This past week, my second book, Different Stars, turned four years old! Aww! Seriously, has it been four years since Daniel and Sara’s story? Yes, it has. I feel like this was one of those pivotal books that set the scene for so many others, introducing us all to Namibia and the characters who were going to start off a whole new generation of stories. I still love that book so much!
Rather than celebrate with cake and ice cream, I thought it would be better to just post a little preview of the story for those of you who haven’t read it yet. Oh, who am I kidding? I’m going to post the preview AND get myself some cake and ice cream. In fact, I might get the cake and ice cream right now and enjoy it while I’m reading. You should do the same. Go on. I’ll wait for you.
Are you back now? Okay! Here’s the first chapter of Different Stars…
I have a sense for big moments.
I get a feeling – part dread, part anticipation – when a big moment is about to unfold before me. Call it a premonition, a hunch, or just a cautionary nudge from God, but whatever it is, this sensitivity for life changing moments has always been a part of who I am.
And just a week away from my thirtieth birthday, I sensed the biggest moment yet, as Bryan and Christy told me that they had incredible news. For the mission board, for Costa Rica, and for me.
I had gone onto the foreign mission field to teach school, first and foremost. I had been a kindergarten teacher back in the US, so I was well prepared to teach the twenty missionary children who fit into the age group there in Costa Rica when I was called to the position a year earlier. The mission board’s team was huge, and as I got to know the missionaries as I taught their children, I became involved in what they were doing and in how they were ministering to nationals. My idea to begin using the local women’s talents to make jewelry and beadwork, take those products back to the US, and sell them for a profit that went entirely back to the women, was one that took off immediately. The goal was to help them earn income, alleviating poverty, all while introducing them to Christ through our witness as we worked alongside them. Christy, the wife of our team leader, Bryan, and one of my best friends there in Costa Rica, took on the project alongside me, and we had our hands full the entire year.
I was happy. Happier than I had ever been in the US, and I was anticipating, after an upcoming, short trip back to Texas to build more interest in our project and raise support for what was being done, another two years of life changing ministry.
I was surprised, then, by the conversation in Bryan and Christy’s small apartment just outside of San Juan.
“Sara,” Bryan said kindly, bringing out an envelope as Christy sat down beside me, taking my hand in hers. “We’ve gotten a request from the mission board.”
“A request?” I asked, as Christy squeezed my hand. “I hope it’s good.”
“Well,” she said, tearing up. “Great for you and for the mission board.” She looked sadly at her husband. “But not so much for us.”
“How so?” I asked, concerned.
“We’ve just gotten word from headquarters. Sara, they’re so impressed and so pleased with what you’ve done here. The center is just… well, it’s beyond anything that they even envisioned when they appointed you to your teaching position.”
I smiled. “I love the center. I love the ladies there. It’s the best part of being here, honestly.” I paused for a moment. “Is the board… are they wanting me to expand it?”
“Yes,” Christy said. “That’s it exactly. They want to expand the center.”
“Oh!” I exclaimed. “I have some great contacts I’m already working with stateside, and we could arrange to have a team come out to put up another building. We could get work for at least fifty other women at first, of course, but there’s no limit to what –”
“Sara,” Bryan said softly. “The expansion isn’t… isn’t in Costa Rica.”
And there it was – the sense that something big was about to happen. “It isn’t… what?”
“They want you to do what you’ve done here,” Christy said, “in another place. To create work for women in another place so that they can support themselves and come to Christ, just like they have here.”
“Another place?” I asked. “Bryan, are they –”
“Sara, they’re sending you to Africa. To a country called Namibia.”
There was plenty to contemplate over the next week.
There was leaving Costa Rica and all that had been home for the past year. So many tears, so many hugs, and so many promises to keep in touch – it had been exhausting. Then, before I could even get my bearings back in the US, I was celebrating my thirtieth birthday. The age was one I had dreaded for a long time, assuming that being single and without the security of a husband and the promise of children in my near future as I said goodbye to my twenties would be heartbreaking. But as it was, I was so preoccupied with the transition from one side of the world to the next that it barely registered with me that I was now what I had always considered “old.”
