Warm Greetings from Long Ago

On Friday I received an email from a very special person in my life. My parents sent me to Trinity Christian School for second grade more than 30 years ago. I only went there for a year because the ride from Delmont to Wilkinsburg proved rough on my little seven year old self. But that year was very special. I had a wonderful teacher who made each of her students feel so special. Her name was Miss Wilma - well, that's what we were to call her since her very Dutch name would have been difficult for our seven year old tongues to get around. I can honestly say that I remember more about that year than any other year in my elementary education. Units about Japan and Holland and the journeys of Paul. Songs about Jesus and Bible baseball games. And special memories like McDonalds lunches on Tuesdays and one particularly poignant moment where I got in trouble with several other kids and spent some comical moments in the principle's office praying with my classmates that we wouldn't get in trouble for racing around an unsupervised classroom on a winter morning while waiting out a snow delay. What a year. And what a teacher. She collected bells and we once visited her house to look at her piano to buy and I remember seeing one of the bells was one we got her as a teacher's gift. I can't tell you precisely why she was so special but I can say that she loved the Lord and she loved me and this was so evident.

After that year, we exchanged letters regularly. I don't remember the chronology but over the years I was priveledged to learn of her missionary return to Japan, her adoption of a little girl named Sarah, and her battle with cancer. And through it all, she loved the Lord with a passion that I aspired to. She taught me about a relationship with the Savior in that year and in every year after by her very life.

She sent an email telling me that she had been reading this blog and Bob's. And sharing some of the our common studies and even struggles. I read it and was immediately overwhelmed with the gift that God has given me in Ms. Wilma. 30 plus years and He's been in the middle of it all along. What grace.

I'm going to try and dig up a photo I have of the two of us standing outside of the school on one of the final days of my second grade year. I know that I'll not likely see her again until we are home again with Christ. What a homecoming that meeting will be.