Katie stared out the Lion’s Den window. The possibility of Todd and Christy coming to Kenya was a delicious thought, and she savored it a moment until her next thought turned her spirit sour. Even Todd’s dad is about to get married. I don’t think I can read any more emails about people who are having easy, breezy times with their relationships. Everything is making me miss Eli even more. This is torture.
She closed the laptop and said to the kids, “Let’s see your fabulous artwork.”
The children held up their pictures for her to admire. She tried to make all the right sort of affirming sounds and nods as each of them went into detail explaining what they had drawn and why.
Adam had chosen a box-style car with five round faces. None of the faces had smiles. On the top of the car was a stick figure of a person sitting, and behind the car he had drawn stick figures of people raising their arms.
“They’re yelling for us to leave,” he explained.
In the bottom right-hand corner, he drew a small bed and another stick figure lying in the bed.
“Is that your dad?” Katie asked.
“Yes. He’s getting better now. But he has to stay in bed and rest first.”
“And who is that on top of the car?” Katie asked.
All three of the children looked at her as if surprised that she didn’t know the answer. “Our guardian angel, of course.”
“Of course.”
Katie thought about guardian angels again later that week when she was walking to the office after lunch. She had heard that Evan was being released from the hospital that day and would be brought to Brockhurst to convalesce and to be with Callie and their four children. One of the women who was at the table with Katie at lunch had said that God had protected Evan, and his being alive would have a powerful effect on the people in the village where they had been serving.
It seemed to Katie that in Kenya the lines were narrow and the veils were thin. Danger did lurk in the corners of this beautiful country, but the veil between the eternal and the temporal seemed to be made of something much more vaporous than Katie had experienced in California. Maybe her senses were more heightened to those things than before. She wasn’t sure. All she knew was that God seemed closer in Africa. His work was being accomplished in ways that seemed more visible and immediate than she was used to seeing.
Watching God at work was having a deep effect on Katie. It was increasing her faith.
She entered the office four days after they had returned from the village and saw that Jim was moving a folding table over to the valentine wall. “Look what I hunted up,” he said. “It’s not much of a desk for you, but it’s a start.”
“Nice!” Katie pulled out her laptop and placed it in the center. “Now all I need is a name plaque, and I’ll look official.”
“We heard from Eli,” Jim said.
Katie’s heart did a little flutter. “You did? How is he doing? Any idea when he’ll be back?”
“He’s doing okay. It looks like he’ll be catching a ride back to Brockhurst a week from tomorrow.”
Katie waited for more details. “Was that it? Did he email you?”
“No. He called about twenty minutes ago. He’s with the well-digging crew now, and they were driving through an area that had phone service, so he took the opportunity to call. He said the film crew left yesterday.”
With Jim’s basic sentences, Katie tried to fill in the blanks. Eli was on his way to another village. He wasn’t with Michael anymore. He would be back in eight days.
“A week from tomorrow, huh?”
Jim nodded. “You know, I have to admit something, Katie. I wasn’t in favor of Eli taking on this role of being onsite in the villages, but I may have spoken too soon. He’s accomplished a lot in only a few days. We needed to negotiate clearance on some land before the team could move forward in the village where Eli was yesterday. Apparently he did it. Single-handedly. I didn’t think he had enough of a command of Swahili to do it. I guess Cheryl is right. I may have underestimated my son.”
An onslaught of mixed feelings came over Katie. On one hand, what Jim was now expressing was the sort of respect and understanding she had hoped would develop in their father/son relationship. She wanted Jim to see the same leadership abilities she had seen in Eli, and now he did. It was great that Jim and Cheryl were seeing Eli as the capable man Katie knew he was.
What twisted her emotions around was that it sounded as if Eli was finding his place out on the road doing fieldwork. The chance of his being content to settle in at Brockhurst and work with her in the office was narrowing.
To complicate that even more, Katie’s enthusiasm for working on the fund-raising hadn’t diminished. Her latest idea was to put together a fund-raising packet for potential groups. Cheryl, Jim, and she had gone over the list of needed materials to include in the packet, and Katie was working next to create the master documents. She also had a good running start on compiling a list of potential schools and churches.
Her productive pace slowed on a cloudy morning five days before Eli was supposed to return to Brockhurst. A large group of Christian writers and publishers was holding a conference on the grounds, and this was their last day. Katie had enjoyed the conversations she’d had with many of them over meals.
This morning, however, she skipped breakfast because she wanted to get to the office before anyone else. She had a number of personal emails she wanted to send before the day started to roll along.
The first email went to Christy. The two forever friends had been keeping up a back-and-forth email correspondence ever since Katie wrote Christy after the time in the village and spilled the details about Michael, Eli, the fund-raising position, and how it seemed that Jim and Cheryl had embraced her as one of their team, part of the big Brockhurst family.
Katie even told Christy about the valentine wall and the passionate kiss. Katie added the details about Jim’s comment that “you could make a baby with a kiss like that.” And then, of course, Katie told Christy about Eli’s decision to venture off on a nomadic trip to other villages. That was the latest topic the two of them had been emailing about, which was why Katie didn’t want anyone peering over her shoulder in the small office and reading their emails.