Besides, I certainly didn’t feel thirty.
“And you don’t look it either,” Melissa said to me as we cut into the birthday cake she had brought to my parents’ house.
“Not at all,” Emily agreed with a smile. “You look amazing, Sara.”
Melissa and Emily had always been my best friends. The three of us had grown up at Grace Community Church together, and through all the years, the miles, and the challenges afforded to us in our lifetime together, we had remained close, almost like sisters. The past year had been the most trying of all, with both Emily and Mel marrying and with me moving overseas. I had wondered a year ago, when we all said goodbye, if our friendship would weather the transitions, and I was so pleased to find that we had only grown closer. It was a treasure, having two friends who were so supportive, so loving, so encouraging –
“Sara looks great, but you look like death, Em,” Melissa said, rather bluntly.
Emily studied her for a moment. “I feel like death, honestly.”
“Should’ve gotten a flu shot,” Mel shook the icing-covered knife in her direction. “Why you’re so opposed to vaccinating yourself, I’ll never know. Bet Sara got one.”
“I sure did,” I affirmed, taking a bite of the exquisite cake. “Along with every other shot known to modern science. Even had to get a rabies shot in preparation for Namibia.”
“Insane,” Mel said. “But at least if you bite someone, they’re safe, right?”
I laughed at this, then glanced over at Emily, who was looking a little green around the edges, holding her hand to her mouth.
“I’m sorry you’re sick,” I said. “Maybe it’s just a 24 hour bug, huh?”
She shook her head, managing a weak smile. “No, this one’s a nine month bug.”
We all three watched one another for an astonished moment.
Then, Melissa dropped the knife straight into the cake as I burst into happy tears, reaching out for Emily. “A baby!” I cried. “How far along are you?”
“Uh… ten weeks, I think,” she sighed. “This one… isn’t the first. We were pregnant this summer, then miscarried. I only knew I was expecting for two days.”
“Em,” Melissa said softly, “why didn’t you tell me?”
Emily wiped away a few tears. “Josh and I were so sad,” she explained. “We didn’t want anyone else to have to feel like that with us. And he’d die if he knew I was telling you now, because we were going to wait to make sure that…. “ She looked up at me, crying in earnest now. “But I don’t care, because Sara’s here and you’re here, and I wanted to tell you both.”
“I’m so glad you did,” Melissa hugged her. “A baby! Don’t let my mother-in-law hear about this.”
“Trish wants you and Beau to have a baby, too?” I asked, wiping my eyes.
“Ugh, yes,” Melissa rolled her eyes. “I have to keep my birth control pills under lock and key when we visit them for fear that she’ll snoop around, find them, and replace them all with candy.”
This made Emily laugh out loud as well.
“So,” I asked softly. “Were you pregnant when you and Josh came to Costa Rica?” I bit my lip, worried that perhaps their visit to me, to help with some projects we’d been doing had compromised her pregnancy, and –
“I know what you’re thinking,” she answered, just as softly. “And that wasn’t it. It wasn’t anything like that. We weren’t pregnant when we got there… we were when we left, even though I didn’t know until later. But the trip? Had nothing to do with how it all ended up. I promise.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
“It’s okay, honestly,” she sighed. Then, with a smile, “Ironically enough, THIS baby was an overseas souvenir as well.”
“The trip to Japan for your brother’s wedding?” I asked.
Emily’s brother, who was stationed in Okinawa with the Marines, had just very recently gotten married. The whole extended family had made the trip out together, and as Emily had emailed me, it had been a test of her patience and goodwill, as all the time spent in such close quarters, 24-7, with her mother and sister had been a real hardship.
“I thought you said you hardly got a moment alone with Josh the whole trip, what with everyone freaking out about the wedding,” Melissa said.
