What stays in our kids’ hearts and spirits?

PREFACE:  I was 16 and had been living in West Africa since I was 3 and loving it, when I wrote the below entry. “Kribi” was a place at the beach, in the then nation of French-speaking Cameroun, where our family of 7, and many other families, sometimes spent vacation.  Kribi was an 8-to 12-hour journey over bumpy red clay roads from where we lived, in the same country.  “West Cameroon”, at that time, was a different country. It was summer vacation when I wrote this and so, I was home in Cameroun with my family, but each of my school years was spent in boarding school in Kinshasa in then-called Zaire( Democratic Republic of Congo).  Two years previous when I was 14, I’d experienced a life-changing personal ENCOUNTER with Jesus and Christianity, which I considered and still consider the beginning of my faith walk with Christ.

Why do I share this?  Because my personal introduction to Christ at age 14 really did change my life, and, in retrospect, I can see that it also began to set a positive trajectory for it!  And I think that knowing Christ has helped me to keep alive a love for learning and for new adventure, which has stood me in good stead in some of the difficult patches in my adult life. Mainly, though, it’s been so good to know that Jesus was there with me in the rough patches, and that He will be with me in my future rough patches.  Also, I guess I wanted to try to help encourage my fellow outreachers today with the importance of praying for and working with TEENS  and younger CHILDREN that God puts within our spheres of influence.  You really CAN, and you really WILL, make a difference in the life of a child or a teen, sometimes a difference that may seem insignificant at the time but can end up making or breaking the potential positive trajectory of a young person’s life.  There were several such adults in my life when I was a child and a teen.  They took the time, they cared about me ENOUGH, to encourage and mentor me. They include my mom, my dad, and many of the teachers at my boarding school in Congo, who caused me to love being a student in that school! I am unspeakably grateful.

 

 

I was a painfully shy teenager, at times.

Thursday, July 12, 1973

At Kribi.  We’ve been here now since last Tuesday and are staying ’til Sunday when we are starting out of the BIG ADVENTURE (cheers!) (cheers!)  Picking up Nate (my older brother) and the unknown Jim (his friend) Sunday afternoon at Douala and then, probably on Monday we are traveling on to and through West Cameroun.  Our family(though we’ve really been missing Nate) has gotten pretty close here at Kribi.  I think we are closer on the whole than we ever have been before.  So, I really, really hope that when Nate comes with Jim it   stays that way.  With Jim fitting in as part of our family.  I want to be completely myself – do anything I’d do if it were just family, and, I’m determined I’m not going to tense up and try to impress. (cause that wouldn’t work anyway!)

Oh please, God, let it work out – completely!

It has been so quiet, hum-drum and dull here.  But peaceful quiet.  Peaceful hum-drum and dull!  There is a very real and definite difference!  I’m glad it has been this way because I’ve had a lot of time to think, and to just dream.  About this school year, what it has been and what it has meant to me.  How it has changed me.  Because it HAS, oh, HOW it has.  About life and about people – mostly people – it has taught me so much.  And yet, there is still so much farther to go.  That kind of sounds like it is discouraging but it’s not.  It is GREAT.  To know that, if you keep open and you let God in,  all your life you are gonna(sic) be growing, all your life you are gonna(sic) be learning something new about what it’s all about, every day.”

* a few names changed to protect identities.