Johannes Ibubesi

There it was! 

Nervously I handed the baker my dime and held my hands open to receive my treasure. Quickly I left the store, afraid to answer any questions he might have asked. Of course it was all in my mind, the baker just made another dime. On the way home I opened my prized possession and ate the tasteless candy that was inside the transparent toy submarine hull. That had been the object of my desire ever since I spotted it a few days before in the bakery window close to my school.  

That morning when as usual a row of coins were laying on the edge of the breakfast table for me and my siblings, I had picked up my dime, which was destined to go into the collection box, that always was passed around during the first hour of class. That time was set aside to learn about the foreign missions, supported by our school and our church.  Each week stories about the missionaries captivated my imagination and often I dreamed away thinking about all the adventures of these men, invariably dressed in white suits and tropical helmets. Stories of mass conversions where dozens were baptized with a garden hose came to mind. I don’t know where some of these crazy stories came from but I still remember them. Maybe it was the teacher who was fired up by zeal for the Lord, who knows.

My father was an avid supporter of mission work and believed in the sending of Christian teachers to not only teach the Gospel but to provide solid education in reading writing and math. His church was strong in that area! So supporting the mission and teaching his own children to give faithfully every week was part of our upbringing.

With a lump in my throat I had lied to the teacher that my father had forgotten to give us money that morning, and luckily he had moved on to the next person with the collection box. I am sure that my face would have given the truth away had he probed.

Now I was on my way home and hid the toy in my pocket before I got into the house. Once inside I quickly brought it to my room and made plans to try it out that night. We had a full size bath tub in the bathroom where normally once every week all the children were bathed in rows of two or three next to each other. I hated bath time because my parents believed in cold rinses after we had been washed with hot water. I hated it! Imagine how surprised my mother was when I announced that night that I would like to take a bath. I smuggled the sub into the bathroom and got all into playing with it, when all of a sudden my mom knocked on the door. Quickly I hid the toy behind my back when she entered. When she asked what I had there I answered “Nothing” but I knew I was in trouble. She then asked me to show the “nothing” and I ended up confessing in one breath! Like always when I had done something bad she was not angry but very saddened that I had done such a low thing with my mission money. My mom was good at guilt trips! I was determined never to sin like that again. What did I know about the seed that was just planted in my heart?

Fifty-two years later!

Sitting in the airplane on our second leg to Port au Prince Haiti, I sat next to the newest member of our Matthew Twenty Eight team, who for the first time in his life went on a mission trip. Richard who was born in raised in Cameroon turned out to be a very pleasant man and we bonded instantly. I shared with him that I had been in Cameroon 23 years before to work on a mission hospital in the rain forest! We had plenty to talk about and then the conversation came to my early years in school and the stories I remembered from those days. About a book that I read then of a boy in a missionary school ,named Johannes Ibubesi, that was still stuck in my mind. I told Richard how important mission education had been to my father in those days. With wet eyes Richard looked at me and said "I was in mission school with a Dutch teacher who taught me all the basics that put me ahead of the crowd in Cameroon". “Without that man I would have never made it out of Cameroon and into the world”. “Your Father was right, he did a great thing for me”! Now it was my time to tear up and I realized that my submarine had come to circle the globe! I had just found the “Johannes Ibubesi” from my book! God’s ways are wonderful!