by Ray Norman
“The ways of Providence are impenetrable,” said a philosopher in the 17th century. I cannot find the words to describe our meeting today. Although I still feel remorse with regard to the evil I have caused you, words cannot express the depth of my joy on Wednesday, 5 June 2002, in seeing you with your daughter, that little angel, alive and well! Madam, you demonstrated immense kindness.
The simple gesture of coming here illustrates, if there is a need to do so, a real nobility of feeling and the deep conviction in a certain understanding of the world. Many times I have heard of “Christian charity” (Christian kindness and love)—now I see it and experience it.
For me it is not sufficient to express my feelings of gratitude in traditional ways. In reality, this is a new path, which is opening up before me. This light which shows the way for what is “infinitely small,” which I am, will end up transcending all obstacles which, until then kept me from what is “infinitely great.”
Is this not an opportunity of which one dreams to prove to the cosmos (all that is) that all living beings can cohabit peacefully without any distinction of race, religion, or color?
Humbly, in a state of fallen nobility, Ali Ould Sidi
When we finished the letter, we were visibly touched. Ali’s sister then continued, “You are wonderful and kind people, and I cannot thank you enough for your generous act of kindness for my troubled brother. I know of no one else who would do such a thing for someone who had brought such harm to them.” As she began to relax somewhat, she went on to express how dearly she cared for him. “He is like a son to me.” She also explained that he had always been bright but had a history of psychological issues, was considered by many a social misfit, and had even struggled at times with drug abuse. Any one of these, I surmised, could have been the reason he was discharged from the military.
She clearly cared about her brother deeply and went on to express her frustration with the lack of help in a country such as Mauritania for someone with his challenges. Then, before leaving, she asked if by any chance he should ever get out of prison, could we, or perhaps our World Vision colleagues, assist her in finding a place, perhaps in Europe, that could provide help for someone such as him. She apologized for the boldness in such a request, but explained that other than herself, she had never met anyone else who believed there could be any promise for someone such as Ali.
11
THE LAST LETTER
When it was time to leave, we left
and continued on our way.
(ACTS 2I:5)
GROWING UP IN AFRICA WITH MY MISSIONARY PARENTS AND spending most of my adult life with my own family spread constantly over multiple continents, I learned that new adjustments and changes are always lurking around the corner. It is just part of the landscape. And as I progressed through these experiences, I grew to be more malleable to the bends and contortions that this migratory lifestyle threw at me. But one thing does not get easier no matter how practiced I may be: saying farewell, sometimes permanently, to friends and relationships.
In the first fourteen years of our marriage, we had packed and moved home and country at least six times. I well remember Hélène sitting dejectedly among suitcases and boxes in our new yet moldy and roach-infested lodgings in Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire, after just leaving our sparkling, clean surroundings of Oman. She lamented the pain of having left friends and community and contemplated the ominous challenge of starting anew: “It’s like being stripped of everything, or constantly having your legs knocked out from under you just after you have begun to stand and walk!”
Listening to Hélène took me back to my own childhood years, when, after one of our three-year stints in Nigeria, we were ready to embark on the lengthy journey to the United States for our furlough—first by canoe for a day, then by Land Rover for another two, then by plane to Europe, and eventually another to the United States. We stood under waving palm trees on the banks of the Orashi River in the delta country of southern Nigeria as our Nigerian friends from the local community gathered around our family to offer a parting prayer and sing a tearful rendition of John Fawcett’s beloved hymn penned in 1782.
Blest be the tie that binds
Our hearts in Christian love;
The fellowship of kindred mind
Is like to that above.
When we asunder part,
It gives us inward pain;
But we shall still be joined in heart,
And hope to meet again.
I looked up to see my mother dabbing her red eyes and hesitantly asked what was the matter. “Oh, Ray, the longer I live this life that I love so much, I’ve learned that the good-byes just never get any easier!”
That was forty years ago, and now I found myself living in the western Sahara Desert, still vividly remembering my mother’s words I heard on the shores of that beautiful, tropical river, largely because my own life experiences, time and again, had proven them to be so true.
And so it was that in the spring of 2002 I began to sense another time for good-byes lurking uncomfortably in the shadows of my own thoughts. We still had concerns about Nathaniel being away at boarding school, now for his second year. For the most part we had been pleased with his experience there, but if we stayed in Mauritania he would need to finish out his high school years away from us. For all practical purposes we would never have him home full-time again. This worried Hélène. In addition, 2002 had brought some changes at his school, notably new house parents with whom Nathaniel struggled to connect, and some personnel were worried about Nathaniel’s propensity to spend his free time with non-Christian and non-missionary youth, some of whom also attended the mission school.