“We managed at least a few minutes, obviously,” Emily sighed. “I never even got to the point of feeling sick with the baby this summer, so even this? Throwing up all the time? Is wonderful. Just reassuring, you know?”
“Well, now, it’s going to be even harder to leave,” I whispered around my tears. “I want to see that sweet baby so badly.”
“It’ll just give you a reason to come back and visit,” Emily smiled, holding my hands in her own.
“Most definitely,” I said, hugging her again.
Namibia? Was far, far away.
I was beginning to feel every bit of my thirty years, plus thirty more, by the time my last flight landed in Windhoek, the capitol city. Still, though, I put on a smile, touched up my makeup, and prepared for a great welcome and introductions to a team that had remained mysteriously silent, with no communication towards me, in the time since I had heard that I would be joining them.
Emmanuel, a national worker for the mission, was the one to meet me outside of immigration. He was holding a sign up identifying himself as part of the Windhoek team, and I went over to him, expecting a warm reception, just as I had received from Bryan and Christy when I first arrived in Costa Rica nearly a year ago. Emmanuel, however, took one look at me, and his brow furrowed immediately.
“You do not look like Mr. Shiftoka,” he said critically.
“Pardon? I don’t look like… who?” I had just spent an incomprehensible number of hours on three separate flights. I was confused simply concerning what day and hour it was, but Mr. Shiftoka? This brought on a whole new kind of headache.
“Oh, Lord,” Emmanuel breathed out, smiling and praying all at once. “I take it that… that you are the one sent from the mission?”
“Yes,” I said, holding out my hand. “Sara Wright.”
“Sarai,” he said, laughing out loud. “Princess!”
I opened my mouth to ask what he meant, but he stopped me.
“I only mean to say that this name? It means Princess, right? In the Bible, Abram and Sarai, the mother of princes… a princess, yes?”
I sighed. “Well, I suppose so. Yes.”
“Oh, Brother Daniel will be so pleased,” Emmanuel laughed to himself again, taking my suitcases up in his arms and leading the way outside.
“Is… Brother Daniel… well, is he the man in charge? Of the team, I mean,” I asked, hustling to keep up with Emmanuel’s long strides as we crossed the porch towards the small parking lot.
“Brother Daniel is the team. The only missionary in all the country, as it is,” Emmanuel said, just as the hot, dry air swirled around us and took my breath away. Seeing my shock at the arid surprise, Emmanuel smiled again. “This is east wind, Princess.”
“Sara,” I interrupted, losing patience with this enigmatic man.
“Sara, yes,” he shook his head. Then again, “Brother Daniel will be so pleased.”
“What’s east wind?” I asked, even as the sand began to bite at my legs uncomfortably.
“It is life here, unfortunately,” he said, throwing my suitcases roughly into the back of a small truck. “The wind from the veld and dunes sweeps through the whole of Namibia, you see? And it’s hot. Unbearably, cruelly hot, in the middle of the winter. It is much worse on the coast. Much, much worse in Swakopmund.”
“Swakopmund?” I asked. “That’s where I’m going, isn’t –”
“Is it?” Emmanuel laughed out loud. “Swakopmund! Brother Daniel will be so pleased. Get in the bakkie, Princess – we shall go and show him just what the mission board has sent to him.”
Brother Daniel was… well, he was a jerk.
Emmanuel had driven me straight through Windhoek, pointing out landmarks and pleasantly detailing some of the city’s history as we drove, looking at me doubtfully but not rudely as we approached the gates for the mission property. “It is an amazing country, this Namibia is,” he said, as he jumped out of the bakkie, throwing over his shoulder, “it is a shame you will not get to know it better.”
Before I could correct him, he was jogging to the gate, calling to a boy sitting guard outside in a language I didn’t recognize. Then, he was back in, driving through as the boy held the gate open and stared at me openly.
“Such a surprise, such a surprise,” Emmanuel said almost gleefully.
As soon as we stopped, he was out again, running to the back to get my suitcases, then looking at me. “We best leave them here, Miss Sara,” he said. “Until we figure out what Brother Daniel will do.”
