I had wanted to go back to Africa for a long time when I finally made the decision to do it. That was a big decision. When I reflect on it now, I realize that a hundred little decisions often determine everything. You never know how one thing will lead to another. For example, before I left, a colleague asked me to drop off a care package for her sponsor child at a Deaf School in Nairobi. That started a chain of events that I could not have predicted, including raising almost $1000 CD for the school at a later date.
Life offers secondary opportunities like that sometimes. You make one decision and several more spin off of it. One must always be on the look out for miracles and occasions to allow Grace to enter in. Today in the middle of a long to-do list and a full day in the office, a colleague stopped by my desk and asked if I was coming to the Remembrance Day Service. I responded I had too much to do and went back to the work for a few moments--just a few moments. Long enough to make me ponder what was really important here. I knew that a woman in her 80’s was coming to speak to the students. While I have heard lots of men talk about their war experiences, I had not heard many women. I got up from my desk and walked into the assembly room just as the first chords of O Canada began to play.
She was delightful. The photo of the strikingly beautiful young woman made me think she must have been a firecracker with that twinkle in her eyes…and still she was a bombshell in many ways. She gave us all reason to pause. She talked about going to school and one day none of her Japanese friends were in the class. No teacher could really explain to a child’s satisfaction why they had disappeared. She suggested that few people in the room would know the fear she knew as a child when she missed curfew by 15 minutes and ran out of a neighbour’s house towards her own down the lane when she heard a voice cry out stop. The solider who caught her warned her that next time she might not be so lucky. Had she been a foot taller he would simply have shot her. This was the climate she grew up in, right here in Canada. The stories were real and relational. They showed a side of the war in a humble sense, right here in my country.
Small decisions can change you. I think tomorrow I will be ready to remember—those who gave their lives so that I may live in peace. I will be remembering soldiers serving in countries all over this world, especially those in eastern Congo where war was made real to me.
Peace,
Suzanne
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