This morning Christy’s email started with:
Life with you is never dull, Katie. Does Eli realize that? I’m guessing he does by now. Since you asked for my opinion, I’ll give it to you.
Do you remember when I broke up with Todd for that stretch of time because he had the opportunity to do what he had always wanted to? Letting go like that was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
But think about what happened after that. At the time, Todd and I both thought he was headed to Papua New Guinea, but he ended up in Spain, which is where he met Eli, which is partly why Eli decided to come to Rancho, which is why he was at our wedding, which is where you met him, and which led to your being where you are today. Quite a nice little trail of God’s mysterious ways, isn’t it?
Katie felt her throat tighten. It was true. She hadn’t seen the trail this clearly before. It was like Cheryl had said: everything has a purpose. One step of obedience led to the opportunity for the light to shine on the next step and so on.
Christy’s email continued.
I know that God can accomplish his purposes any way he wants. But when I look back over the years and see this chain of events, I have no doubt that all of this is a beautiful, continuous God-thing that started with something difficult when my heart surrendered Todd to the Lord. When you follow the trail of God’s faithfulness in your life, Katie, I know he will give you the courage you need for whatever is going to happen next.
Katie nodded, even though no one was there to see her affirmation. Or maybe there was. God’s Spirit felt close. Covering her, guiding her, protecting her like the guardian angel on the top of the Jeep in Adam’s drawing. She looked around the empty room, half expecting to see a translucent angel feather floating in the air. She was
going to stop and type a response, but there was more to Christy’s email.
Katie, do you remember when we were in England doing that short-term mission project, and we called each other “Missionary Woman”? We thought we were being so daring and sacrificial by giving up a week and a half of our lives to stay in a castle (all right, it was freezing and that was a hardship, but it was a castle!). What we did then had kingdom value. I don’t doubt that. We thought we were doing so much good, but really, when I look at where you and I are now, we are so much more in the flow of God’s good kingdom work.
I believe that in what I’m doing right now, partnering with Todd in working with the teenagers at church, I have become Missionary Woman 2.0. We’re on to the next season, the next level, you and me. This is good work.
Katie leaned back in the office chair and thought about Christy’s scenario of the helpful, supportive wife of a youth pastor. Yes, she agreed, things were just right for Christy and Todd.
But we’re not them. Eli and I are wired differently. Life isn’t like that here. At all. Eli and I aren’t like Todd and Christy. We’re not that couple. We’re not like Rick and Nicole. We’re us. The thing is, the way we’re headed, will there be an “us” at the end of this short trail?
Katie set to work, typing as fast as she could to answer Christy while everything was fresh in her mind. She was nearly to the end of her email when Cheryl opened the door of the office and entered with a cheery “Jambo.”
Katie minimized the screen so the unfinished email wouldn’t show and turned to greet Cheryl with an equally cheery “Jambo, rafiki.”
“Oh, good! You remembered the word for ‘friend.’ Are you ready for your next Swahili word of the day?”
“Bring it on.” Katie enjoyed the lessons both Cheryl and Jim had been giving her during the past week. Katie wanted to surprise Eli when he returned and greet him with at least one complete sentence in Swahili.
“Okay, here it is. Wapi choo?”
“Wapi choo,” Katie repeated. “So what did I just say?”
“You asked, ‘Where’s the bathroom?’”
Katie laughed. “I’m sure that will be very helpful at some point, but you do remember that I’m trying to learn something that I can say to Eli when he gets back. I’m thinking that ‘Wapi choo’ isn’t exactly going to make his heart soar with joy over my accomplishment.”
Cheryl slid into the chair at her desk. “Okay. You’re right. Here’s a good line for greeting someone who is special to you: Napenda kukuona mpenzi wangu ni furaha ya moyo mangu.”
“No, not gonna happen. That sounded really pretty coming from you, but you’ve noticed what a slow learner I am. Can you give me something in between ‘Where’s the toilet?’ and ‘Napa wapa snapa mango’?”
Cheryl laughed. “You do know, Katie, that you should be careful when you try to make up your own Swahili words. One of these days you’re going to manage to say something dreadful.”
“Okay, so give me another line. Something shorter. But wait. What did that greeting for someone special mean? Maybe we can shorten that.”
“It’s very sweet. It means, ‘I love to see you, my dear. You are the joy of my heart.’”
“Ohh.” Katie melted just a little. “That is sweet. But I don’t think I could say that to Eli. He would think I was joking. I need something not as sugary, you know? Something that’s more true to who I am and what he would know is really coming from me.”
“I’ll give that some thought,” Cheryl said. “By the way, did Mary catch you at breakfast?”
“No, I didn’t go to breakfast. What did she want?”
“The group that’s staying here this week for the writer’s conference is going to Lake Naivasha tomorrow, since it’s their final day. She wondered if you could go along as their guide since Eli isn’t here.”
“Guide? How could I be their guide? I’ve never been to that lake. I don’t know anything about it.” She didn’t want to be diverted from all she was trying to accomplish in the office and wasn’t sure why Mary would think Katie was a natural replacement for Eli on a tour.
