How can I get this goodness?”

Grandpa smiled. In fact he gave a happy little laugh. “God gives it to us as a gift. Just like He gives us forgiveness. He can give it, because someone else has paid for it. Do you know who?”

My eyes went to the figures of the nativity scene we have on a low bookcase. I saw the little baby in the manger.

mk-xmas-nativity

I thought how He grew up and always obeyed God, and how He died unfairly so that I wouldn’t be punished for my sin. So I…. so I would also have…. God’s goodness instead of a heart that wants to do bad.

I looked back at Grandpa, my eyes and my mouth wide open.

“Yes, June. Yes!” he cried and gave me a big bear hug. “God did a wonderful exchange when Jesus died. He took our sin, and gave us back His forgiveness and His goodness.”

Wow, it made sense to me now. I have a lot of stuff – I thought about all the things in my room and about my family and friends – but I didn’t have everything. I did need God’s charity; I needed His giving me His forgiveness and His goodness. Boy, I sure was needy and poor!!

It made me want to thank Him. Thank Him very much!

And then I wanted to thank Grandma and Grandpa for the candy, and even for that old sewing picture, because it must have meant something special to them.

I got up and shuffled through the wrapping paper on the floor till I found the picture. But…. oh no! There was a big spider crack in the glass, just over the bottom word that was sewn bigger than the rest. I wanted to cry now. My first thought was to blame it on someone else, but I knew it was me who stepped on it. I had heard that crack sound.

I went to Grandpa very slowly, my eyes filling with tears. “I’m sorry Grandpa and Grandma. I ruined the picture you gave me. I didn’t want it at first, but now I do.” And I started crying really hard.

I didn’t know it, kids, but all my brothers and sisters and even Mom and Dad were staring at me in surprise.

Grandma got up and took me in her arms. “Charity June, we forgive you. The glass can be replaced. And it doesn’t look like the embroidered sampler is hurt at all.”

Grandpa was already gently pulling out the pieces of glass and laying them on top of that old Bible on the table beside him. With the glass out, I could clearly read the emboider—the cross-stitch letters and see tiny hearts that made a frame around them on the cloth. It said…

And now abides

Faith,

Hope,

Charity,

these three;

but the greatest

of these is…

Charity

1 Corinthians 13:13

And in very tiny letters at the bottom… C.G.H.

My Grandma took the picture gently in her hands and lightly traced her finger over the letters. “This sampler was embroidered by your great, great grandmother, Charity Grace Hill, in 1902 when she was about 12 years old. We have cherished it in the family all these years.”

I looked at the stitched words again. They were over 100 years old!

“You were named after her, June, did you know that? We thought it was time for you to have the sampler now.” Her hands were shaking when she gave it to me. “Maybe before we go back to America, we will tell you her story. She lived up to her name, you know.”

“Did she give a lot of things to the poor?” I asked.

“June,” Grandpa interrupted, “Don’t you know what “charity” means? It’s an old English word. You read it in the verses tonight.”

I shook my head.

