What's it really like? One to One
Never think you're too old...
Appearances can be deceptive. At 67 and 60, most people assume that David and I have been married for decades, but actually we’ve just celebrated our sixth anniversary.
Since we got married we’ve been putting out feelers for where we might be able to contribute short-term to missionary work. David is an electronic engineer (retired) who has not experienced living in the developing world. I teach students with specific learning difficulties, mainly dyslexia, and did previously work in Asia for ten years as a missionary. No-one seemed to have a slot for the two of us… until we contacted Wycliffe last year.
Wycliffe told us about Rain Forest International School in Cameroon. Although Cameroonian children now attend too, R.F.I.S. is a secondary school first established to give a good education in West Africa to the children of full-time Christian workers.
They needed help on the maintenance side, and their Special Needs Co-ordinator had been invalided out. To cut a long story short, we went for eight weeks from August to October last year.
Our initial job descriptions lent themselves to flexibility...! David spent his time with the Cameroonian school electrician, carrying ladders and tools, or providing (lifesaving!) input on electrical items (e.g. microwaves) which were new to the electrician. He also helped out in the library, cleaning videos and transferring videos to DVDs – jobs the regular staff never found time for. I did some one to one teaching, some screening of people for dyslexia, and some teacher training. All the teachers and students were very welcoming, and I was humbled by some of the people who were courageous enough to ask for my input.
We wanted to set R.F.I.S. in context, so were thrilled during half-term week when Wycliffe missionaries arranged day trips for us to see the kind of work the students’ parents did. We visited a literacy project, and sat in on a lesson in a small school. The children were learning (for one hour a week) to write the sounds they had been saying all their lives. They had only slates and stubs of chalk, but their concentration was total.
Then, on my sixtieth birthday, we were driven up a mud track to a village off the map to watch a grammar consultation attended by men who had walked in from surrounding villages. It was fascinating. I also wandered round to find the wife cooking lunch over a fire in another room. We enjoyed the porcupine later!
We felt we were useful to a handful of people, and that God used our willingness to go, even at our age. So if you’re sitting back complacently reading this, watch out!
David and Denise
