A first

(posted by Paul Zilmer)

Yesterday we had a first-ever event at our BEC – a memorial service for the husband of one of our students, who died last week. Our student, Nancy, is one of those people who lives on the margins of society. She has multiple issues: physical, cognitive, emotional, economic, and social. You might think of her as one who has "seven demons". In fact, she is the kind of person that Jesus reached out to, when no one else would, and we have been trying to do as we believe he would.

Nancy's husband had been disabled for many years, and had been in various nursing facilities much of that time. What was very clear was that they loved each other very much.

Hosting this service came with some risk. Nancy has come to understand much of the truth of Bible teaching, but is not yet ready to entirely leave other teachings behind. She selected a number of songs, and we had to look up the lyrics, and ask her to leave out one of them. She asked a Baptist pastor who has been a long time family friend to say a few words; so I had a phone conversation with him about our understanding of the state of the dead. He assured me he wouldn't be there to start a fight.

Nancy has a stormy relationship with her mother (and in fact with many people). A couple of times she threatened to leave if her mother came. In the end, she wanted her mother there. The program kept changing. Would this event, intended to give loving support, turn into a disaster?

It did not. For a person who often says she has no friends, the room was full – at 27, we think it's the most people we've had there for anything. I conducted the service overall, but much of it was provided by Nancy herself, who played music, sang, and spoke with real eloquence about Hobert. We read some scripture, as did the Baptist pastor, and those in attendance heard the Bible speak about resurrection and the Kingdom. Nancy asked Dana, one of our volunteers, plus a social worker from the nursing home to say a few words. After the one-hour service, there were refreshments and nearly all stayed for over an hour of very positive conversation. Two high school girls who came want to attend an after-school program, and asked Dana to restart it.

Possibly the best thing said in the informal time was by one of our other students, who attended to support Nancy. He expressed how glad he was that we had opened our facility for something like this, that it showed a real commitment to the community. The whole thing made us hold our breath in some ways, but we did feel it was a real way we could serve our community. It was one of the first opportunities we've had to put into practice the spirit of "touch and teach" that the South African BECs promote. We're glad we took the risk.