“Until we figure out what Brother Daniel will do?” I said, rather irritated. “I’m here to do a job, with my own orders to follow, and—“
He looked alarmed. “I did not mean to offend you,” he said. “It’s just… well, we were expecting Mr. Shiftoka.”
“Yes, you keep saying this. Who is Mr. Shiftoka?!” I practically shouted at him.
“Come,” he said, shrugging his shoulders. “We will talk to Brother Daniel.”
The mission was laid out very simply. Stucco, one floor buildings – one the size of an apartment, another the size of a garage, and a third the size of a closet – were contained within a security gate. There were two older looking trucks (or bakkies, as Emmanuel called them, pointing them out to me), and of all things, a basketball goal.
“I suppose Brother Daniel likes to shoot hoops?” I asked as we made our way to the smallest building.
Emmanuel looked at me, confused. “What? That? Well, you would think, but Brother Daniel? He doesn’t do much besides work.”
“Sounds like a fun guy,” I muttered, but he didn’t seem to hear me as he opened the door, shouting out with great delight, “Brother Daniel! I have your new missionary!”
I peered around Emmanuel’s dramatically splayed arms to see a very attractive, very irritated, young American man, sitting behind a desk, a phone to his ear. He took one look at me, rolled his eyes, and shouted into the phone, “This is unacceptable!”
Thirty minutes later, Emmanuel shook his head at me sympathetically yet still with a great smile on his face, as he served me tea. I had endured half an hour of glares from the inhospitable Brother Daniel, who never hung up the phone but continued to go over, in exhaustive detail, his grievances with the mission board stateside.
The listening had informed me of many things – that I was notMr. Abed Shiftoka, a Namibian national who was still in the US at this point, studying at a university and notcoming back home to assist Daniel in the unreached parts of the country as he had been commissioned by the board to do. That had been the plan – for him to go study stateside, earn his degree, then come back to assist with language in the far reaches of the country – but Abed’s plans had changed. Apparently. And Daniel hadn’t gotten the memo until approximately thirty minutes before my plane landed, when the mission board called to inform him that instead, he was getting a missionary from the field in South America, sent to work with women in the DRC, a refugee camp at Swakopmund.
“Swakopmund?!” he continued shouting at the phone as I sipped my tea, wincing at the unexpected sweetness, then sipping it up almost greedily. It was like candy. “Why are we wasting personnel dollars for a holiday at the beach?!”
“It is Rooibos,” Emmanuel whispered to me.
“What is?” I asked. “The beach?”
“No, no, no,” he said, laughing at me quietly. “Rooibos. It’s the tea. That’s what it’s called.”
“Well, it’s just great,” I whispered back to him, “and I –”
“Fine,” Daniel shouted. “Whatever. We’ll deal with it.” He hung up the phone abruptly, causing Emmanuel and me to stare at him.
I put my teacup down and waited for this monster of a man to finally speak to me instead of just aboutme.
“Who are you?” he said, sitting back and crossing his arms over his chest.
“Sara Wright,” I said evenly. “I thought you were expecting me.”
He sighed. “Well, I was expecting a man. A Namibian man. Who, you know, can speak Afrikaans. And German. And Oshiwambo. And Herero. Can youspeak any of those?”
“I can speak Spanish,” I said.
Emmanuel laughed out loud at this and pointed a finger at Daniel. “You see, they’ve sent you a woman. Who speaks Spanish.” He raised his eyebrows at Daniel. “Someone, somewhere is having a very good laugh.”
“Well, it’s not here,” Daniel said, continuing to glare at me. I mentally retracted my first thought regarding his attractiveness. With the scowl on his hot-tempered face, he was about as unattractive as any man I had ever seen.
We sat in silence for a moment.
“So… Sara Wright.” He continued to glare. “Can you tell me what you were sent here to do?”
I held up my wrist, where I wore one of the beaded bracelets my ladies in Costa Rica had made. “Jewelry.”
