September 2006

A Day in the Life of A Missionary

Life is up front and personal for us as missionaries in Kenya.

The day began early before our teaching assignments at the Presbyterian College. We welcomed 17-year-old Wanjiru into our old Toyota and headed out into the countryside. She was starting high school late because she had needed a sponsor to pay her school fees. Driving about 45 minutes over dirt roads that rattled and shook our car, we arrived at the school. The building had an office and two classrooms made of sheet metal walls and dirt floors. A Christian group of people had hired four teachers and organized the high school for about one hundred students. Her classmates cheered as Wanjiru joined them. She was one of the lucky ones. Her school fees were paid and she would be able to finish the term.

We arrived back at the college just in time for mid-morning chapel and tea with the faculty. It was there we learned that the principal of the college had been robbed at gunpoint. The evening before he and eight fellow clergymen were in a meeting when thugs broke in and stole their cell phones, watches, rings, and money. As I looked around the tea room I was aware of the fact that five of the ten people in the room had been robbed, and some had been severely beaten during the robbery. We were all grateful that the principal had not been hurt. Still it was terrifying for him to experience the ordeal.

After classes we walked to our house where we were met by our guard, Munyua, He guards us and our house with a bow and arrow. He told us the tragic news that both the baby and his aunt had died in childbirth. The three orphaned children would have to be reared by his aged grandparents, because the other wife in the polygamous marriage refused to care for the children and had chased them from the family compound. Twenty years ago the same thing had happened to Munyua — his grandparents has reared him and his sister.

As the weary day came to a close, a widow with two children sat in our house and cried. She needed to find a job so she could feed her family. We had no answers, no solutions.

Living with poverty, violence, and tragic losses seems to be an ever-present part of the fabric of our days. It is the emotional toil on our spirits that is so difficult to bear.

How does one find hope in the midst of despair? My heart desperately wants to sing.

Where does one find the hope that Maya Angelou speaks about: the “Hope [that] has conspired with the wind and blown away the demons of despair”?

During the quiet solitude of evening prayers the answer came:

Have you not known? Have you not heard? The Lord is the everlasting God, the creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary; his understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint, and strengthens the powerless. Even youths will faint and be weary, and the young will fall exhausted; but those who wait for the lord shall renew their strength, they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.
Isaiah 40:28-31

Lyle and Terry Dykstra

The 2006 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 334