Nathaniel was learning to be his own person, and we had a few concerns. But for the most part we had always encouraged our children to break out of the box and relate across cultures and faiths among their friends since we believed it would equip them to be more secure in themselves and have a better understanding of the world around them. In a few years Hannah would also grow out of her beloved school in Nouakchott, and her only realistic alternative would also be boarding school in Dakar.
I was also worried about Hélène, not only for the emotional toll of the past year, but also because of some chronic health issues that she had been dealing with long before the shooting. She had undergone surgery in Europe the previous summer, from which there were still repercussions, and getting good medical diagnosis and treatment for this and other ongoing health issues was difficult, if not impossible, in this part of the world.
As we gradually sorted through the issues at hand, it became increasingly clear that this season of our lives in Mauritania needed to come to a close in the not-too-distant future. Up to this point our children had never had the opportunity to sink roots in one of their home cultures for any significant period of time. The time was rapidly approaching that they would need to begin preparing to complete high school and enter their university studies. Hélène, more than anyone else, needed a break from running the homestead for years in lonely, challenging environments and a chance to sort out debilitating health issues that our stressful lifestyle had only exacerbated.
I agonized over this decision, and Hélène was a daily witness to my distress. Things were slowly returning to normal with World Vision’s program in Mauritania, and our relationships with the communities we served and with the government, our principal partner, were as strong as ever. In spite of all we had been through, I was more fulfilled in my work than I had ever been. I loved the country, the people, and the work we did, difficult as it was, and my heart ached at the thought of leaving this all behind. What’s more, I was loath to give the impression that our leaving, should it come to that, was a reaction to the tragic events that had taken place the previous year.
So with a heavy heart I began discussing with World Vision staff an eventual transfer, preferably to Europe or the United States. There was an opportunity at World Vision’s office in Washington, DC, and I t
raveled there in the spring to review the position. A year earlier, and much to my surprise, Messiah College, a small, Christian liberal arts college in central Pennsylvania, also had contacted me to gauge my interest in a forthcoming position as an academic dean. But at that time my heart was still fully engaged in my work abroad, and seeing myself more as a field practitioner, I simply could not envision myself in academic administration back in the United States. But during the time I was speaking with World Vision concerning a transfer to Washington, I learned that Messiah College had not filled the position and had renewed their search. I had my heart set on continuing with World Vision, but I had always known it never hurts to look broadly when making such a change. As my travels often took me to North America, and at Messiah’s urging, I took a two-day detour during a visit to World Vision Canada to interview at the college, not really thinking they would want me in the end. Besides, I had told them that I would be unwilling to cut all professional ties with World Vision.
To my astonishment they offered me the position, with a contractual agreement that I could continue to serve in an advisory and consulting role with World Vision. Messiah College was looking, among other things, for someone to enhance their international ties and opportunities for students to engage more directly in service-related work.
When my family weighed in on the prospect of a more sedate academic life in suburban, semirural Pennsylvania versus fighting Washington’s beltway traffic and having a father and husband who would be traveling the world 30 percent or more of his time, Messiah became more and more appealing. In the end I accepted the position and once more braced myself for another huge and somewhat daunting paradigm shift in my professional career.
I was now a seasoned mover, and I knew well the importance of ridding oneself of unnecessary and encumbering possessions that accumulate and being selective and discerning about the things to hold on to. But I had also learned the benefits of filtering out and registering in my heart important life lessons that a particular season in life had provided.
As our time approached to leave in the summer of 2002, I found myself looking back over our time in Mauritania, trying to piece together and capture the many valuable lessons we had learned in this remarkable season. I was keenly aware that Mauritania had provided us with an intimate perspective on the unfolding drama of God’s unceasing care and love for all people that has been playing out for millennia. More specifically, we knew we had been granted a humbling, though tumultuous, view of the limitlessness of God’s love for those we had been here to serve.
During walks with Hélène along the beach in our last months, not far from where our world had seemingly fallen apart the year before, I often thought of Sir Isaac Newton’s reflections as he looked back over his remarkable career (as one of the most original and influential theorists of all time in the history of science): “I was like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.” Newton was referring to the wonders of the created world and the natural laws that govern it. But the analogy can be expanded beyond the bounds of God’s created order. I knew we had been given a small glimpse into something far larger than ourselves. God’s love is surely boundless, and his ways with his people and those he seeks to draw to himself can simply not be foretold, much as we may try. And what we are privileged to hear and see in this lifetime, such as we did in our days in Mauritania, must be only whispers, encounters with just the “mere edges of His ways” (Job 26:14 NKJV).
During our time in Mauritania we had learned important lessons about prayer. First and simply, that God hears and heeds our prayers, especially when our petitions intersect with his heart’s intentions and desires to bring hope to a hurting world. And we had learned that, try as we may, we can never presuppose his ways and the surprising means by which he may choose to answer those prayers. We had asked God to open doors of opportunity, and he had done so in a measure that far exceeded our expectations, but in ways we never could have expected nor ever would have chosen.