“Jewelry?” Daniel asked with no small amount of derision. Even Emmanuel stopped what he was doing to look at me oddly.
“I’m here to set up a center for women where they can make goods to sell. You know, make a sustainable income and all to support themselves.”
Emmanuel nodded as though he thought this was a great idea, but his enthusiasm was cut short by Daniel’s words. “Jewelry? You’re going to take women who are starving, who have to watch their children die in the streets, and teach them how to make jewelry for rich, white American women?”
“Teaching them a skill will keep them from starving,” I began. “I’ve seen it before, in Costa –”
“You haven’t seen anything,” he said, harshly. “You haven’t seen this place.”
I kept my mouth shut, holding in the harsh words that I so desperately wanted to say.
“Emmanuel,” Daniel said, a mocking smile coming to his face, “I’ve been told by the mission board that Miss Wright is staying with us whether I want her to or not. And that we’re to take her immediately to Swakopmund and make arrangements for her to stay.” He looked at me. “Swakopmund… it’s a holiday destination, you know. So, you’ll really be suffering for the Lord and all. Going out to the DRC to help the starving women and all, then heading back to your flat to enjoy lobster.”
Emmanuel looked at him, sensing that I was being pushed too far. Perhaps Daniel would have felt some remorse as well, had I not looked him straight in the eye and said, “I prefer steak, actually.”
There was a moment of stunned silence. Emmanuel looked from me to Daniel, then back again. Then, he seemed to want to disappear entirely as Daniel slammed his hands down on his desk, causing me to jump in my seat.
“Well, then,” he hissed at me with a tight smile. “Best be getting out there, huh?” He stood and began stuffing papers in a bag. “Emmanuel, I’m taking Miss Wright to the coast in… the next ten minutes,” he said, glancing at his watch. “We’ll be visiting the DRC, if you can get some supplies ready for me to take out there.”
“Okay,” Emmanuel said, heading outside to get the truck ready.
I tried reasoning with him. “But I can’t pick up the keys on the flat I’m leasing until tomorrow –”
“Should have thought of that before you came all this way, I guess,” Daniel said, his back still turned to me. “You can camp in the river bed.”
“Are you being serious?” I gasped.
He looked me straight in the eye. “You want to see what it’s like? What Namibia is really like? Well, we will.”
I blinked at him. How very different this was from my welcome to Costa Rica, where Bryan and Christy met me at the airport, showed me around the city, had me stay with them for a few days before settling me into my new place with kind, supportive words –
“Emmanuel should have everything ready by now,” Daniel cut into my thoughts.
“Fine,” I managed. “My bags are still in the truck.”
The first Namibian people I met were starving.
After a very silent drive across the country, where I fought the jet lag in an effort to see where I was going and where he was taking me, Daniel and I arrived in Swakopmund. Even as the ocean and the quaint, colorful buildings were coming into view, he took a detour up through the townships, pointing them out, naming them by names, and finally parking in a squatter camp far out on the edge of town.
“This is the DRC,” he had said without any fanfare, as thin, hungry people surrounded the truck on all sides.
Daniel had jumped out, shouting out a greeting in a language I didn’t recognize, as several people began crowding around him. I got out and numbly came to his side, where I felt my skirt being tugged in several different places. I looked down to see five small children, all of them covered in dust, flies buzzing around their faces, their hands held open towards me, saying words I couldn’t understand.
“Um… Brother… Brother Daniel, I… what are they saying?” I looked at him helplessly.
“They want to know if you brought food,” he said. “Because you’re white. And white people must always have food.”
“Well,” I looked at him. “Do we? “
“We have some,” he said, a flicker of compassion in his cold eyes, “but not enough. That’s not the most pressing issue right now, though, according to these ladies,” he gestured towards the few ladies who now clutched his arm, pulling him from me, even as one of them cried. “Can you grab my bag out of the bakkie?”