“Charity means LOVE, a special kind of Godly love” He repeated the verse in 1 John from his old Bible, “In this is charity: not as though we had loved God, but because he hath first LOVED us, and sent his Son to be a sacrifice for our sins.”

~~~~~

One day, much later, after Grandpa and Grandma had gone back to America, Mom asked me, “Well, June, do you want us to start calling you Charity now?”

Her question surprised me. I thought about what I had learned from the special Christmas story we’d read in Grandpa’s old Bible. I thought about the wonderful things my great, great grandmother had done (Yes, Grandma told me her story). I thought about the old sampler picture (with new clear glass now) that was hanging on the wall by my bed. And I thought about what Charity really means.

“Mom,” I said. “I think I need some more time to grow into that name.

And that’s my story, kids!

Love,  Charity June

Well…..I’m still just June for now.

— Facts —

The electricity goes out often in Malawi, sometimes for whole days at a time. When it does, you don’t get any water in your pipes either, because electricity is needed to pump in your water. People who live in houses always have spare water in big plastic bottles, all purified and ready to drink or cook with. 

They also keep buckets of water next to their toilets, so they can be flushed. (Did you know your toilet won’t flush unless water is coming through the pipes?)

Sometimes missionaries have a generator if they can afford it. It runs on gasoline and is noisy, but it will make some electricity for a while. But you can’t use hairdryers or plug in your Internet when you are using generator electricity.

And sometimes…. in the dry months, there is just NO water to pump, even if the electricity is working. And when it does come back, it is muddy from the red dirt in Malawi.  Here’s what came out of our broken water heater.  Ewwww!

MK.Malawi mud.jpg

 

Missionaries have to think of all this and buy drinking water in big bottles from the Chipiku market so they are prepared.

How would you like to live in Malawi with the electricity problems? In some ways, it is like camping. In other ways….. you just want to take a bath in clean bubbly water and go get a drink any time you want.

Next time… maybe Marshall will tell you HIS story about a…. criminal!

 

 

“Come, my young friends and listen to me. And I will teach you to honor the Lord.”  ~~~ Psalm 34:11   Good News Bible

Stories of Missionary Life in Africa for Children (#3) “The Eyes in the Well”

Oct19

mk-story-covers

This story is the THIRD in the Missionary Kids Stories about the Matthews family who live in Malawi, Africa.

Each story is written in the form of a letter from one of the Matthews’ children. There are seven children, (but the baby can’t write yet!).

I write these stories so young readers can learn about missionary life in Africa. The MKs (Missionary Kids) will tell stories about cultural differences (and similarities) such as eating DEAD MICE in the first MK story, and show how they face the same temptations, emotions, and problems that all kids everywhere do. I hope to entertain and inform the children, but mostly I want to quietly teach them truths from the Bible, God’s Word, as it pertains to their everyday lives.

So, here is the next story!  (Scroll down, or check the list on the side bar to begin the with the FIRST story and meet the kids and their idiosyncrasies in order.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The Eyes In The Well!

Dear kids,

I’m Melody’s oldest sister, just after our brother, Marshall. My parents named me Julie Joy Matthews. Can you guess what month I was born in?  I’ll give you a hint – it’s the 7th month. And I was born on the 7th day!  I was only four years old when my parents became missionaries to Malawi. Now I’m twelve and a half. I don’t remember much about living in America, except when we visit there every couple of years.

Right now, it’s getting cooler in Malawi, just the opposite of where you live. We have hot, wet winters, and cool dry summers. All the grass is brown and dry now. When the warm and wet season comes, November to April, everything is green because of all the rain. We get “buckets and barrels” of rain then! (That’s what Mom says.) And also very loud thunder and flashes of lightening.

Sometimes I worry that our house will just wash away, but Dad says NO WAY that will happen. The rain stops just as fast as it starts, leaving everything dripping and muggy under a blue sky.

Well, we had a freak rain storm this summer (remember it’s usually cool and dry then). It rained really hard – you could hardly see across the yard for all the rain. It was pouring off our roof too, and the driveway got flooded fast.

It was that day that something happened in the very back corner of our yard. Usually the rain rushes down our driveway in the front, under our big gate, and into the culvert by the road, like in the picture.

mk-rain-in-culvert

BUT…. as I was watching it out the window that day, the flooding water changed direction. It went along the wall to the very BACK corner of our yard.

Where would it go from there, I wondered, because we have a very tall brick wall all the way around our property. Would it stop up against the wall and flood our whole yard? Would it go into our garage or into our gardener’s little house at the other corner of the back yard?

Pretty soon I was biting the corner of my bottom lip, like I always do when I get worried. I was holding my little brother Deek (on my hip like my Mom does) as I watched the water do this weird thing out the kitchen window.

Deek noticed I was getting nervous. He started patting my mouth and saying “no biii, Ju-lee.”

Then I smelled something … well, let’s just say, I had to go change his diaper.

2

I didn’t think about the rain water rushing backwards till the next day.  It was sunny then  and everything was dried out again. I was swinging Deek and playing soccer ball catch with Gus and April. Gus went to play toy cars in the dirt and Deek followed him.

I started back to the far corner of the yard where the water had gone. It wasn’t flooded at all. Where did all that rain go to?

Marshall and Ngunda (nnnn-GOON-dah), our gardener, were trying to pry up a big wild plant. I laughed as they pushed and pulled one way and the other. That big weed did not want to come out! Marshall looked at me and then glanced back at the corner of the yard. April was there staring down at something.

“What’s she doing, Jule?” Marshall asked quickly. “There might be snakes around. Go get her!”

I looked where he was pointing and saw poor April leaning over something. Her arms started swinging around like wind mills. She looked like she was falling.

