"What would really be nice," our church district superintendent was saying at the conclusion of the meeting yesterday, "is that you would invite a missionary out to lunch." I nudged my husband and suggested we ask a young woman whose name we had recognized as the daughter of an on-campus ministry director that our son had had in college some 15-18 years ago. The group was a home-away-from home for Jamie and he had become very close to the director and his family.
I introduced myself to the sparkling, red-haired missionary candidate who would be serving in Mexico. She had been 11 when our son had known her. "Oh, Jamie's parents!" she exclaimed, happily accepting our invitation to lunch. Her friend, another missionary whom we had met previously, stood with her, so we invited her to come along, too.
While they stood winding up their conversation with friends, I excused myself to follow up on a hunch I had from another name I'd heard mentioned. "Is there a guy in your group named Destry?" I asked a young man. He said, yes, and pointed him out as he stood at an information table across the sanctuary. The unusual name rang a bell when he was introduced with other young missionaries earlier. Jamie had gone to New York to visit someone by that name when he first got out of college. I remember how worried I was at the thought of him seeking out an acquaintance in a huge city where he'd never been before.
"Are you Destry?" I asked as I approached the tall, courteous, figure. He said, yes, and I asked him if he'd ever lived in New York. When he acknowledged that he had, I said, "I think you may know my son. I'm Jamie Summers' mother." It was like we were long-lost friends! Although they had gone to different colleges, they knew each other through Chi Alpha, the ministry group. A fragment of memory reminded me of the concern Jamie had expressed about the newborn of his friend and his young wife. "You had a new baby at the time, I think," I mused. He nodded emphatically, saying his son had been premature. Wow, he must be a teenager by now, I realized.
All day I was amazed at how the thread of Christian relationships was woven through our conversation. At lunch, Angela, the now grown-up redhead, mentioned a church in Mustang, Oklahoma. Our nephew's son serves in that church as youth pastor, and I asked her if she knew him. "Yes!" she exclaimed, "We used to do youth camps together!" She said had never made the connection between our common last names.
And so it went. Howard got into a conversation with a missionary from Kenya, who dropped a name of a colleague there. "We knew his father!" Howard said, "He was a missionary to Kenya from Hattiesburg, Mississippi!" What a small world!
Our pastors, who were at lunch with us and knew the young woman who sat at our table who would be going to South Africa on a construction/water well drilling mission with her husband, shared with her that the director of the drilling operation was from the little town of Newkirk where he is pastor and where, during his recuperation, my husband is interim pastor!
What will it be like in Heaven, when we are following all the threads of the ministry of the faithful, stitched in a hodge-podge on the earth's side of God's canvas, to reveal a beautiful tapestry of souls that God had in mind all along!
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