Glorious Montana Sky (The Montana Sky Series) by Debra Holland

Author:Debra Holland [Holland, Debra]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Montlake Romance
Published: 2014-10-28T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER TEN

On Sunday, Joshua sat in the first pew of the church, Micah on his right and his mother on his son’s other side, listening to his father’s sermon. This is my true homecoming. While he followed along with the words, a part of him remained caught up with a deep feeling of gratitude and appreciation for being in a familiar setting, singing his favorite hymns in English—surely picked by his father for that very reason—and listening to the piano, instead of the organ at the church in Cambridge or the a capella voices of the natives in his Uganda church.

He’d sat through many more beautiful services than this one, more moving or eloquent sermons, but none gave Joshua this sense of peace, of rightness.

Joshua hadn’t realized how much he missed these simple services—how relaxing it was to listen to someone else preach. Even when in Cambridge, when listening to Abner’s sermon, he’d have to stay alert, absorb all the points, to prepare for Sunday afternoon discussions that took place at the Maynards’ dinner table.

Perhaps, even better, he didn’t have to compose and preach the sermon—in a foreign language.

How wonderful to understand every word. To not have to struggle to convey meaning in a language not my own.

For the first few years in Africa, just listening to people was exhausting: mentally translating the words into English, having to think through everything twice. At the same time, he’d struggled to understand all the customs and taboos—many downright bizarre to him, and some even dangerous if broken. He had to distill his teaching into simple truths that he could convey.

Once he’d told the natives before he started preaching that he had the vocabulary of a seven- or eight-year-old and, thus, to please bear with him. That comment had infuriated Esther, who had more facility with the language and thought he shouldn’t admit any weakness. The white man must always be superior, he thought with bitterness.

So many times over the years, he’d been helpless to communicate in the manner he’d needed, had known that if he’d had a better command of his parishioners’ Swahili dialect, he would have made more of a difference. Instead, there’d been opportunities lost and souls forsaken because of not having the right words.

Old guilt rose in him, and Joshua forced it aside, reminding himself, as he had so many times before, that he’d done the best he could. If he and Esther hadn’t been serving in Uganda, the situation would have been worse for the natives. So despite his language handicap, he’d done some good.

He brought his attention back to the service, studying the interior of the church. Nothing had changed since he’d been gone. I could close my eyes and listen, and pretend I’d never left. But when he opened his eyes, Joshua saw the gray of his father’s hair and beard, the lines on his face, and knew those years had gone by.

The altar was covered by a white cloth and held so many vases of flowers that the cross in the middle was almost hidden.

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