“April!” I screamed, and started running towards her. I felt Marshall charge past me.  He reached out and grabbed April’s shirt right between her shoulder blades and pulled her backward.  She was very pale and scared and turned around to cling tightly to Marshall.

What was it? A snake? I know that black mamba snakes are very poisonous, and can spit poison into your eyes from six feet away!!  Did we have one in our yard? Did April almost step on one… or a NEST of them??

I got to where they were standing, all the while looking down at the grass for a snake. I slid to a stop and stared down. Now I knew where all that rain water had gone.

There,  just where April almost fell was a big… black… hole!

mk-well

Quickly I looked over my shoulder for my brothers, but Gus and Deek were happily playing with their trucks.  Whew!

“Here, Jule,” said Marshall, and pushed April toward me. “Let’s have a look here.”

He went closer to the black hole and knelt down. I copied him and so did April, only I kept her back a little.  We peered over the edge and could see….. nothing. Just blackness. No bottom. I felt a kind of shiver go up my back.

Marshall picked up a rock about the size of an egg and tossed it into the hole. Immediately it disappeared into the blackness.

“Wow,” said Marshall.

“Well,” said Ngunda and startled us. He was shaking his head slowly. “A very old well we have here. It supposed to be covered.”  He looked around and spotted a rusty old sheet of metal with lots of holes punched in it. It looked like it got washed ways away in all that rain and was covered half with dirt.

Ngunda loosened it and brought it to the hole. “Get back now.  Very dangerous if you fall in. It very deep and narrow. You not get out, maybe.”

About then, Gus came running up, Deek toddling after him. Gus ran right up and looked in, standing RIGHT at the edge. The tips of his shoes were over the edge as he bent to look into the hole.

“Watch out!” I yelled and pulled his arm to get him away.

“Very dangerous, young Gus,” said Ngunda and waved us all back. He fit the metal over the hole and found four big rocks to put on the corners.

“Is that where all the rainwater went yesterday?” I asked him.

Ngunda looked at me and then around at the ruts in the dirt where the water had rushed. He frowned and opened the hole again. He threw a big rock in, which disappeared into the darkness just like before. We didn’t hear a splash, but we did hear a thud and then a……. screeching yowl echoing up the shaft!

We all jumped way back, even our gardener, whose eyes were open impossibly wide.  Something was in that old well!  But what?

Ngunda took off running to his house. That made April scared and she ran off to our house. Deek toddled as fast as he could after her. I almost ran too.

“Gus!” I said, almost shouting, “Go with them and tell Dad what is back here.” Gus obeyed me and ran after them. (I can be very bossy at times.)

Marshall was on his knees again, with his hands on the edge of the hole, or well, or whatever it was. He was peering down into the darkness.  I could see now there was a circle of bricks around the opening, but dirt and weeds had hidden it.

“What’s down there?” I asked Marshall. “Can you see anything?  What made that awful noise?”

“I don’t know. It sounded like a…. a…. well, I don’t know. Something wild maybe.” He tossed another small stone into the hole. Nothing.  “What did it sound like to you, Jule?”

“I don’t know either,” I said. But my mind was picturing all kinds of scary creatures and monsters. I started biting my lower lip.

Ngunda came up behind us then and we both jumped. Gideon and Goliath, our two big dogs came trotting over too. “What great guard dogs!!” I thought. They probably were sleeping away on their mats in the carport while “a thing” fell or crawled into this black hole!

“Back,” commanded Ngunda waving one hand at the dogs. Gideon and Goliath backed up and sat down. Ngunda had a big flashlight and stepped up to shine it in the hole. It barely lit the way down.

We could see wet weeds and roots hanging from the side walls. I shivered a little, thinking what if April had fallen down there. Or me!

He shone the light right to the bottom, a long, long way down. (Dad said maybe 10 meters when he saw it later.)  At the bottom, through the thick gloom we saw something muddy move, then jump up. The flashlight beam shown in its eyes for a second and they flashed green.

Marshall and Ngunda got up, brushing the dirt from their knees. I kept kneeling there, staring down into the now very black hole again. I heard a small yowl again.

“Some kind of cat,” Marshall said. “Did you see the green eyes?”

“Feral cat,” added Ngunda.” Wild cat.”

He put the metal sheet and the rocks back over the hole.  Dad came up then and they talked about the well and the wild cat. But all I could think about was the poor animal down there in all that darkness. Was it scared?

“I throw poison down it tomorrow,” said Ngunda.  Dad scrunched up his face and nodded reluctantly.

My heart was beating very fast. They were going to … to kill it?  Very quietly I whispered, “nooooo.”

mk-well-cover

3

Around the dinner table that night Marshall and Dad told Mom about the deep hole and the cat inside.

“Oh, Hudson, what if one of the children had fallen in!” Mom had a worried look on her face, but she didn’t bite her lip like me. “Deek is so small,” she continued. “We never would have found him, or even thought to look there!”

“We’ll seal it up permanently tomorrow, Audrey,” he said. “Meanwhile you kids stay away from it.” He looked slowly around the table at each of us… right into our eyes.  We all nodded, one at a time.

While we talked about other things, I didn’t hardly realize what I was doing, but somehow I slipped a chicken wing into my napkin and put it in my pocket.

mk-chickenwing

Later that night, very much later, about midnight or so, I got up and sprayed some bug spray on my arms and legs, and patted a little on my face and neck. I didn’t want to get bit by a malaria mosquito!  Then I quietly walked down the hall and sneaked out the door on the patio side of the house where the washing machine was. I took my little pink flashlight to show the way.

Gideon and Goliath trotted by my side.  They could smell the chicken wing too, but I pushed their nosy noses away. It was really dark back there by the back wall. There was only starlight, and even though there are a lot of stars in Malawi, I couldn’t see very well. Would I find that old well?

Yes! I lifted the rocks off the metal sheet and pulled it back half way. I shone my flashlight down the hole. It looked creepier down there because my light didn’t go very far down the narrow shaft to the bottom.  But, then, the green eyes flashed up at me and I heard a little yowl. The dogs leaned over the hole and sniffed. I pushed them back.

