The Gift
Emma Lou
Thayne
Jan Cook and
her husband lived for three years in Africa, in deepest Africa. His work had taken them and their three small
children there, and any Church meetings they attended took place in their own
living room with only themselves as participants. By their third Christmas, Jan was very
homesick. She confessed this to a good
friend, a Mennonite.
Jan told her
how she missed her own people, their traditions, and even snow. Her friend sympathized and invited her to go
with her the next month to the Christmas services being held in the only
Protestant church in the area, saying that there would be a reunion there of
all the Mennonite missionaries on the continent.
It took some
talking for Jan to persuade her husband, but there they were, being swept
genially to the front of the small chapel.
It felt good being in a church again on Christmas. The minister gave a valuable sermon on
Christ; the congregation sang familiar carols with great vitality, then at the
very end of the meeting a choir of Mennonite missionaries from all over Africa
rose from their benches and made their way to stand just in front of Jane and
her family. Without a word they began
singing. Without a leader, without
music, without text, they sang, “Come, Come Ye Saints.” Every verse.
Disbelieving,
totally taken by surprise, Jan and her husband drenched the fronts of their
Sunday best with tears. When the choir
finished, Jan’s friend said simply, “For you.
Our gift.”
Jan’s
Mennonite friend had sent to Salt Lake City for the music to the hymn that she
knew Jan loved, had it duplicated and distributed to every Mennonite missionary
in Africa. They in turn, had learned it
very carefully in order to bring the Spirit of Christ to their own reunion,
where foreigners to their faith would be waiting to hear.
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