2
Chapter Two
And did you find the train trip hard, dear?” Mrs. MacDonald passed me a cup of tea.
“Oh no,” I said, “I was a little sleepy since I had to get up very early, but the scenery was so beautiful I didn’t think much about the train itself.”
“Not what you’re used to in the United States, is it, though? I hear they’ve beautiful trains there.” Mrs. MacDonald’s t’s and r’s were still Scottish, though she said she had been away from her homeland for many years. She poured a cup of tea, moved an empty cup closer, and poured the tea from the first cup into the second. I watched with interest.
“And now you’re wondering what it is I’m doing,” she said, her pink cheeks lifting in a smile. “Oh, it’s a funny custom. Ian likes his cup warmed first, so I pour him another one. That way he gets it really hot.” She moved the sugar bowl toward me.
“Ian. Ian, dearie?” she called.
“I’m coming, Janet. Coming right away.” He came into the room through a doorway covered by a flowered curtain. His feet scraped slightly as he moved. He paused a moment and looked steadily at us both—first at his wife, then at me. His hands trembled almost imperceptibly as he put them on the back of his chair and pulled it slowly out from the table. He smiled and sat down.
“Some of your oat cakes, dearie. I thought maybe Margaret would like them too. My mother used to make these,” she said, lifting the china plate of little brown biscuits and passing it to me. “Ian likes them very much. But I can’t get quite the right kind of oats here. I have to substitute.”
“They never tasted better to me in Scotland,” said Ian, picking one up almost tenderly. He lifted his face and closed his eyes. “Father,” he said, “You’ve given us all things good, and we thank You from our hearts. Amen.”
I had heard many prayers in my life, but few with which I so wholeheartedly joined. It was exactly what I wanted to say. The marvel of that broad valley with its lake and white birds and straw huts and mountain bastions; then the trip through the pass and up into further hills, across more desert and through fields of calla lilies, lovely in their classic simplicity, then the arrival at the Wairapamba railroad station, where I saw the kind face (like the Good Shepherd, I had thought at once) of Mr. MacDonald looking over the shoulders of some Indians who were waiting; now this room, with its sunlight coming through the geraniums on the windowsill, the taste of the hot tea and the crumbly cakes, for all of this, and for the honest warmth of the two people who had received me, I was more grateful than an elaborate prayer could have expressed. “All things good. We thank You.”
It was as I had hoped. If God had called me to Ecuador there would be a sense of belonging, a confidence that things were as they should be. During those strange and uneasy first days in the country this confidence had been lacking, and I had wondered whether I had made a mistake.
The certainty of my call seemed to wane, perhaps at times because of the oppressive heat, perhaps because of the shock of finding myself an alien. My mind was soon at rest when such explanations could be found. When they could not, I was troubled. Why was it, for example, when I helped a group of missionaries in Guayaquil with the task of folding Gospel tracts, that their conversation seemed somehow staged? They spoke of people in terms of “souls,” cities in terms of “need,” and church meetings in terms of attendance. Not that I would at that time have found fault with this view. Far from it. The fault lay, I suspected, with myself in not being able wholeheartedly to share it. Had I not been called to cast in my lot with these servants of the Lord?
But here in the MacDonald home things were different. I found a peace and a simplicity, which acted like a balm to my spirit. The teacups were of bone china, and the spoons were thin sterling—they must be very old, I thought probably an heirloom from Mrs. MacDonald’s family. The furniture was crude and heavy, of Ecuadorian design. They lived neither in unrelieved ugliness nor in inappropriate luxury, it seemed to me, and I was reminded of home, where a few very beautiful things that had been given to us, such as an Oriental rug and a cloisonné vase, were mingled with practical and inexpensive things which my parents, who considered all their money the Lord’s, had bought.
“You can’t imagine how we’ve prayed for this,” Mr. MacDonald said to me. ‘You know we thought we were going to work with the Indians. Thirty-one years ago we came to these mountains, selling Bibles in the little villages round about. We couldn’t sell many—not many people could read, and they were afraid of us. They would see us coming. Foreigners. And they’d run. But God gave us some precious opportunities. There’s an old brother who lives seven miles from here who bought one of those first Bibles. He couldn’t read, but he’d always wanted a book. ‘If I had a book, I could learn to read,’ he had said. ‘If only I had a book.’ So when I came he said, ‘That’s what I want. I want that book.’ His wife scolded him for wasting money. He didn’t give her any heed. He went into the back room and I could hear him moving trunks and things. He must have kept his money in one of them. His wife was screaming at him, ‘So you’ll let the children starve, you won’t buy me a good rooster, but you’ll buy a book.’ Well, he bought it, and he learned to read. I came back several years later and he was reading. He knows the book now, from cover to cover. And I think he knows the Author, too. So you see, Margaret lassie, the Lord knows what He’s about” He passed the cakes to me again, and his cup to Mrs. MacDonald. She poured milk into it and then tea.