I gulped and tossed the chicken wing into the hole. Gideon and Goliath lunged forward, like it was a game of fetch. But it disappeared too quickly and they whined unhappily.

When I shown my light inside the well again, no green eyes flashed up.

I sat back on the dirt. Gideon and Goliath lay down on either side of me. I thought about how it would be in a dark hole, trapped, alone and afraid and very hungry.  I just HAD to do something! But what?

When I aimed my flashlight down again, the green eyes flashed up at me. Flashed and stared for a few seconds.

I thought about how it was my job to look after my younger brothers and sister when my parents weren’t around. I was to help them with stuff, have fun with them, and keep them safe.  What about that poor cat creature in the black hole? How could I help it?

Gideon licked my fingers, getting the last bit of fried chicken taste. I patted him a few times. Then I saw the collar around his neck and thought of something.  If I could just……

I got up and found my way to the long clothes line that Asala (a-SAW-la), our housekeeper and Ngunda’s wife hung the clothes on. It was empty except one old cleaning rag hanging from a clothespin.

I stood and stared at it, my mind whirling around with thoughts and plans. Then, before I could think any more, I quickly untied the ends of the long rope and gathered it up. I grabbed the old rag and tied it to one end. Gideon and Goliath thought it was a game and tried to grab the rope.
“No!” I cried, but they kept bouncing around me as I stumbled back to the old well. Would it work? Would that feral cat creature be smart enough? Desperate enough? Strong enough? I had to try! Otherwise, tomorrow–

I thought of the poison that would be tossed into the hole to the hungry thing. It would eat it up right away and then get really sick and then–

Slowly, I started letting the rag end of the rope down into the hole.  Would it be long enough? What if I dropped it?

I came to the last 12 inches of the rope and lost hope. It would never work. What a stupid idea this was. I felt tears stinging my eyes.

But then I felt a little jiggle on the rope. I jumped and almost dropped it. I jerked it up and down a little bit a couple of times. It jiggled some more in my hands. Then I pulled it up about two feet and let it down quickly, then up again.

Suddenly I felt a weight on the rope; a pretty heavy weight. Was it working?  Would the creature do it??  Would it grab on with its claws? Would they hold it as I raised up the rope?  Slowly I pulled and pulled higher and higher and the weight did not come off.  My heart started beating faster as I got near the end of the rope.

Suddenly a black creature burst from the hole like a big hairy shadow. I fell backward and it raced across me. Gideon and Goliath took off after it, barking. I called them back, but they didn’t hear.

I shown my little flashlight where I heard the noise and saw a blurred creature race up a tree, jump at least five feet to the top of the wall, scramble under the wire and disappear.

And then…. the house lights came on.

Dad came running out with just his pajama bottoms on. He was holding a big flashlight and calling the dogs. Ngunda came out too with another flashlight.

Then… both their flashlights landed on me.

And the rope.

And the open well.

4

I have to tell you, it wasn’t a happy night for me. After they covered up the well again and collected the rope, Dad led me into the house with his hand firmly on my shoulder. He and Mom sat me down by the desk in his office.

“What were you thinking Julie? You could have fallen in and broken your arm… or your neck,” He was shaking his head solemnly back and forth.

I looked down at my hands in my lap.

“Didn’t I tell you kids not to go back to that well?”  I nodded.

“Didn’t you promise you would not do it?” I nodded again.

Dad just looked at me, and thought about what to say.  I started biting my lip.

“Don’t do that, Dear,” said Mom. Then she thought of something else and she leaned toward me. “Did that thing scratch you, Julie Joy? It could have had rabies or something!”

She pulled back my robe, lifted up my pajama top, and inspected my front side.  She relaxed when she saw no bite marks or claw scratches.

“I felt sorry for it, Daddy!” I said loudly and started to cry. “It was so dark down there! It was scared and hungry and Ngunda was going to poison it tomorrow and it was going to die!!”
“Julie!” Mom cried. “YOU could have gotten hurt too!  YOU could have di—. Oh, Sweetie, we love you so much.”

“It was an irresponsible thing to do,” said Dad. “Maybe if you’d have told us how you felt, we could have done something together… in the daylight.  I didn’t like the idea of poison either. But instead you disobeyed us. You promised, and then broke your promise just like that.”

I nodded. “I’m sorry, Daddy.” My voice was just a squeak now. He reached out and set me on his lap, even though I am almost too big to do that anymore.

“We forgive you Sweetheart, but you must always think before you act. You must think of the consequences. You must think about how your decisions will affect others. And you need to listen to your parents because we only want what is best for you.”

“I will, Daddy. I will try to be smarter and trust you and listen to what you say.” He and Mom kissed me then. We went to my bedroom and they tucked me back into my bed.

Dad gave me this discipline before he prayed with me and turned out the light.

“You will have to stay in your room all day tomorrow, Julie, and think about how you disobeyed. Think about how important promises are too. What if God didn’t keep His promises?”

Mom and Dad forgave my foolish idea when they saw how sorry I was. I was so glad they did. I asked God to forgive me too, and He did.

5

Dad and Ngunda covered up that old well hole permanently with cement the next day. The rain would go back down the driveway and into the culvert as it was supposed to do. And somewhere, a feral wild cat got a chance to live a little longer.

I was glad about that.

6

It was Dad’s turn to preach the next Sunday. He asked if he could use my adventure as an illustration and I said, yes.  He talked about how Jesus came down to this dark, sinful world and rescued everyone who wanted to be helped by him, who would believe in Him, by dying on the cross.

He read Romans 5:6 – For when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly.

Jesus wasn’t doing something foolish when He came down to help us, like I did. He was doing exactly what His Father told Him to do. I’m so glad He came and rescued me!

Then Dad read the first part of Psalm 40 and smiled at me over his reading glasses.

“I waited patiently for the LORD; and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry.He brought me up out of an horrible pit, out of the miry clay, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my way. Blessed is that man (or girl) that makes the LORD his trust”

