Psalm 37:4
King James Version (KJV)
Delight thyself also in
the Lord: and he shall give
thee the desires of thine heart.
The year was 1959 and I was a senior at Sedaven High School
near Johannesburg, South Africa. My parents, missionaries in Southern Rhodesia,
had sent me three days by train to this Christian school. I wrote home once a
week and in one letter mentioned I had gotten a girl friend.
Mom wrote back “So you got yourself a girlfriend.” She spent
a serious paragraph outlining my responsibilities as a boyfriend. She didn’t
want me to “use” the girl. She rejoiced in the joys of courtship. She also
encouraged me with this verse to keep my connection with the Lord.
Sedaven was not the ideal place to get involved in a
courtship. In fact courting was strictly prohibited. Lila lived off campus and
was not in my class. So I seldom actually saw her. We exchanged clandestine
daily letters. My letters were short and factual and hardly romantic. No copies
of them survive to my knowledge. Lila must have spent many hours writing her
letters which were long and dripping with honey. There is a story behind those
letters. Today I laugh at the experience and how I was totally conned by them.
Had I known about it then, I probably would have gotten quite angry. I’ll
probably have an occasion to relate this story in another post.
Eventually, like many high school romances, Lila and I
drifted apart. We have each established our own homes, and I trust that God has
indeed given both of us the desires of our hearts as the text promises.
I kept my mother’s letter in my Bible for years. I actually
went looking for it as I wrote this, but it too has drifted away and been lost.
But the appropriate wisdom of her comments still remains.
Indeed You do give us
the desires of our hearts as we delight in You, O Lord.
I joined Ikizu in 1969, to live under the tutorship of American missionaries for my formative years. As a young lad of 15years it was no difficult at to obey all school regulations. I had come from a typical African village but of a Christian orientation. I belong to a warrior tribe but my father had always disapproved the killing activities that is often considered important to a 'moran' (warrior). In the 1940's he had worked on tea picking farm at Kericho Kenya, where he was converted to christianity. Due to hard and earnest working, he became a farm supervisor. This implied an increase in salary. In course of time, however, while disseminating his duties, he came to realize that, the job of a clerk at te white man's farm was better than that of his own. To be a clerk but, one had to know how to read and write, the quality of which he didn't have. At Kericho, he told, he met and embraced the white man's faith in the Christianity. As his first son, he encouraged me to love education rather training in fighting.
ReplyDeleteAt Ikizu, therefore, I worked had and maintained obedience to my teachers. I never sympathized like colleagues whenever one was sacked, say if caught 'using' a girl (senior boys often did under cover) resulting in unwanted pregnancies. As years pushed on I also became a 'boy' and found out that girls were very sweet, especially if you contact her in a dark area and in the absence of teachers. Unequivocally, even some teachers did it with students.
Looking at this past now and learning from your own, I can now understand why the style of some events took pattern they did. Ikizu was a model school I would conclude.
The Bible tells me that we have all sinned.
By the way do you still have feelings for that girl of 1957?
I don't have any romantic feelings for her. We parted as friends and I do hope that her life as been as rewarding and satisfying as mine has been.
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