I did as he asked, even as he continued chatting in soothing, foreign tones with the women who led him away, and I rushed to follow them, more children coming up to me as I did so. As we neared one of the makeshift shelters – made mostly of garbage, it seemed – a horrific smell wafted up and hit me in the face.
“Oh, God,” I managed.
“Yes,” Daniel said. “By all means, start praying.”
Inside the inadequate shelter was a child, lying on the dirt. His little stomach was puffed up, his hair was nearly white, and he wasn’t moving. A man sat near him, stoically watching, as an elderly woman kept tending to the child, rubbing his face tenderly and cooing to him. When the pair saw Daniel, they stood to their feet, grasped his hand, and began very nearly shouting their concerns to him.
“Ja, ja,” Daniel said calmly, kindly, patting them on the backs, then kneeling next to the unresponsive child. “Miss Wright –”
“It’s Sara,” I managed.
“Sara, then,” he said, irritation back in his voice, “can you get the medical kit out of my bag?”
I began digging through the bag until I found it, handing it to him as I knelt across from him. “Are you a doctor?”
“Nope,” he said confidently, even as he pulled a syringe from the kit and began looking for a vein on the small child.
“Then, should you be –”
“What choice do we have? I don’t suppose you have a medical degree, do you?”
“I’m a kindergarten teacher,” I gasped, shocked as he injected the dying child with who knows what.
“Well, that’s helpful,” he muttered. He rubbed his thumb along the child’s face and spoke a few words to the crowd that had gathered. Then, placing his hand on the boy’s chest, he bowed his head and prayed words I couldn’t understand in a defeated tone that needed no translation.
Before I could properly gather myself back up, he was back out into the sun, as more and more people crowded around us with their worries and concerns.
“His father has AIDS,” Daniel said by way of explanation, as if anything could explain the horror I had just witnessed. “His mother likely died from it. And he’s the unlucky recipient of it as well. Which, you know, might not mean a death sentence anywhere else, but here? He’s got parasites from the drinking water, he hasn’t had a decent meal in months, and he probably has TB. I gave him something for the fever, so that he’ll hopefully have a few last lucid moments.”
My eyes filled with tears. “That’s… that’s horrible.”
“That’s reality,” he said, glaring at me.
“I saw that you had some food in your bag,” I told him, looking around at the crowd of children that wouldn’t let me go. “Can we… can we at least leave it with them?”
“Sure,” Daniel said, tossing me the bag. “You go right ahead.”
I opened it to hand out what little we had, and as I held out just the first piece of fruit, tiny, hungry hands began clawing at me, at the bag, to get inside. I let out a gasp, shocked by their frantic reaching and pushing, as they all but ripped apart Daniel’s bag until it was completely empty.
And then, they pushed up against me, even more closely, their cries and yells for more even louder than they had been ten seconds ago.
The images from the dying boy’s home and this frantic, starving crowd raced through my mind even as I clutched the side of the bakkie weakly, unable to keep them from coming, even as I closed my eyes and prayed that I could forget, even for a little while, even as I was being pulled in several different directions.
Before I could do anything to stop myself, I leaned over beside the bakkie and threw up, gagging even as there was nothing left in my stomach. The smells and the sounds, the sights and the taste of sand and filth in my mouth brought tears to my eyes. Tears that were already pooled and ready to fall as I took in the devastation around me.
“Get in the bakkie,” Daniel said, and I did so, hating him all the while.
He got in the driver’s seat, slamming the door behind him, and accelerated as the sea of people surrounding us parted to get out of his way. He didn’t even look my direction as he sped out of the DRC and into Mondessa, the township that was significantly better but so far removed from what I had ever considered enough. I couldn’t stop sobbing.
“Are you done?” Daniel asked evenly.
“Why do you hate me?!” I yelled at him, finally done with his attitude.
“Are you actually crying because you think I hate you?” He glanced at me.
“No,” I said, “I’m crying because there are children starving back there, and the man sent here to help them is so angry and bitter and cynical that he is useless.”
Daniel looked as though I had slapped him. He seemed to be without words.
