Why Jo and I Did Not Get Married a Year Earlier Than We Did
Grateful for Our Marriage
This week, we celebrated Valentine’s Day and Jo’s birthday. Next month, we’ll celebrate my 86th birthday and our 62nd wedding anniversary. No wonder we kept thinking about our life together and giving thanks to God for the wonderful life He has given and is still giving us.
“I keep kicking myself for not proposing to you in our last year of Bible School,” I said to Jo, “so we could get married right after graduation.”
A Memory Rather Forgotten
“Well, remember what happened in your first year,” she replied.
“Oh, right.”
I deservedly was expelled for one semester because I had broken more rules, than any other student in the school’s history. I graduated a year after Jo did and finally proposed.
“Yeah, if only I had not been such an idiot, we could have started our lives together a year earlier,” I confessed ruefully.
God Turned Negative into Positive
“True but God turned something bad into something good.”
“How do you mean?” I asked.
“Well, don’t forget, while you were finishing school, I went to the Bible Institute of Los Angeles, (Biola) and studied Missionary Medicine and Dentistry. And that is why we had such an effective dental extraction ministry among the Canela.”
Right! “Thank you, Lord God, for turning my foolishness into such a positive and encouraging outcome!”
Dental Surgery (brown flecks in top left is fungus on the photo)
Jo Trained Me
Jo taught me about each tooth, how many roots it had, and whether to take it out towards the tongue or towards the cheek. And where to inject the anaesthetic and how to loosen the tooth before extracting it without breaking a root. And how to care for the patient afterwards. I started practicing dental surgery immediately, the first week we were in the Canela village. I kept on showing love to the Canelas in this way long before we could speak with any degree of fluency.
I Trained a Canela
After several years, we trained a young Canela man in these dental surgery skills, and he performed under my supervision for many months. He became so skilled and was so careful that the Canela people trusted him as they had been trusting me. I turned over all our dental tools to him, and Jo taught him how to clean and boil the instruments after each use and before the next patient. She gave him a pan to boil them in and our medical kit with a tight-fitting lid to keep the instruments clean. He continued these dental services during the following year when we were on furlough and through the years when political pressure exiled us from the village. More than thirty years after we had taught him, we visited the Canela village with our family and grandkids, and he was still serving the Canela villagers in this work!
God at Work! All Honour Goes to Him.
So, this week, we reminisced how God used my foolish behaviour to move Jo into getting that dental training which resulted in such a long-term blessing for the Canela people. Of all the dozen or so village teams that worked among indigenous people from the Belem missions centre, Jo and I didn’t know of any that had a dental extraction ministry among their people group.
Yes, looking back, that year of waiting to get married was certainly worth it, both for us and for the Canelas. What an amazing work of God!