ADOPTION COMPLETE!

Beautiful.

-- Captain's Log. Stardate 2007-03-24 --

Ok, so a little background might help here. And a note that the Beautiful above is actually a hyperlink.

My first trip to Africa I met two men who deeply touched me. The first was Joseph, an incredibly intelligent West African who was teaching the missionaries both French and Aja, planting churches, and providing leadership for many—American and Aja. The second was Ega (pronounced AY-guy). Ega. What a man. He's crippled from his waist down, meaning he scoots around everywhere he goes, mainly from his village to the corner where he sells water in little plastic bags to travelers (pedestrians or dirtbike riders). The water he gets from Joseph's tap, and I think someone donates the plastic bags. Ega has a mouth full of the whitest and most perfect teeth you'll ever see, and when he smiles, the sun comes out. He mostly smiles.

There are so many stories to tell about Ega. Every Sunday morning during "testimony time", Ega scoots up to the front and recounts the latest thing God has done for him, like sending someone along with a flashlight when he was scooting home after dark just in time to see a poisonous snake in the trail in front of him. Or like the time when his wife, Lokadi (low-kah-DEE) was in the field picking corn with his baby daughter wrapped in a blanket under a tree, and a snake fell down from the tree and headed towards her, and she prayed that God would turn the snake away, but He didn't. The snake crawled right over his daughter and kept on going. And it's the way he tells the stories, too. You can't help but thinking that God smiles on Ega the way Ega smiles on everyone else.

One more story. Randy wanted to teach the West Africans something about what we Westerners call stewardship. He gave Ega and one other man each a modest sum of money and asked them to find someone in need and give it to them. The idea was that they would do this, report back, and talk about it together, and then Randy would give them some more. His goal was to prime the pump, and get them used to the idea that God takes care of you so that you can take care of others, and then God takes care of you some more, so you can continue taking care of others even more, and so on. Randy checked back with them a few weeks later. The other man, a "wealthy" young farmer who employed several people said he couldn't think of anyone who was needy. So he still had the money. But he was praying about it. Ega's story was different. He told Randy about all the people he had given some small amount to, and what their needs were, and with tears in his eyes he told about all the ones he wanted to be able to give to, but had nothing to give. "Randy," he said, "there are so many people here who are truly needy."

The first time I met Lokadi, I had already heard of her. Randy and Kelly had asked Ega's permission to take her to Mercy Ships to have a massive tumor removed from her face. This they did. And this was early in their time in West Africa, before they knew Ega very well. I remember them asking us to pray that he would receive them well, and would allow them to take her, because this was a big deal. They had to take her in their car several hundred miles to a different country where the ship was docked (may as well have been to the moon as far as an Aja man is concerned). But Ega agreed, and off they went. It wasn't an event-free trip (I'm sure Randy and Kelly could tell the story), but it was a success. And I wasn't there to see Ega's face when his wife was returned to him, but I imagine the sun was shining bright.

But I didn't meet Lokadi the first time I went to Africa. She wasn't a believer then, and so she wasn't at any of the church gatherings. It was the second trip when I met Lokadi. If I hadn't known she had had surgery to remove that tumor I would have asked about the possibility of her having surgery to remove some of her tumors, which were all over her body, varied in size from pea to grape, and her face still sagged on one side from her surgery several years before. And it was the smile under that beautiful sagging flesh that welcomed me into her home. I'm sure I could dig up a picture of Ega and Lokadi's house somewhere so you could get an idea of the mud walls and tin roof, one main room with several small offshoots, shelves on the walls graced with "treasures"... But the main thing was the reason we were there. Ega and Lokadi invited us for dinner. Which means they invited us over to feed us like foreign kings and queens, six of us. Randy said they took out a loan to throw this banquet, just for their American visitors, and it was beautiful. I could write more about what was served later: pot, turkey (with feathers), boiled eggs (brown on the outside, green on the inside), rice, holy-crap-hot red sauce, and some other stuff that I have no idea what it was. It was beautiful. And they were so pleased.

But back to Lokadi's trip to the Mercy Ship. It was a big deal for more reasons than I may have implied before. Everyone, you see, knew the source of Lokadi's tumor. It was from god. God had cursed her with this. It was because she was wicked at heart that she had been plagued with this deformity. And so to even make the offer to help her would be to draw attention to her affliction. And her shame. Of course, Randy and Kelly had one thing going for them. The people heaping on the condemnation were the same people who had told Ega and Lokadi that they would never have children—they were both cursed, him with the palsy, and her with all the boils, and especially the one making her face so hideous (I can only think of Jesus here, of whom it was said, "He was despised, and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and as one from whom men hide their face he was despised; and we esteemed him not."). When the pair got pregnant, they changed their tune. Some said she would never carry it. Other said it would be born dead. Others said it would be a monster. But they were all proved wrong. Ega and Lokadi had not one but three of the most beautiful, perferctly formed, healthy children running around that house at the feast they gave us.

Beautiful.

And then they got pregnant again, this time with a beautiful girl named Lael. This was during the time my mom had cancer. And I remember being in Stephenville with my mom taking care of her in the final stages of cancer, getting an email from Randy and Kelly, saying that Lokadi was having trouble with her pregnancy. Randy ended up driving her to the emergency room about 20 miles away, and making a long story very short, she ended up having an emergency delivery. But she lost a lot of blood. And a week later, she died from complications.

Selah.

And the next day my mom died of cancer. Part of what I wrote Randy and Kelly was this:

Randy & Kelly,

When I got the news about Lokadi it felt like a sledgehammer to the chest. I didn’t know what to say or do except pray. What a loss! What a precious woman not only Ega has lost, but you, your family, and all of the Aja people—and even the others of us who have met her and been loved by her. Please tell Ega for me that I love him, and have prayed for God to comfort him and his children. I hope his brothers and sisters in Christ are rallying around him to serve him and take care of him. If there is anything we can do please let me know.

In lieu of sending flowers, Mom had suggested several things people could give to, both related to church building funds. Of course we respected her wishes, but there were two things. One, nobody took mom seriously about not sending flowers. Mom was a flower. I’ve never seen so many flowers in a church as there were at her memorial service. Two, do I look like I’m going to give anything to a building fund? Didn’t think so. After we ran it by Dad, we collected and sent a small sum over to Randy for Ega. I wish we could have sent more. Had I been in better shape financially at the time I would have.

It is obviously hard to take care of a little baby by yourself, when you have three other children, and a job, and you live in the third world. This is where a family comes in handy, especially the family of God. And that is how Ega lives. And over the past twenty months or so Randy and Kelly have adopted little Lael into their home. And they have waited patiently as all of Ega's blood relatives passed on their chance to formally adopt her. And they were thrilled when Ega agreed to let them not only adopt her, but bring her back to the States with them as their daughter, permanently, when they return within the year.

Oh, there is so much more to this story! You'll have to go to Randy & Kelly's blog to read about Ega and Lokadi, and Lael, whom they have finally officially adopted.

I remember wanting to bring Ega back with me when I returned from Africa. Both times. But this is even better.

Beautiful.