Rizpah

 Recently, Lynn & I watched a program on PBS about the railroad that runs from Mombasa, Kenya thru Nairobi, the capital, all the way to the western border at Kisumu, on Lake Victoria.

It reminded me of the journey Lynn took me on during January, 1983 to Kenya. She said I would never understand her unless I saw the land & met the people she worked with in Kisumu. She had spent 8+ years there as a medical missionary sent by the Southern Baptist Church's (SBC) Foreign Mission Board.

We went to many places in Kenya, but our longest time was spent in Kisumu where Lynn did mobile clinics along the shores of Lake Victoria. We also went to many of the churches that Lynn related to & was a part of in that area.

The first Sunday we were in Kisumu, Vaughn Ross, an agricultural missionary with the SBC, took us out to one of the churches outside of town in the countryside that Lynn had been connected to the most.

When we got to the church, up near the top of a mountain, we found just one lone man sitting in the shelter. After he had greeted Lynn happily & warmly, we asked where everyone was. He told us they were down at the river having a baptismal service.

The river was about a mile away, down the mountain. Lynn & Vaughn had both been down the path before for baptisms, so off we went.

We had gone about 100 yards when we suddenly heard this African woman down the mountain shouting something in Swahili, the national language of Kenya.

The man at the shelter had sent a child ahead of us to alert the crowd that Lynn had arrived.

The woman shouting as she climbed the mountain was Lynn's friend, Rizpah. Rizpah was Lynn's assistant in many of the clinics, something like an LPN. Rizpah & her husband, Moses, were pillars of the church we were attending that day.

For the next 10 minutes as Rizpah climbed the mountain from the river she continued to shout. I didn't understand what she was saying, but I did understand the obvious joy in her voice.

We finally met up with this lady in her 50's. She & Lynn hugged & cried & danced around. When Lynn introduced me to Rizpah, she grabbed me & hugged me so hard I could barely breathe.

We walked on down to the river for the baptism where we experienced an equally abandoned outpouring of joy when Lynn appeared.

We walked back up the mountain, stayed for the worship service that lasted around 2 hours, during which Lynn was asked to preach (in Swahili, off the cuff). That is all a story for another time.

It wasn't until we got in the car to go back to Kisumu that I had time to ask Lynn what Rizpah had been shouting.

She said in essence she was praising God. She was praising & thanking Him for returning her friend & sister, Lynn, back to her home with the Africans who loved her, & that she had been there to live with them & meet not only their medical needs, but their spiritual & personal needs. Lynn said Rizpah was expressing a typical outpouring of praise & thanks to God that she had seen with the Africans the years she spent in Kenya.

I've never experienced since then a more unbridled expression of love. But I also saw the amazing impact Lynn had had with the Kenya Africans around Kisumu.

I wish there was 1 tenth of 1% of that kind of connection for Lynn now. 99% of the people in our lives have disappeared, which is typical for people who are afflicted with Alzheimer's. It is fraught with pathos that a person who had given her life & had connected at so many levels there in Kenya, as well in the health departments of middle Georgia, plus the nursing students & colleagues in 2 universities, would spend the years of her greatest personal need in ignominy with no connections & as a inconsequential, insignificant old lady on the periphery of life.