Well, Kids, I know my story was very long this time. All my sisters and brothers say I talk too much, even Melody, who talks a lot too. I will tell the others to make their stories shorter.

Much love, Julie

 

 – Note – 

 June (Melody’s twin sister) will tell you a story next time. I had to beg her to do it, because, well, “it’s not a pretty picture.” It started out when the kids’ Grandma and Grandpa Matthews visited them in Malawi last Christmas, and ended in a… disaster.

 

 

“Come, my young friends and listen to me. And I will teach you to honor the Lord.”  ~~~ Psalm 34:11   Good News Bible

 

 

Stories of Missionary Life in Africa for Children (#2) “Big Black Dogs”

Oct17

mk-story-coversThis story is the second in the Missionary Kids Stories about the Matthews family who live in Malawi, Africa.

Each story is written in the form of a letter from one of the Matthews’ children. There are seven of them, (but the baby can’t write yet!). Haha.

I write these stories so readers can learn about missionary life in Africa.  The MKs (Missionary Kids) will tell  stories about cultural differences (and similarities) such as eating DEAD MICE in the first MK story. I hope to entertain and inform children, but mostly I want to quietly teach them truths from the Bible, God’s Word, as it pertains to their everyday lives.

So, here is the next story!  (Scroll down, or check the list on the side bar to begin the with the FIRST story and meet the kids in order.)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Big Black Dogs!

Introduction

Are you all “over”your gross-out from the mice-eating story that my (pretend) MK Melody Matthews told you? I do hope so! THIS story is by Melody’s next-to-the-youngest BROTHER. His name is Gus, but I will let him tell you all about himself.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Hi Kidsssssssssss!

Sometimes I like to hold the last letter of a person’s name real long. I can do that with my sister’s name. Sometimes I say Melodeeeeee when I call her, even if she’s in the same room. She turns it around and calls me AUGUST!  And then I try to punch her – but not really.

You see, my name IS August, but I don’t like it very much. I wouldn’t mind Augie, but most of my friends call me Gus. My Mom named me August Hope Matthews, because I was born in the month of…… can you guess??

I got my middle name because of something sad that happened. Between me and my next older sister, April Grace Matthews, we had another brother. I wasn’t here yet, but they told me about him.

Freddie was born in February, but he was SUPPOSED to be born in May like Melody. If he had been born in May, his name would have been Mayson Michael Matthews.  Instead, he was born on the last day of February.

February has 28 days most of the time, but every four years, in Leap Year, it has 29 days. It has something to do with how our calendars are made. We have to add an extra day in February every four years or the seasons will get all mixed up. Christmas might come in the summer!

Anyway, Freddie was born on one of those 29ths that come every four years. He would have been 8 years old this year, but he would have had only TWO birthdays (and parties) by then. Think of that!!  Totally weird, I know.

Well, maybe he didn’t like that idea, so he decided to go back to Heaven to be with Jesus. That’s what I think, but, here’s how my Mom and Dad tell it.

A week after Valentine’s day (February 14th) Mom got really sick. She had forgotten to put on bug spray when they went to the Mr. and Mrs. Floreen’s house (that’s another missionary here) for a “Sweethearts Dinner.”  Remember, she was still “carrying” Freddie then and she didn’t like to use too much bug spray. But this time she forgot it altogether.

She must have gotten bitten by a mosquito that had Malaria (not all of them have it).  A week later she started feeling very sick.  She got SO sick that Dad took her to the clinic.  I think there is some medicine you can give people who have Malaria, but it’s dangerous if they are expecting a baby.

Everyone was worried about her, especially Dad. (Remember I wasn’t there yet, but they told me.)  Everyone at church prayed for her – really hard. But she just got sicker and sicker.

Finally on February 28th she started feeling better. But Freddie didn’t want to stay inside any longer. (Was it too hot for him with that high fever she had?) He was born the next day. They took a picture of him. He was soooooo tiny, but soooooo perfect! I’ve seen the picture so I know. He stayed with Mom in the clinic for six hours then he went back to God, who made him.

ANYWAYYYYYY….. I know this is such a sad and looooong story, but that’s how I got my middle name. After Freddie, Mom and Dad were “hoping” for another boy.  At that time, there was only our oldest brother, Marshall and four girls.

They hoped and hoped, and when I came in August a couple years later, that naturally became my middle name. It’s not a girl’s name, it’s a “feeling” name. I guess I’m okay with that.

Okay, okayyyyyyy!!!  Melody says I need to tell you my story – the one about dogs.

Have you ever had a dog?  A big, big dog?  A big, big, black dog?  How about TWO big, big black dogs?  Well, we do. You HAVE to have them here in Malawi if you live in a big house like us. (There are NINE of us, remember!)

Our dogs are part Great Dane and part Rhodesian Ridgeback so they are big and have short black hair. Some people here are afraid of black dogs, so they make very good guard dogs. But ours are gentle with kids like me and my sisters and brothers.

We have a 2-year old brother, and sometimes they knock him over. But he’s fat and just plops down and laughs.  Then he grabs hold of one of their collars and pulls himself up again. They don’t mind.

Our dogs’ names are Gideon and Goliath. Goliath is bigger.

Well, one night very late, I heard Gideon and Goliath barking really loud, like they were very angry.  It was on the side of our house where me and my baby brother’s bedroom is. I heard some quick sharp talk and then the dogs got quiet for a few minutes.

I peeked out the window through the mosquito net and saw Goliath eating something on the grass. Gideon looked like he wanted some too, but he was not so big and couldn’t take it away from Goliath.

That was a good thing, as I will tell you later.

Finally Goliath picked up whatever he was eating and went around the side of the house with Gideon following him. Then I saw a head peeking over the top of our wall. It is very high, so he must have had a ladder on the other side.  He was watching our two dogs go.

“Gus-ie. Watz wong?” said my little brother from his bed. He was awake too.

“Shhhhhh, Deek!” I said in a loud whisper. (His real name is Deacon, but that’s another story.)

