This Little Light of Mine: Letters to My Grandchildren

Copyright © 2011 by Terry Lee Dick Dykstra

Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, Copyright 1991, 1994 by Oxford University Press, Inc.

The Revised Standard Version of the Bible, Copyright, 1973, by Oxford University Press

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ISBN: 978-1-4497-2354-5 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-2353-8 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-4497-2355-2 (ebk)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2011914736

Printed in the United States of America

WestBow Press rev. date: 10/04/11

Contents

Introduction

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

End Notes

Bibliography

My thanks to Jerry Sittser, author of A Grace Disguised, my husband, Lyle J. Dykstra, and Wanda, Sharon, and Dan.

TLD

For my grandchildren: Katherine, Alexandra, Elizabeth,

Isabella, Hannah, and Austin.

For their parents: Lisa and Mark, Jennifer and John.

For my dear husband, Lyle: my love, my companion.

Introduction

Dear Grandchildren: I Dreamed of Africa

Long ago and far away, when I was a child, I enjoyed our family gatherings. As my cousins played and my parents chatted with uncles and aunts, I would find my grandfather and crawl into his lap.

As we sat in the big rocking chair near the fireplace, contentedly waiting for the potatoes to roast in the ashes beneath the crackling fire, I would say, Grandfather, please tell me a story of the old days when you were a boy. I loved those stories of the way things used to be in the hills of Appalachia: logging, horseback riding, going to Presbyterian mission schools, and thirsting for an education.

From generation to generation, from grandparents, parents, and children, the stories go on.

Now, my dear grandchildren, I would like to do the same for you. I would like to tell you the story of the old days I experienced—my trip to Africa, a dream that began in childhood.

As you know, your grandfather and I spent eight years in Kenya. You have seen the many treasures and pictures we shared with you. Now we want to fill in the blanks and help you comprehend the essence of the stories and understand our search to find a faith-response that would give added meaning to our lives.

Someday you will have a story to tell of your life and of your adventures as the years unfold. So have at it. Dare to follow your dreams. Create a wonderful story along the way as you follow your bliss. And may your life be rich and full and happy—and yes, meaningful.

With love,

Nana

Letters to My Grandchildren

My Dear Grandchildren: Africa, A Land of Adventure.

I dreamed of Africa.

The dream about that strange and exotic land took root when I listened to a Presbyterian missionary, Mary Baker, tell of her adventures in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

At the age of twelve, I began a correspondence with Miss Baker. For six years, Mary sent stories and pictures of her adventures in Africa.

There were pictures of elephant tusks, thatched-roof huts, and people wearing nothing much at all but beads and body paint. In my mind’s eye, I could see people dancing around the campfire at night, keeping time to the rhythm of the beating drums; I could see children playing games, running to and fro, and mothers cooking dinner in a big pot over an open flame. The stories about wild animals, witch doctors, village life, and the work of the missionary preachers, teachers, and doctors came alive and fueled my imagination. It was a land of awe, wonder, and adventure.

And the words of the great missionary Albert Schweitzer inspired me: I don’t know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know: The only ones among you who will be really happy are those who will have sought and found how to serve.

I wanted to experience that fascinating world, to discover who I was and what life was all about—to chase my destiny.

Unfortunately, Congo became a dangerous place for missionaries in the early 1960s, and the church evacuated them for a time. I lost contact with Miss Baker and never heard from her again. I have often wondered what happened to her. I pray life was as kind to her as she was to me. How I treasured her friendship!

Although I lost contact with Mary Baker, my dream of Africa continued into my college years. When I was nineteen, I had an opportunity to go to Ghana, where I spent three months living and traveling with Ghanaian college students.

For Africans, life changed rapidly in the sixties. Fortunately, I was privileged to experience some of their liberation. There was excitement in the air as African countries broke free of their colonial masters—and I had the special opportunity to see Kwame Nkrumah installed as the first president of Ghana.

As the years slipped by and Africa gave birth to many new nations, my life was productive as well. Your grandfather and I got married. We enjoyed many happy years of marriage and family and careers. But deep within me, there was still that relentless dream of Africa lying fallow, just waiting to sprout wings.

And wow! It happened, dear grandchildren, it happened; the dream gathered substance and form and momentum and reality. I could touch it, feel it, live it. Your grandfather agreed to go to Kenya with me to pursue the dream.

Lyle and I applied and we were approved to go to Kenya as mission volunteers. In 2003, I was on my way to Africa… to chase that dream.

This is the story of our African experience, the joys and sorrows, the wins and losses, the struggles and despair, and the secrets of a dream come true.

With love,

Nana

Chapter One

The Journey Begins

It was the beginning of a dream come true. A dream of Africa. My thoughts were floating on cloud nine, high above the earth, carried through time and space. I was giddy and apprehensive about following my lifelong fantasy into the unknown as the airplane soared through space.

There I was, a wee mission volunteer, traveling to Kenya with butterflies in my stomach, pondering the following questions: What in the world was I thinking? Would I be able to make it? What would it take to fulfill the dream?

