Deserts, Dams and Dirt by Delwyn Fredlund & Elsie Loewen

Author:Delwyn Fredlund & Elsie Loewen [Fredlund, Delwyn]
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: mom fiction
Publisher: Elsie Loewen and Delwyn G. Fredlund
Published: 2017-10-26T16:00:00+00:00

“What draws people to be friends is that they see the same truth. They share it.”

C.S. Lewis

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

One of God’s extra special blessings in my life appeared unexpectedly, unannounced, and filled with uncertainties. Harianto Rahardjo arrived at my office one day at the start of the 1980 fall term, armed with my contact information and one simple request: would I agree to supervise his studies toward a Master’s degree?

My immediate thought was to refer him elsewhere. I had just returned from vacation to the usual chaos of a new year and reorienting myself to the inevitable changes that came with it. I already had a full slate of grad students and few funds in my research account to take on more. With gradually tightening budgets affecting all faculties, each professor’s work load had increased along with corresponding classroom preparation time. Still, there was something about him that drew me to hear his story—who he was and how he came to be here.

Harianto was from Indonesia where he’d completed a Bachelor’s degree in civil engineering, since then working as an assistant with a Canadian consulting firm on an open pit mining operation. His supervisor, Don Shields, whom I knew as a professor at the University of Ottawa, and more recently at the University of Manitoba, had urged him to go overseas for further studies and post-graduate degrees. Harianto had long dreamed of such an opportunity but there was one huge and insurmountable obstacle in his way. Without a scholarship, he didn’t have enough money to enroll in post-graduate studies.

Don was determined that nothing should stand in the way of an educational opportunity for someone in whom he’d already seen unusual potential. A Master’s degree at the University of Saskatchewan would be a good place to start—with me as his supervisor. Advance notice of Harianto’s arrival had gone astray, leaving me with no time to adequately assess the situation or how to deal with it. While I didn’t see myself as part of his future, neither did I wish to see him forced to leave the country through lack of my effort to find a suitable placement.

Harianto was 22 years old, soft-spoken and polite, answering my questions about his prior studies and work in a manner suggesting understated success. My previous hesitation vanished as he talked and I suddenly began looking for ways to accommodate him, both in time and finances. I soon realized that he was a brilliant student with a hunger to learn akin to my own.

We had more in common than our mutual engineering interests. This became clear as he talked about being raised in a devoutly Catholic home, visited regularly by the parish priest who taught his family about God. When I told him I shared the same faith, his eyes filled with tears, hardly able to believe that he’d been led to the other side of the world, not only for advanced education but to the doorstep of someone who also knew Jesus Christ—who could ease his way through all the adjustments ahead.

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