Our windows were open because it was very hot and I didn’t want the man to hear him. Oh, no!! Now there were TWO men!! One was hacking at the wire on the top of the wall with a machete (that is a huge knife used to cut tall elephant grass). The other one was starting to climb over where the wire was gone!

Kids, sometimes in Africa, very poor people don’t have enough food for their families.  The men can’t get work because they don’t know how to do much. And the women, who take care of their kids and work in the garden and sell their peanuts and squash and tomatoes and cassava, don’t earn very much.  And they have a LOT of kids to feed – sometimes more than we do.

So the men think that if they can just steal something from one of the “big houses” they can sell it and get some money for food…. and other things. THAT’S what was happening now to us!!!

I was just about to run and tell Dad – who sleeps on the other side of the house, when Gideon came running around the side of the house, barking his head off and growling like a mean wolf or something. He jumped up against the wall, higher and higher and caught one of the men’s pants’ legs.  The man let out a little yelp and pulled back.

He bumped the first man who dropped the machete into our flower bed.

“Yay! Gideon!” I whisper-yelled. “Good boy!”

“Ayyy Giddy!” said Deek.

But then, Gideon did a weird thing.  He stopped barking and ran back around the house.

What was he doing?

The men looked at each other, then down at the machete. I guess they thought if one of them could jump down and get it before…..

But then Goliath came running around the other side of the house. But wait…. it wasn’t Goliath. It was Gideon again.  Where was our biggest dog?  Was he still eating? Bad dog! Bad Goliath!

Gideon grabbed the shoe of the man who was starting to climb down and jerked it real hard.  He twisted his head back and forth and the man started yelling real loud now.

The lights went on in our gardener’s house in the back, and pretty soon he came running and shouting.  A few minutes after that Dad came out too with a….. a mosquito zapper???

That was enough for the two intruders. They thought two big dogs, a guard with a gun (Our gardener really had only a shovel) and another man with a…. what WAS that??…. was too much to handle.

The one kicked off his shoe that Gideon had in his mouth and then both scrambled back over the wall and ran off into the darkness.

By that time, Mom had turned on the outside lights and Marshall (our oldest brother) had come outside too. But the emergency was over.

Or WAS it?

“Where’s Goliath?” asked Marshall. He was petting Gideon and looking around. Usually our two dogs are together all the time.

They started looking around and calling. They went around the side of the house and I couldn’t see them anymore. I ducked under the mosquito netting and ran down the hall.  In the screened in porch I could see them all in the driveway, crouching down beside a big black pile of something.

“Poisoned meat,” I heard our gardener say. “Robbers do that. They throw poisoned meat over the fence to keep any dogs from attacking.”

Oh, no! Was Goliath dead?

“Li-ath sick?” asked Deek who had followed me to the porch.

I could feel tears stinging my eyes, as the men all stood up. (Marshall is fifteen and almost a man.)  Gideon started pushing against Goliath’s chest with his nose and gently pawed his shoulder.

“What’s happened?” said Mom behind us. “Ohhh, noooo!”

Dad turned then and said.  “He’s not dead, Audrey, but he’s very sick. We’ll take him to the vet. Can you call and tell him we’re coming?

“Good thing the big one got the poison, Mr. Matthews,” said our Malawian gardener, Ngunda. (Nnnn-GOON-dah) “He can take it. If he let Gid-yan here have it, well, this one would be dead.”

While Dad and Ngunda took Goliath to the vet, we all prayed that God would make him better. We needed two guard dogs – wasn’t that obvious from what happened tonight? And where would be get another one?

Well, Kids, I know this is a long story so I will just tell you that the next afternoon we picked up Goliath. He was still pretty weak and wobbly, but he was our Hero Dog!  He took the poison instead of Gideon, after trying to scare the intruders away at first. Dad said that was kind of like what Jesus did when He gave up HIS life to save people in the world.

And Gideon was a Hero Dog too. All by himself, he stopped the men from jumping down into our yard.  They might have stolen something from our garage, or… or… or even broken into our house!

God was protecting us, first, when we got those two big dogs, and then that night when they were heroes. People in our church back home pray for us, Mom says. (They send money to help us too.) She says she and Dad are very thankful for all our “supporters.”  She says they are “holding the rope.” (I’m not sure what THAT means. What rope?)

Anyway, that night, God heard all their prayers to keep us safe, even though our supporters didn’t know about the robbers right then!

When Mom wrote the newsletter to all our friends and family at the end of the month, she told them about Gideon and Goliath, and how good God is to us all the time. She thanked them for praying.

Oh, I almost forgot! We got another machete and the ladder that was against the wall that the robbers forgot. Ngunda fixed the wire on the wall – he’s good at fixing things. And Gideon and Goliath got an old shoe to play with!

Goliath is all better now. He thinks he is some special dog with all that extra good treatment and snacks he got. But he is ready again – with Gideon – to guard “his” family.

And that’s MY story. Maybe next time, my biggest sister, Julie Joy will tell her story about some “eyes” that she saw at the bottom of a deep, dark well.

See ya!  Gus

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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Do you have any questions about the (pretend) Matthews family?  How do you think Africa is different from where YOU live?  Do you think you would like dogs like Goliath and Gideon? Do you know other missionaries that you can pray for?

PS: In this photo, do you see the tall wall and the wire on top? Which dog do you think is Gideon? Do you remember the Matthews’ gardener’s name?

 

 

“Come, my young friends and listen to me. And I will teach you to honor the Lord.”  ~~~ Psalm 34:11   Good News Bible

Stories of Missionary Life in Africa for Children (#1) “Dead Mice”

Oct16

mk-story-coversI recently posted an article on my writers’ group blog, Writers in Residence about “Turning Experiences into Stories” (http://bit.ly/2cTsCu0) and included in that post a story; the first and shortest in a series I’m writing for children. Since then, several people have asked to read the other stories in the series. Since I send these out to about a dozen kids (7-11) at my church via email, personalizing each and inserting 2-6 photos individually in each separate correspondence, I cringed to think about sharing them all in this way in any great number.