A few months after arriving in Kenya, reality hit me in the face. I wanted to cast the stubborn ounces of my weight into the future, but I was such a wimp! I was lying in bed with chills and a fever, so sick I was praying to die—yet afraid I would. I had malaria. A cold fear carried me away into turbulent currents of thoughts. As Lyle and I were new mission volunteers in Africa, I was worried about our fate.

Just six weeks before, Lyle had contracted typhoid fever. To this day, we don’t know what went wrong. We boiled the water. All our fruits and vegetables had been dipped in bleach water—even our dishes and eating utensils. Maybe he had gotten contaminated water in his mouth during a shower? Or maybe he forgot and brushed his teeth with water from the faucet?

It was midnight with a brooding darkness all around when he became gravely ill. Morning, when I could get help, seemed like an eternity away. After gut-wrenching bouts in the bathroom, Lyle spiked a soaring fever. Then he began to chill; his teeth chattered and his body shook violently. I feared that he was having a convulsion. I gave him the antibiotic Cipro we had brought from America. I piled blankets on him and put a cap on his head to keep him warm. While terror gnawed on my bones, I lay in bed beside my husband and cradled him in my arms.

Just two days before, a little three-year-old boy had died of typhoid. He—a child of the ramshackle mud houses with tin roofs where green sewer sludge trickled through the Kibera slum dwellings—arrived at the mission hospital too late to be saved. Typhoid had caused the child to become severely dehydrated from vomiting and diarrhea. The doctors were not able to save him. In his weakened state, the boy fixed his eyes on his mother and said, Mama, I am going away, and he died.

When the boy’s auntie told me that the struggle to save his life had finished, a chill went through my soul, and I could not shake it off. The void in the hospital room was fathomless. The deep darkness of mourning engulfed everyone, and the mother’s wailing for her child pierced our hearts. Grief dug its sharp claws into all of us; her flood of tears could not wash away the pain. The mother cried herself into exhaustion, and in utter despair and resignation, with a weak hope that oozed in from who knows where, she murmured, God will make an angel of him.

These tragic deaths happen too frequently in Africa. The lurking menace of poverty was the root cause of the child’s death. (Why is it that those who have so much share so little with others? Selfishness is truly a murderous sin.) The child lived in a Nairobi slum (Kibera, the largest slum in East Africa), where clean water was not available except for those who could afford to purchase it. He had drunk contaminated water collected from a ditch. The water was not boiled because his mother did not have enough money to buy charcoal to light a fire.

Lyle was an adult, not a child, so his chances of surviving typhoid were good. As the minutes dripped by, my anxiety about Lyle’s condition mounted. However, I took comfort in the fact that we had the resources to care for him, and that, within hours, we would be able to get help. Surprisingly, just as abruptly as the brutality of typhoid began, it ended. Lyle’s fever broke, and he slept peacefully. His pulse was normal. It appeared that the Cipro was working. The worst was over. Dawn began to break. With the first glimmer of light that morning, I bundled him up and drove to the Presbyterian Church of East Africa Mission Hospital in Kikuyu.

After putting Lyle into the competent hands of the medical staff, my anxious heart came back to its normal rhythm and my fears subsided. Losing Lyle, my husband of many years, had been an unbearable thought. I loved him even more than the day I met him—and that seemed impossible considering how head-over-heels I’d fallen in love with him that fateful week in New York City so many years ago when I was nineteen and he was twenty. We were both college students on a summer trip sponsored by Operation Crossroads Africa (which President Kennedy used as a model for the Peace Corps).

I remember sitting in the orientation session, listening to the speaker tell us about what to expect on the summer work-camp trip to Africa, when I noticed a tall, good-looking man taking my picture. His intense blue eyes never seemed to leave me as his blond hair glistened in the sunlight. He strolled around the edges of the group, clicking his camera much like a reporter, but I couldn’t help but be aware of the inordinate number of pictures he took of me. During a brief break in the morning schedule, we became acquainted.

About an hour after we had chatted during the conference recess, Lyle discovered that another young man was planning to ask me for a date. Lyle often laughs and tells the story of how he out-maneuvered his competition, so that he would be the one to get to me first and ask for a date. His plan was quick and simple: Lyle recruited a friend to engage the man in conversation while Lyle slipped past him and quickly approached me first and asked for a date, which I gladly accepted.

The day after my first date with Lyle, I panicked. My mother had frequently said, Terry, you are a beautiful girl, and you attract boys like bees to a flower. (Mothers are often very biased. Although her opinion of me was exaggerated, I was vain enough to believe her.) You treat men with such indifference; some day you will fall deeply in love with a man, and he will treat you the same way. She was right. I had often been accused of maintaining a certain aloofness, an apartness, even a watchfulness about men.

On our first date, after we saw a Broadway play, Lyle and I sat on a park bench in Washington Square Park and talked until three in the morning. A policeman approached us and told us to leave. He said it was too dangerous for us to be there. We had been so totally immersed in talk about life, politics, religion, values, ethics, our hopes and dreams, and the upcoming trip to Africa, we had lost track of time.

I could see that Lyle was a man of innate gentleness and true goodness. I had found him—my soul mate for life! It had happened. I had fallen into that sweet cauldron of love. Then I became frightened. Would my mother’s prediction come true? Alone, back in my room with a trembling heart, I lay in bed looking up between the skyscrapers of New York, trying to find the night