“Guide is the wrong word,” Cheryl said. “Basically, she just needs a representative from Brockhurst to do a head count and to call the office if any problems develop. You would be the point person, that’s all. I didn’t mean for it to sound as if you had to be a tour guide. Lake Naivasha is beautiful. Last time we were there, we watched the hippos come up from the water at sunset. It was quite a sight.”
Katie liked the way this diversion was beginning to sound. “All I’d have to do is ride along and check names off the list as people get on and off the bus? I wouldn’t have to give everyone the history and scientific facts of each location the way Eli does?”
“No. You don’t have to try to do it Eli’s way. You’ll also have to settle the bill with the restaurant where they’ve set up a lunch for the group. It’s all been arranged through the Brockhurst main office. As you know, we used to have a tour company — in this office, as a matter of fact. Now that they’ve moved out, Mary is trying to juggle a few of these promotional tours that were booked before the tour company relocated in Nairobi.”
“I can do that,” Katie said. “I can ride along, count noses, and hand over a check. I’ll go talk to Mary about it.” Katie quickly clicked on her screen and ended her email to Christy midsentence with a couple of dashes and a final line that read, Gotta go see a lady about some hippos.
She hit Send, closed her email, and scurried out the door. Katie almost felt guilty for feeling so happy about the opportunity to see the hippos. If she was missing Eli dreadfully, as she was, then shouldn’t she be so depressed that nothing, not even wild hippopotami, would float her boat like this?
Note to self: Ask Christy if she thinks it’s possible to befalling in love with a place and a person at the same time, and if so, that’s not cheating, is it?
19
Loading up the tour bus with the group of writers and publishers felt familiar to Katie, because it was the same bus and driver that had taken the Texas group to the giraffe reserve almost a month earlier. Katie didn’t remember the driver’s name, but he remembered her, and when she climbed on board, he greeted her by saying, “Jambo, Ekundu.”
Katie had no idea what the “Ekundu” meant, but she hoped it was flattering or at least pleasant. She responded with, “Jambo, rafiki.”
The driver seemed to like her calling him “friend.”
Remembering how Eli had taken the microphone and welcomed everyone last time, Katie followed suit. “Jambo! How’s everyone doing? My name is Katie. I’m your unofficial guide today. So if you have any questions, I can pretty much guarantee that I won’t be able to answer them.”
She received a sea of blank stares. Katie was aware this was an international group, but she had dined with them all week and knew that English was the common language. So she tried to ramp up the enthusiasm. “Are you guys ready to see the hippos at Lake Naranja?”
“Naivasha,” one of the African women in the front seat across from Katie said, quietly correcting her. “We’re going to Lake Naivasha.”
“Right. Yes. Lake Naivasha. Not Naranja. Naranja means orange in Spanish, and I know that because I’m from California, and my friend had a surfboard he named Naranja because it was orange.” Katie could tell by the expressions changing before her eyes that she was tottering way off track.
“Okay, but enough about my friends and me. This trip today is all about you and your friends. So please sit back and enjoy the bumpy ride. Although I am happy to say that our rafiki here behind the wheel is known for providing his passengers with a much smoother ride than you’ll get in any of those white shuttle buses.”
The group seemed to have reconnected with her on that comment, and she guessed that arriving at Brockhurst had been the same sort of experience for them as it had been for Katie and Eli.
“So, if you were hoping that our ride today was going to be just like what you experienced
in those vicious, vibrating vehicles, I hate to disappoint you, but there are no free African massages on this bus.”
Two of the men from the Philippines let out a cheer from midway back. Katie had met one of them at lunch earlier that week and appreciated his lighthearted spirit and engaging smile.
“Thank you for that affirmation there, Ramon. Keep those cheers coming. I need all the encouragement I can get. In case you hadn’t guessed, this is my first day on the job.”
Ramon and the guy next to him let out a lively shout of “Mabuhay!”
“Whoa!” Katie said a little too loudly into the microphone. “And what does that mean? Because if it means “Please sit down and stop talking, Katie,” then you’ll just have to be straight-up with me on that, because I don’t speak Filipino.”
“It means ‘long life,’ “ Ramon called out.
The guy next to him cheered again. “Mabuhay!”
This time everyone in the bus echoed the cheer.
Katie thrust her arm in the air. “All right! We’ve got us a party bus goin’ on here. Woo-hoo! Mabuhay!” She held the microphone out like a lead singer at a rock concert inviting the audience to sing back their favorite lyrics to the song.
The gang complied and cheered, “Mabuhay!” into the microphone.
On the backside of the group cheer, a polished-looking gentleman sitting up admirably straight two rows back filled the air with his cultural version of the cheer and added, “Viva! Viva!”
Katie remembered that he was a publisher from France, because when she sat by him at breakfast the first morning the group arrived, she was fascinated with the flowing conversation he was having with some of the West African publishers who spoke French. She didn’t understand a single word, but it was beautiful to sit with them and feel as if her ears were tasting a smorgasbord of brand-new sounds.