“But you were telling Margaret about our wanting to do Indian work, dearie. You do get off the track.”
“Oh yes. We came here to live twenty-eight years ago. We had sold Bibles in the area for a few years—I think it was five years—and then we came here to live. We visited around with the people of the town and with the Indians in the hills. But the Indians only come to town on market day and they live far apart. We found we couldn’t keep them here long enough to do any work with them, and we couldn’t visit their homes often enough. We had the children, you know.” He took a sip of tea.
“How many do you have?” I asked.
“We have three,” Mrs. MacDonald answered, her eyes lighting. “Two lassies and a laddie.”
“Isn’t your son a missionary?” I asked.
“Oh yes—in Tanganyika. He’s been there two years now and just last week we received a letter from him with the news that he’s found a wife. She’s an English girl—a nurse. They won’t be married for another year or so—she’s still studying the language. But we’re so happy for him. You know, it doesn’t seem right for a young man to be alone like that, away out there.” She had risen from her chair with the teapot in her hands. She looked eagerly at me. “I’ll show you the picture he sent of her. She looks like a dear girl. And here I am talking when your cup is empty. I’ll just heat this up a wee bit” She went to the kerosene stove in the corner of the room, set the teapot on the side and poured water from the steaming kettle into it. Her husband watched her bent back from the other side of the room. She straightened up and stretched a wisp of white hair into the cluster of pins at the back of her head, looked at the clock, and then carried the teapot to the table again.
“Here, Margaret dear, let me fill your cup. You must be tired. No? Ah, you’re young. And then we have the two girls—Joan is married to a doctor in Kansas and Mary’s studying to be a teacher. Sometimes we wonder about Mary.” She looked at the geraniums with her head angled slightly to one side. She lifted her cup and held it without drinking. “Ah, she’s a dear girlie. She had a hard time being away from us at the first, and then later, somehow she didn’t seem to want to come back home. She didn’t write for five weeks once. We heard things from people in Scotland: Mary’s running around, Mary’s not going to church, Mary’s a wee bit rebellious. We don’t know. The Lord knows what she needs, and we just commit her to Him. He’s the Shepherd of the sheep—He won’t let His lambs go astray. That we know, don’t we, Ian? But we’ve talked too much, and you must want a little nap, Margaret.
“We haven’t heard anything about you, dear, and we want to—tomorrow you’ll tell us all about yourself—but not now. You’re tired. Come. Let me show you your room. Ah, you don’t know how good it is to have you with us. We prayed so long that the Lord would send someone who could work with our Indians.” She put her hands on the edge of the table and pushed herself back and then up from the chair. “You’ll love them. I know you’ll love them. But you won’t find it easy.”
“No, I don’t expect I will. Everyone tells me how hard they are to reach. But then nothing’s too hard for the Lord.” As soon as the words were out of my mouth I felt checked. Who was I to tell a veteran missionary such a thing? Mrs. MacDonald put her arm around my waist.
“Follow the Shepherd, Margaret. He knows the way. I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me. That’s His promise—to be with us. Ian and I have known it here.”
The room to which she showed me was very small and immaculately clean, with a chair, a dresser and a bed that had a crocheted spread on it.
“There now, dear, you just put your things here.” She pulled back a curtain and showed me a closet “And there in the dresser is drawer space. You’ll need a wee nap, now. You just lie down there, and when supper is ready I’ll call you.”
She left me and I went to the window, which looked out on a small patio where there were a dovecote and a great many geraniums in brilliant bloom. I saw Mrs. MacDonald open the kitchen door. The doves burbled and cooed as she held up her hands to them.
“Palomita, palomita!” she called, as though they would understand her better in Spanish than in English, and obediently they flew to her, circled and picked up the crumbs she scattered.
On the dresser was a neat, fat pincushion, crocheted like the bedspread, and a crystal bud vase with a few cornflowers. There was a plaster-of-Paris motto on the wall with the words “He careth for you” entwined with forget-me-nots and rosebuds.
I could have wished that the little room, in the quiet home, in the town of Wairapamba, were for me the end of the road. It might have been so, for the mission to which I belonged, Indians for Christ, Incorporated, had suggested that I settle there near the MacDonalds, at least until the arrival of the Gardners, a couple who were coming to work with me but had so far been delayed for medical reasons. But Wairapamba was not so centrally located for reaching the Quichuas as some of the smaller towns farther up in the mountains, and the mission, as well as the MacDonalds, was pleased to know that I was willing to start out alone in the attempt to gain a footing among the people whom I thought of as my own. Tomorrow the MacDonalds were to drive me in their jeep up to Indi Urcu, several hours away, and help me to move into the house they had procured for me.