We had already learned the importance of being willing to receive love from those we were called to serve. In Mauritania we learned that such love can be God’s manna-like provision of spiritual and emotional sustenance during wilderness sojourns, bringing healing and restoration, and to receive and partake of it with humility and open hearts. We had come to Mauritania knowing that God had given us a commandment to love, and we had come wanting to be vessels of that love in both word and deed. We were intimately acquainted with the limits of our own love and the importance of relying on a love that is truly beyond ourselves. But it was here that we learned that God’s abundant provision of such love is unfailing, even in the darkest and most challenging of circumstances. After experiencing and surviving the horrors of the holocaust, then later encountering one of her past tormentors, Corrie Ten Boom framed it so simply, “When he tells us to love our enemies, he gives along with the command, the love itself.”
We had also learned that obedience to this command means being vulnerable, and we had indeed experienced the hurt that can follow. At the same time we had also seen that in taking this risk, remarkable doors of opportunity could be opened to demonstrate to others the often-misunderstood nature of a caring God. This journey had brought us into a more intimate and priceless understanding of the One we had chosen to serve—an omnipotent God, who because of his love for us chose to be vulnerable, a choice revealed through the incarnation and demonstrated with humility, suffering, and eternal wonder on a Roman cross.
We had taken up our cross, perhaps clumsily, stumbled forward, and followed God to this land; but to our relief and wonder, we had encountered him most tangibly in the darkest and most challenging parts of that journey. We had heard his voice when he called us, but we found, time and again, that we encountered him most intimately in the places he had called us to.
Tired and extended as we were, in our hearts we had no regrets for having chosen this path. As Christians we often stand on the shore of the river of his love and observe with wonder its free-flowing and thirst-quenching journey through time and history. But God also compels us, as his people, to do more than just observe and offer prayers of gratitude and songs of praise for the wonders of his love. He invites us in. He invites us—even compels us—to engage and take the risk of submerging ourselves in its flow and releasing our will to it, as it then loosens our secure footholds and rushes us along well beyond our familiar surroundings to places and encounters yet unseen. And such had Mauritania been for us.
When we finally announced to our staff and friends that we would be leaving, we braced ourselves for the painful process of saying farewell to a country that had impacted us deeply and its people whom we had grown to love and cherish. There were many who had walked with us closely through the most challenging experience of our lives, and we were often at a loss to know how to say good-bye.
I made one last trip around the country to bid farewell to the communities where World Vision served, as well as to government officials and other partners in our work. During these encounters I tried to be transparent and explain the necessity for this transition in as simple terms as I could. But in spite of my efforts, there were still some among our Mauritanian friends who wondered if perhaps we had simply found life in Mauritania too harsh. There was no culpability implied in their wonderings, just regret, even shame, that their homeland could be so inhospitable for those who came to help; and I did my best to allay these reasoned suppositions.
It was particularly hard to say good-bye to our Mauritanian staff at World Vision. Many of them had given years of faithful service but had endured saying good-bye to their expatriate leadership much too often in years past—as most rotated in and out every three to five years. They hosted a traditional farewell meal, and as we sat under the large canopy of the Mauritanian tent, my colleagues shared many touching words of gratitude and encouragem
ent. At one point someone mentioned the regret they felt that we would be leaving Mauritania with scars on our bodies. With my emotions running deep and threatening to overflow, I assured my colleagues that, truthfully, while Hannah and I would be leaving with scars on our bodies, there were none on our hearts.
About this same time there was a reception held in the courtyard at Nouakchott’s finest hotel—a rather modest hotel by US standards, but the warm, collegial atmosphere of the gathering made up for any shortcomings of the venue. This evening reception was held to honor my family and me and to provide us the opportunity to say a formal farewell to our colleagues and partners in the Mauritanian government, various UN agencies and international NGOs, the World Food Program, and local embassies. It was a rich evening of warm exchanges and, for me, the sealing of many happy memories.
Toward the end of the evening, while my family and I were standing at the door shaking hands and bidding farewell to our guests, a senior official from one of the government ministries, dressed in a traditional flowing robe, approached and greeted Hélène and me warmly in impeccable French. Hannah had been standing dutifully and quietly beside us, and as guests passed by, she would on occasion get a nod or a friendly pat on the head as they left. But after greeting us, this official bent over and clasped Hannah’s right hand in both of his. Hannah was a bit wide-eyed and self-conscious at the sudden attention. He gazed at her for a brief moment, then said, “Hannah! You are indeed a courageous young girl. We have all heard of your brave and selfless deeds this past year. And we are all sorry to see you and your family leave Mauritania. But please know, my dear Hannah, that you are our hero, and you will always be a part of Mauritanian history!” He gazed at her for another moment with a quiet smile of admiration, then turned and walked away as we watched silently, trying to grapple with these surprising and poignant words.