Friends have suggested I turn them into chapters in an eBook, but that sounds like a lot of hassle and I’d rather spend my time writing the stories and not “marketing” them. I believe God gave me this idea and talent as a ministry to do for Him, so to “profit” by them… well, it seems wrong.  But we’ll see – maybe sometime. I’ll wait for His leading on that. I have printed the series in simple booklet form for a few special individuals, but that would get quite costly in quanity.

So, I decided I would simply post the first seven “Missionary Kids Stories” here, on this site.  (Believe me; I agonized over many of them in my “Morning Meditations” time with the Lord!)

The characters came easy – seven children (2-15 years old) in a Missionary family living in Malawi, Africa.  Their backstories and personalities were fun to create, although sometimes “they” dictated just what they wanted to be. Since I have been on three short-term mission teams to Malawi, I’ve observed and learned a lot, and photographed a good deal. (I am a former photo-journalist.)  I listened to the missionaries talk about the people, animals, insects, cultural differences, living conditions, personal problems, and the things they experienced in their own daily life (some very funny). This was enough of a “spark” to get me started on the stories.

But my goal to “glorify” God with my writing, teach my local church kids about missionary life, and tie everything together with an important truth from the Bible, was a challenge I couldn’t manage on my own.  I have to admit (and thank God) that as I put my fingers to the keyboard and began these email-letter stories with, “Hi —, my name is —” the Lord would bring what I needed to my mind.  Nothing supernatural or weird; the story simply began to flow from the character and the spark of an idea.  Only twice did I really get hung up. Those were stories #4 and #7, and THEY ended up having the strongest Gospel message.  One of my young readers wrote that the #4 was her favorite story!  Thank you, Lord.

Here is the first one I sent out, introducing the family and setting up the series.  The stories vary in age level depending on the MK (Missionary Kid) who is telling the story. Stories five and six – told by a teenager – is actually one story in two parts with a cliff hanger at the end of five. I include the rest of the series in the following posts.

Dead Mice

Introduction

 These stories are about the (make-believe) Matthews Family, who went to Malawi, Africa about eight years ago to be missionaries.  This family has a dad and a mom, and seven children (three boys and four girls including a set of twins). As part of their names, each of them has the month that they were born in as a first or middle name, like Melody May or April Grace.  All of the stories are written to you as letters.  The first story starts like this: 

Hi kids!

My name is Melody May, and I have a twin sister whose name is Charity June. I also have three brothers and two more sisters. We all have the month we were born in as part of our names. It’s really cool I think, but some people think it’s weird.

My mom – her name is Mrs. Matthews – is really fun and creative. She picks out all our names. My dad – his name is Mr. Matthews – just smiles at her with love and agrees to the names.

People call me Melody, but they call my twin sister “June.” You may wonder how twins could be born in two different months. Can you guess how? It’s kind of tricky.

I’ll let my brothers and sisters tell you about themselves in other letters, but right now, let me tell you about what happened to my sister June and I a week ago.

We are MKs (Missionary Kids) who live in Malawi, Africa. Our dad is a college teacher at the African Bible College. We go to a school there too, but in a different building.

One day, an African boy in our class showed us a mouse… a really DEAD mouse. Then he dared us to do something with it. At first June and I refused, but then…..

Here’s how it happened.

The boy’s name is Kukana (Koo-KAH-nah). On that day, the first day of the new school year, he dared us to EAT a dead mouse! Ewww! Would YOU eat a mouse, especially a dead one? (I guess a live one would be worse!)

There are kids from America and Canada and Holland and South Africa in my class. There are many Malawian kids too. We have three grades in our classroom because, well, our teacher is very smart and can teach three grades at once! At least that’s what I think.

That day, when Kukana stood up in class with a closed box and told us he brought something for us to eat, we all smiled. We thought it might be some roasted peanuts, or those small super-sweet bananas they grown in Malawi. Yum.

Then he opened the box and reached in and held up this really stiff, black, hairy thing.  Some of the new girls screamed, but June and I didn’t. We almost did, but we grabbed each other’s hands and squeezed real tight.

“This is a mbewa,” he told us.

(You say mbewa like this – mmmmm-BEE-wah.)

“They are very tasty to eat,” Kukana said.

Then he held the mbewa up high by the stiff tail, tilted his head back, put the old dead mouse’s head into his mouth… and crunched it off!!!!!  He smiled big as he chewed it. The Malawian boys cheered and stomped their feet!

Our teacher frowned a little, but she didn’t say anything.

Kukana smiled again, real big, and there were little bits of black fur in his teeth!  He leaned very close to June and me and showed us his icky tongue, trying to scare us, I think.

Then he ate the rest of it….. even the tail. There were more hoots from the boys, and this time Mrs. Molenaar said, “Okay. That’s enough. Now tell the class about mbewa. Why did you bring it – and eat it?”

Mrs. Molenaar knew about mbewa – we could tell by her look – but she wanted Kukana to explain about this “famous Malawian snack food.”

“We eat mbewa because it’s good protein food,” began Kukana.

June and I looked at each other, our eyebrows raised way up and our eyes got big. OUR family eats  eggs, chicken, fish, and sometimes pork or beef for protein.

Kukana went on, “Village families here in Malawi are very poor. They raise goats and sometimes cows to SELL but not to EAT. They do this to have money for beans and maize to eat, and seeds to plant.”

I thought about what else OUR family eats. We like the beans, tomatoes, pumpkins, and peanuts that the villagers grow. We also eat yogurt and canned fruit and oatmeal. Sometimes Mom cooks nsima (nnnnnn-SEE-mah) which is made from white corn, called maize, and tastes like thick hot cereal without any salt. (Mom adds some for us.) Poor Malawians eat that every day. Sometimes that is all they HAVE to eat.

