Last Lessons#67 – DREAM COME TRUE

“Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age.”  Matthew 28:19-20

Not all our dreams come true.  All God’s promises come true, but God does not necessarily promise us what we dream.  God did not promise me that I would become a missionary when I was seventeen years old.  But he did give me a desire to be a missionary and then he fulfilled my desire.  Here is how he orchestrated it.

We lived in Maryland where Bob was Chief of Medicine at Fort Meade Army Hospital.  Our first daughter, Annie, was born in the hospital there in 1955.  Then the Army offered Bob a promotion and a job in research on atomic medicine in Oak Ridge, Tennessee.  Bob wanted to cure people instead of being involved with destroying people and we needed to make a decision.  I suggested that we consider going to the mission field since both of us had dreamed of that.  We contacted the Lutherans and the Presbyterians and realized that Dr. Bob was most needed by the Lutherans in Tanzania.  We were accepted by the Lutheran World Federation and were commissioned by our church in Glen Burnie, Maryland. 

I was excited and happy that my dream was coming true, but not everybody was happy! My mother was happy because she had given me to the Lord when I was five years old (but that’s another story!).  My father was not happy, and Bob’s parents were not happy because we would be gone for four long years without coming home.  Some friends and relatives asked how we could sacrifice our lives and most especially the life of our child by going to Africa!  Neither Bob nor I ever considered going to Africa a sacrifice.  We considered it a privilege. 

But as we sailed out of New York harbor and passed by the Statue of Liberty, I must admit that I was more than a little nervous.  We were going for life and might never come home!  Yes, God had promised that he would be with us (Matthew 28:20), but what about our children?  Plus the fact that I was sea-sick the whole trip to England where we would live for eight months while Bob received a Masters in Public Health at the University of London School of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.

We sailed out of New York in 1957 with fear and trepidation.  I don’t know about Bob, but I was afraid.  Still, we went. 

“Jesus said, ‘Truly, I say to you, there is no one who has left house or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or lands, for my sake and for the gospel, who will not receive a hundredfold now in this time, houses ad brothers and sisters and mothers and children and lands, with persecutions, and in the age to come eternal life.’”  Mark 10:29-30

As I reflect on leaving my country, my family, and my comfortable life in America, I learned that God, true to his Word, gave me so much more than I ever left including brothers and sisters, children and mission compounds. 

One thing I am sure of: if we had not left America in 1957, there would be no Kilimanjaro Christian Medical Centre in Tanzania and there would be no Rafiki Foundation with Villages in ten countries in Africa today.