Thursday, August 26, 2021

I worried: Would my kids suffer for living in such a place?


Since arriving in Lomalinda, Matt and his little buddies had spent hours upon hours playing softball on the field below our house but, by mid-November, athletes switched to the school’s soccer team and Matt was thrilleduntil he heard the crushing news: He couldn’t join them. Only those in fourth grade and older could play on the team. What a sad day!

 

But when Jim Miller, the dad of one of his friends, started a team for first through third graders, Matt’s joy bubbled over.



He also competed on a non-school team with his dad, older boys, teens, and men, often against local Colombians, in temperatures of 104 in the shade. How did they do it?

 

Back then, no one had yet invented sunscreen, and sometimes my fair-skinned boy got so sunburned that his face blistered, but he was having the time of his life.

 

Soccer filled Matt's thoughts and conversations. One week he talked non-stop about soccer shoes—he had to have the shoes with yellow stripes. The next week only white stripes were cool.


 

He wore his Seattle Sounders shirt to every practice and game. And for days on end, he talked on and on about the color and style of other soccer teams’ shirts.

 

One Saturday, Dave and Matt hitched a ride on a truck to Puerto Lleras with our school’s junior high team, and our team won. Matt was thrilled.

 

And then!—And then!—Dave took him to a little store in Puerto Lleras and bought him soccer shoes! He was overjoyed.

 

But it would get even better than that! Matt didn’t yet know about a secret. Mark Steen, one of Dave’s high school students, was soon traveling to a big city and while there, he’d buy a soccer ball for Dave to give Matt for his birthday.

 

One of my all-time favorite snapshots captured Matt after he opened his gift and found that ball.


 

The government allowed us to receive only flat parcels in small manila envelopes and my mom, a busy professional who also volunteered at church and in the community, somehow found time to buy, package, and mail us packets. She must have spent a fortune on the items and postage.

 

Matt got a kick out of the Seattle Seahawks sticker she sent, and when Karen received a picture of my dad at Hurricane Ridge, she squealed, “That’s my Papa Jerry! My Papa Jerry!”

 

My mom also sent books, games, toys, workbooks, and things for us to set aside for the kids’ birthdays and Christmas—and, it turned out, for their friends. One day Matt and Karen came home from school with invitations for a birthday party the next day, and I panicked. I wouldn’t have time to make gifts. What would I do? Then I remembered the stash of items my mother sent—Whew!

 

By mid-October, Miss Wheeler had moved Matt (a first grader) to second-grade readers and Karen (a Kindergartner) to first-grade readers.

 

Within no time, my kids picked up beginning Spanish, and Karen often sang little Spanish tunes.

 

She had trouble pronouncing the “R” sound but another teacher, Mrs. Gross, helped her for a few months until she said it correctly. To this day we are still grateful to Mrs. Gross for that special help.

 

It did take Karen a while to adjust to the way one classmate showed his affection—he placed a line of dead cockroaches across each girl’s desk throughout the school year. Perhaps that had something to do with her lack of interest in boys, but she had lots of sweet little girlfriends.

 

She also enjoyed climbing into our mango tree, sometimes with a friend, other times with her stuffed toys, teaching them to sing in Spanish, and sometimes alone, quietly enjoying worlds her imagination invented. In her own quiet way, she was settling well.

 

Before moving to Lomalinda, I’d worried

about my kids’ wellbeing.

Would they suffer for living in such a place?

The answer: No.

They thrived at school, at play, and at home.

And in their hearts.

I was deeply grateful to God for His care and provision for them.

 

(From Chapters 14 and 15,

Please, God, Don’t Make Me Go: A Foot-Dragger’s Memoir)

 

No comments:

Post a Comment

104 degrees and it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas--or not

We’d lived in Lomalinda less than four months when, one December day, with the temperature 104 in the shade, I was walking a sun-cracked tra...