“I think,” I said, “that I would do better on my own –”
“Let me tell you something,” he said, finding his voice again. “Women out here? On their own? Namibian women? Are attacked every day. Raped. Beaten. And all but murdered. And they do need help, you’re right, to keep from starving, to keep their children from starving. And what does the board do? They send me a woman. To come and teach a skill that isn’t sustainable out here and certainly not with women who are so sick and frail that they can do nothingto protect themselves and their children. A woman who is so naïve and innocent as to what this place is really like that she’ll be robbed blind just at the point where she’s gotten others to put their trust in her. And so, everyone will be – pardon my language – royally screwed.”
I continued wiping tears away, wishing myself as far away from him and this horrible place as possible.
“You can’t teach people anything if you can’t keep them alive, Sara. And I certainly can’t do anything of any significance in being the hands and feet of Christ out here without some help. But you? You’re not who I need because instead of alleviating the problem, you make it worse. You bring in your American, money-making plans without knowing anything about the people here. And added to that, now, instead of worrying about all of these national women living here, I also have to worry about the blond, beautiful, American woman I’m sending out there every day. Who, sad to say, can’t even spend ten minutes out there without throwing up and crying.”
I scowled at him. “It was the first time. It won’t always be this hard, and I—“
“It will always be that hard,” he said. “I’ve been here ten years, and it never gets easier. Seeing that, witnessing that, and knowing that there isn’t a whole lot you can do for people beyond offering them hope for what comes after the disease and the hunger kills them. That’s all you can do.”
“I’m not stupid, you know,” I whispered. “And I’m not worthless. Surely there’s something I can do here to help.”
He took another frustrated breath. “I didn’t say you were stupid or worthless. I just –”
“You just can’t see how anyone could do anything here, for people, for Christ, unless they’re you,” I spat at him. “Oh, I get it, Daniel. And I get why you’re the only person out here. Because I can’t imagine that anyonewould want to work with a jerk like you. I know I don’t.”
We drove in silence for a while, the holiday town slipping past us as we went. By the time he pulled up to the beach, I had my backpack on and was ready to jump out as soon as he stopped the truck. “I can handle myself,” I told him. “Go back to Windhoek.”
I went around to the back to get my two suitcases… and stopped short when I saw that they weren’t there. I was certain that they hadn’t been left in Windhoek, and I had seen them when we got out at the DRC, and –
“What?” Daniel muttered, getting out of the truck. “What’s –”
He stopped short at my expression.
“My things…” I said, weakly. “They’re… gone.”
“Oh, geez,” he rolled his eyes. “Did you just leave them in the back of the truck when we got out?”
“What was I supposed to do?”
He looked at me like I was an idiot. “Lock them up in the cab of the truck! Lock up everything! I can’t believe I even have to tell you that!”
I couldn’t stop the tears from returning. “Those two suitcases were… all I had in the world, actually. Everything. Just gone.”
Daniel blew out an exasperated breath, running his hands through his hair, no doubt considering the very few options the board had left him in sending out a clueless, naïve missionary to this place, and –
“It’s okay,” I said, in my bravest voice. “Whoever took them really needed all of that stuff more than I did. How can I even be upset when those children are dying out there, and the worst I have to deal with is… only having the clothes on my back, right?”
Daniel looked at me, a glimmer of sympathy on his face. Then, it was gone as another thought hit him. “Please tell me that you still have your passport.”
“Oh, yeah,” I said, relieved at this, at least, holding up my backpack for him to see. “Passport, lease, all of my documents, my laptop, and, hey! A change of clothes!” I smiled weakly. “See? It’s good news after all. I’m just fine!” And I burst into tears again.
Daniel stared at me for a moment. No words of comfort, no move to help, nothing. Just staring with his intense, hateful, glaring way of doing everything, and –
“Like I said, just go to Windhoek,” I said, turning away from him. “I’ll be fine on my own.”
Want to find out what happens next? Get your copy of Different Stars here!
Jenn Faulk 