Legacy

Sometimes one never knows when the ridiculous can be sublime, and solutions can come from unexpected sources.  My name is Roland Pierson.   I was the pastor of one of the larger churches in Fort Wayne, Indiana for over six years.  I had been pasturing churches for over twenty years and am now in my forties.  My wife LuAnn is a tremendous help to me.

I have two children, a boy and a girl who are attending college at this time.  My story starts last Christmas when I was surprised with the gift my wife gave me.  It seemed like pure insanity to me at the time, but I smiled my best sincere smile and thanked her for her unique thoughtfulness.  The same way one thanks his mother-in-law for a useless piece of whatever, and then graciously uses it.  Whoops, may God forgive me for that snide remark.  But a guy has to protect himself by not looking disappointed, if you get my drift.

The gift?  Oh yes, it was a heavy gold-plated dog whistle with a chain to wear around one’s neck.  You know the kind only dogs can hear.  Supposedly the sound is so hurtful to their ears they will run to get away from it.   That’s nice, but I hadn’t ever encountered a loose bad dog.  Oh well!

LuAnn said with a look of great pride, “I know that it’s an unusual gift, but the spirit came upon me and compelled me to buy it for you.  The spirit didn’t say why, but it was clear I should do it.  And we both know that when the spirit moves that ‘No’ is not in our vocabulary. Look, I even had your initials engraved on it.”

That put me in a box and there was no way out.  I wasn’t going to argue, and suggest that I exchange it for something else.  So I’ve been wearing it to this very day. Now here is where things get interesting.  LuAnn isn’t the only one the spirit moves.

I   too felt the spirit’s urgings, and “no” isn’t in my vocabulary either.   I was being called to the mission field.  That came as a surprise because I’d never given it much thought before, but now it’s all I could think about.

I called the District Superintendent and told him of my being called by the spirit to the mission field.  He began stammering and stuttering as if he’d been hit over the head with a two by four.  When he got his normal composure back, he said, “Roland, the spirit had been talking to me about the same subject, I was just getting ready to call you.”  Now I did my turn at stammering and stuttering.

The DS said he’d been contacted and accordingly wanted me to accept an assignment to pastor at a church next to a mission school in the Bangali region of Kenya.   In addition to my pastoral duties there, I’d be expected to make field trips to try to start new churches.

Well of course I accepted.  When I told LuAnn, she nearly fainted.  It was a big shock and surprise and she was not terribly delighted.  I told her that as she well knows when the spirit moves, that “no” is not in our vocabulary. I went on to say the spirit had urged me and the DS simultaneously, and that made it very clear.  She agreed, but added, “I wish you could have eased me into the news.  As it were it was like a cold water shock.”

I apologized for overwhelming her, but said it came fast for me also.  Now that that issue was settled it was time to get prepared to go.

Number one, tell the kids. I left that job to LuAnn, it seemed like a mother job to me, plus I have a sissy side about some things.  Then sell the house and most of the contents.  Get passports, shots, etc.  A lot of stuff to take care, many little details.  All that accomplished, we said our goodbyes and boarded the plane for Nairobi, Kenya.

It was a pleasant flight.  We had already been informed that someone would meet us at the airport and drive us some four hundred miles over mostly dirt tracks to the semi-remote area where the school and church were.

First thing that became obvious to us was the climate was a whole lot different from Fort Wayne, Indiana.  That would take some getting use to.

The trip was interesting, but dusty and bumpy, especially dusty.  Our driver explained that the dust wasn’t usually that bad but there had been drought and some crop loss as a result.  A side result was that the natives were having a hard time keeping predators away from their cattle and goats.  Apparently the drought made predators more desperate to find food.

As we were arriving at the school we were greeted by a most horrendous sight.  The students and teachers were holed up in the school behind very flimsy doors and some had scrambled to the roof of the flat- topped one-story building.  They were under attack by a huge pack of hyenas, big ugly dog-looking creatures only bigger and more fierce.

It was obvious that it wouldn’t be long before one of them figured out how to access the roof or breech the doors.  Not being timid under fire, just foolish crazy, I leaped from our vehicle and charged the pack of twenty to thirty slavering Hyenas, shouting and waving my arms.

Needless to say that got their attention.  They stopped in their tracks and stared at me. A charging human was a surprise.  They got over their surprise real quick and I must have looked like Meals on Wheels to them, because now they were coming for me.

Frankly, I don’t know how or why I did it.  There wasn’t much fore thought, more of a knee-jerk reaction.  I put that dog whistle, which I’d become obligated to wear, to my lips and blew with all my might, waved my arms and continued to charge the hyenas.  Afterwards when things were all over, I sat down and shook, wondering if I had any brains at all.

Apparently the hyenas’ ears are close enough to being like canine ears that the sound greatly pained them and they skedaddled like their tails were on fire. Later LuAnn said, “It is now crystal clear to me as to why the spirit moved me to buy you that whistle in the first place.”  I nodded in agreement, because I couldn’t argue with that one little bit.  He works in mysterious ways.