“There’s LOTS of mbewa around,” said Kukana. “You just have to catch them. We go to where old maize stalks or dead grass is piled up. We stand around the pile with sticks. Then someone lifts up the pile with a long pole and mice run out everywhere.  We have a lot of fun killing them with our sticks!”

Kukana laughed and all the boys laughed too.

“Then we put five or maybe ten of them on a long stick and roast them.”

Kukana looked right at June and me, opened his eyes really big and added, “….just… like… your… marshmallows!” Then he laughed in a mean way.

That made us feel mad and scared and icky, but we didn’t do anything. I think it was then, that I started to think….. maybe I WILL eat a dead mouse!

Mrs. Molenaar gave Kukana a stern look and he finished his talk like this. “Sometimes our fathers burn off the maize stubble (old stalks) in our fields. Then all the people stand around the edge of the field to catch the mice that run out.”

Mrs. Molenaar told the rest of it. “After the mice are roasted, which dries out the bodies but doesn’t burn off all the fur, they will keep for quite a while. Maybe you American children have tried jerky. It’s a bit like that.”

She turned to Kukana. “Did you want to share your mbewa with the class?”

He walked through the desks with the box down low. All the Malawian boys and girls took one out and started crunching and chewing. One American boy, named Benji took one too.

When the box came to June and me, my sister leaned way back, but I….. I reached in, grabbed a stiff hairy burned mouse and took it out.  Before I could think about what I was doing, I leaned back, held the thing up, and crunched off its head!!!!!!

This time June DID scream. “Melody! Noooo!! You are going to get sick and die!! And Mom will be very mad!”

I didn’t look at her. I stared at Kukana as I chewed the prickly, scratchy thing. It tasted kind of like burnt peanut shells and grease to me. Finally I swallowed it and stuck out my black-specked tongue to prove I ate it.

Kukana was surprised. He smiled at me (nicely, this time) and gave a little nod.  After that, he didn’t tease June and me. He kind of respected me, and since I was usually with my sister, he didn’t dare tease her either. After a while we even became friends.

Let me tell you a secret now. I didn’t finish the dead mouse.  I passed it to the boy behind me who snatched it up and ate it.

And you know what else?  I didn’t get sick and die.

I just became a Malawian.

But Mom DID get mad at me and told me never to do that again. I promised her that I wouldn’t. I figured I would never HAVE to do it again.

Later in our Sunday School class at the International Bible Fellowship church where my Dad sometimes preaches, I learned what Paul wrote in one of his letters in the Bible. He was a missionary to MANY countries. I don’t know if he ever had to eat mice, but he did say in 1 Corinthians 9:22, that he wanted to “become all things to all men that he might save some” for Christ.

I hope Kukana will someday want to know Jesus too. Maybe he will listen to me now when I tell him the gospel story ….. BECAUSE I ate the mouse.

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mk-mice-1

~~ Facts ~~

          Malawians DO eat mice like this for protein. Sometimes you can see them along the road, selling mbewa still lined up in a row on the roasting sticks, or in piles on a piece of cloth they spread out on the ground. They also eat big grasshoppers for protein which they fry in oil and sprinkle with hot pepper. 

“Come, my young friends, and listen to me. And I will teach you to honor the LORD. ~~~ Psalm 34:11  –  Good News Bible

“Charlie” & Lazarus, a parable

Oct7

lazarus-01Jesus told this story to men who were lovers of money, who ridiculed Him on His teaching about using money for the Kingdom of God, about being faithful to use what what they had, and about not being able to serve BOTH God AND money.

 

“You either hate one and love the other, or are devoted to one and despise the other. God knows your hearts. What men value highly is detestable in God’s sight.”

“There were two men……

A rich man (we will call him Charlie) and a very poor man named Lazarus.

Charlie lived in a fine house in a gated community.

Lazarus lived on the cold sidewalk outside the gate.

Charlie was clothed in purple and fine linen.

Lazarus was “clothed” in sores.

Charlie feasted sumptuously, every day.

Lazarus begged for just a few… crumbs.

While Charlie was probably pampered by a dozen slaves, Lazarus had his sores licked by dogs.

Then….both men died.

Charlie was buried (a grand funeral, no doubt, laid out in silken robes with flowery wreathes).  He went straight to Hades, and was in torment, in anguish, in flames.

Lazarus was carried by angels to Abraham’s side where he was comforted and had access to refreshing cool water.

Charlie: “Oh, please, Father Abraham, send Lazarus with a cool drop of water for the tip of my tongue, for it is burning beyond what I can bear!”

Abraham: “Lazarus can neither hear you nor see you.  He is being comforted and healed from all the abuse and misuse he suffered on earth.  Sorry, Charlie… it’s not going to happen!  Your days of ordering slaves and servants to meet your every need are over.  Besides… there is this huge chasm between where YOU are, and where WE are.”

Charlie: “Then…. I beg you, Abraham, send Lazarus to my five brothers to warn them about this place!”

Abraham: “No, Charlie. Your five brothers have Moses & the Prophets (the Bible).  Let them listen to them!”

Charlie: “No, they do not read the Bible. They don’t know any of that. But… if you would send someone from the dead (Lazarus), they would believe him, I know!”

Abraham, with a sigh: “If they do not believe Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced if Someone (Jesus) was raised from the dead.”

~~~ from Luke 16.

 

Romans 10:17 “Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.”

After Jesus’ resurrection, He joined two disciples walking to Emmaus, and “beginning with Moses and all the Prophets, he explained to them what was said in all the Scriptures concerning himself.”

Later, to his own close disciples, Jesus said, “This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.” Then He opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. He told them,“This is what is written: The Messiah will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance for the forgiveness of sins will be preached in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem.”

***

Oh, be prepared for your last day! Read, listen to, meditate on, believe, and obey all God says in His Word about Jesus and the gift of faith and salvation. His Word is truth. Search the scriptures, for they testify of Jesus Christ, and in them you will find  eternal life. Be a “doer” of that Word and not only a superficial “hearer.”