I lay down on the bed and thought about all the way which the Lord had led me. There was a certain element of apprehension of the unknown as I contemplated my arrival in Indi Urcu, but the knowledge that the MacDonalds had prayed for someone to work with the Indians, when they had found that they themselves could not, was to me the final seal that the course I had chosen was God’s course.
There had been some strained moments at home when my parents learned that not only was I not going to India with my aunt, but that I intended to apply to a small, newly organized mission instead of to an established one, and would probably end up in Ecuador. Ecuador! They were not even sure where it was, and they had never known anyone who had gone there. Africa, China, India—these were the known fields. Why Ecuador? I had finally succeeded in persuading them that it was God’s will. The evidence was enough for me—a chance encounter with a missionary, a meeting in which the needs of Ecuador’s Indians were presented, a series of circumstances which seemed to point toward my going there, and, most incontestable of all, an inner conviction that this was it. I did not try to prove it to others. I simply said that the Lord was leading me, and this was both understandable and believable to my family and friends. I had not thought much about how such a statement might appear to others until I happened to meet a young man in Guayaquil, a drug salesman from New Jersey named Bill who, when he learned that I was a missionary, said, “A missionary! God. What’s your religion?”
The question took me off guard. I belonged to a small church called interdenominational where we thought of all religions as sadly mistaken. Ours, by contrast, was not called a religion at all. It was the Way. Believing this as I did, the only answer I could think of sounded lame.
“Well, I’m a Protestant. I’m hoping to work among Indians and translate the Bible for them.”
“Going to work in the jungle, huh?”
“No—among mountain Indians. Quichuas.”
“Mountain Indians! Jesus Christ. Do you think you’ll like that?”
“Oh, I think so.”
“Kinda tough for a girl. Some of those mountain Indians can be pretty tough.” He shook his head slowly and surveyed me as though assessing my capabilities for the job. “Well, I wish you luck. I suppose you’ve got the call, haven’t you?”
“Yes,” I said, wondering how I could change the subject, for it was not clear what “the call” might mean to Bill, and I cringed at the thought of trying to explain to him what it meant to me. “Do you like your work?”
“Oh yeah, it’s a good job. Good pay, lots of travel, meet a lot of nice people. It’s only a job, though—the work is all cut out, you put in your time, draw your salary. But take you—you’ve got something to do that’s really worthwhile—if you can get anywhere with those Indians.”
There was nothing to say to this. I smiled. It was true, I thought, that what I had to do was far more than a job, and there was no salary. My support had been partially pledged by individuals who wanted to have a part in missionary work. There was no guarantee, of course, that they would fulfill these pledges, and even if they did the amount would not cover my expenses. I was living on faith, which I had been taught was a very honorable position of dependence on the Lord, never to be confused with living on charity, which meant dependence on human beings. As for having my work cut out, as Bill had, there were moments when I wished that the term “missionary” were a little more clearly definable. If I had been a missionary teacher or doctor or nurse my goals would have seemed unequivocal. Just how I was to “get anywhere” with the Indians I was not sure.
“I knew a couple of missionaries in Colombia once,” Bill went on. “I was up there before I came here. Couple of girls. Nice girls, they were, from New York. They invited me down to their apartment one night for dinner. I was glad—you know, a bachelor, living alone, eating out in restaurants a lot, traveling a lot—it had been a long time since I had a good old American home-cooked meal. So I was glad they asked me. I tried to think of something I could take to those girls. You know what I mean, some little thing. So I bought a bottle of Drambuie. There’s just nothing like a little glass of Drambuie with your after dinner coffee. I thought it was just the thing. So I arrived at their house and when they opened the door I could smell steaks broiling. I gave them this bottle—and you know what they did? They threw me out. They took one look at the bottle and they threw me out Really. I couldn’t believe it. Never even gave me the meal they’d cooked. Can you beat that?”
“Oh, I suppose some missionaries are like that. It is hard to believe, though. I hope we’re not all alike.”
There was a low murmur from the kitchen, where Mr. and Mrs. MacDonald were. They did not want to wake me, and I could hear her moving plates and pans and things very gently as she prepared supper. Now and then a white dove flashed across the square of sky that I could see as I lay on the bed. It was delicious not to sleep, but just to lie in the stillness and think.
“Thank God,” I thought, “they are not all alike.”