The Emmanuel Sisters

Chapter 8 A Journey of Faith and Love

As Faith and Darryl boarded the plane, Faith started reminiscing about the first time she ever flew on a plane. She was just a child when her adopted parents took her on her first family trip to her mother's homeland in Darfur, Africa. However, that trip was not a vacation. They were going back to Africa so that Faith's adopted mother could spend time with her own mother who was terminally ill, before she died. Faith's mother had left her homeland many years ago when she was a teenager because her cousin had gotten her a good paying job in South Africa.
It was in South Africa that Faith's adopted parents met. Her father was a teacher in South Africa at the university back when apartheid still existed and her mother was a nanny and housekeeper for the couple he rented a room from. Although he was white he never agreed with what he saw happening around him in South Africa. He became an underground organizer assisting other White and Black South Africans in their fight against apartheid, and he held secret sessions where he taught the Black South Africans who could not go to the university. His future wife was also one of his students. The family that rented the room to Faith's father was very well to do and always away at social events. This left Faith's parents plenty of time alone in the house to get to know one another, with only the children and no other adults around. At first, their relationship started innocently. Faith's father hated any form of prejudice, and when he met his future bride he wanted to teach her as much as he possibly could. He told her about his travels all around the world, and how different things were in other places compared to South Africa. She was amazed by his stories and flattered by the attention he showed her, but she still never considered his feelings for her were more than a friendly teacher student relationship. But he was immediately attracted to her. He thought that she was the most beautiful woman he had ever seen. He was impressed by her natural intelligence despite her lack of
formal education. And he felt especially touched by all the love and kindness she showed the children she cared for, even when she thought no one else was watching her with them. The children she cared for looked to her as their mother because their own mother was rarely at home.
It didn't take long before the teacher student friendship between the two blossomed into something more. They kept their love for each other a secret, and hid it the best they could from everyone. They knew their feelings were too strong to hide for too much longer. So eventually, Faith's father secretly arranged for himself and his secret fiance to leave South Africa. He applied for a job as a professor in France. He had a friend on the university's board of directors. The board was looking to diversify and expand their student exchange program, and he suggested a few of his South African students be accepted. He falsified some documents and his fiance's name was included in the midst of the other students that were approved for Student Visas to attend the University in France. Once they were in France they were married. After being married for a few years and after his wife had received her degree he suggested something to her that he had been contemplating doing long before meeting his bride. He wanted them to join the Peace Corps. So they joined together, and they returned to Africa for their first assignment. Eventually after several years is serving in the Peace Corps they settled in the United States, but they always used their summers to volunteer in third-world countries. It had been a very long time since the adventurous couple had been back to Darfur, and this would be little Faith's first time in Africa.
Faith's mother felt an enormous amount of guilt for letting so many years pass by without returning home. She was elated to finally be a mother when she adopted Faith and she couldn't wait to write home and tell her own mother the news. That was when she discovered that her own mother was dying. She decided right then that she could not put a return visit back home off any longer. She had to see her mother one more time, and she wanted her mother to see her beautiful daughter Faith and bestow blessings upon her.
So the newly formed family prepared to leave for Africa. This family trip would mark the start of Faith's special interest and love for her African brothers and sisters.
Faith and her parents stayed in Africa for close to two years, before returning back home to the states. They had decided to stay on another year after Faith's grandmother died. They tried to help improve the lives of the other people in the village. Faith's mother and father started up a school for the children in the village and they assisted in obtaining clean water, agricultural necessities and medical supplies for the villagers. Living conditions in the village had improved greatly since the family had arrived. Faith attended school with the other children in the village and assisted her father and mother in all things. She also had plenty of time to play with her new friends. Besides missing her sisters, Faith was very happy in the village, and she felt loved and accepted by her new family and friends. Life seemed simple in the village. The other children adored Faith and were curious about her American look, her American accent, and the places in New York she had been. When the family had to abruptly leave Darfur it was very difficult for Faith. Faith's Aunt was the only living family member that her mother had left. So when they left Darfur they took her with them. Faith's mother made it clear to her husband that she was not going to leave without her unmarried, younger sister because the political climate in Darfur was growing increasingly unstable.
Faith maintained a vivid memory of the day they left Darfur. She recalled the four of them waving goodbye to the friends that escorted them to the small plane. All of her little friends were waving and smiling and yelling her name and how they loved her as she boarded the plane. Faith knew she would return to Africa one day to see all her friends. She thought maybe she would come back on summer vacations with her parents, and when she grew up that she would even join the Peace Corps like her parents did and work in Africa. She never dreamed all her friends in Darfur would be gone by the time she would eventually return.
After Faith and her family were back in New York for some time, Faith would repeatedly ask her mother and father when they were going to go back to Darfur to visit? Her parents always found ways to put off the conversation. Faith and her friends initially kept in touch by mail with short notes and
pictures they would send to each other. Until one day the letters just stopped coming.
When Faith was ten years old she overheard her mother crying in the kitchen, she came in and asked her parents, "what was the matter?" Her mother and father looked at her like someone had just died. Faith thought something had happened to Auntie. Then her mother said, "Faith the village, my village, has been destroyed in Darfur, all the people there were killed." Faith had known how bad things were getting there because even at her young age she followed the current events very closely despite the fact that her parents tried to shelter her from it, and Faith said, "everyone, mama, everyone was killed?!".
Faith turned around in silence and went into her bedroom. She couldn't believe what her mother had just said. It was just earlier that month she had received a letter from Asla, one of her friends in Africa. The letter talked about how bad things had gotten, how they were not allowed to leave the village at anytime and how they slept in fear every night. But at the end of the letter Asla was hopeful, she signed it, "I think I will come to college one day in America and we can be roommates. Soon when all of this is over we will see each other again. Your friend Asla." And now Faith thought, "was Asla, was all her other friends gone forever?" Faith couldn't believe it. She wouldn't believe it, until she saw evidence of it for herself. So the next day Faith skipped school and spent the day at the library. She looked up all the articles on Darfur, all the magazine articles, newspaper prints she could find, and she saw the headlines and the pictures. She didn't break to eat lunch or to rest her eyes. Then she came across one Associated Press article. There was no mistaking one picture she saw, it was her mother's village. The young people's mutilated bodies were on the ground in the picture. The bodies covering the ground were unidentifiable.
The huts were all burned down. She felt like she could almost smell the stench of death off of the newspaper pages. Her head and her heart told her, her friends were gone, gone forever.
Once again, Faith had lost people dear to her. At that young age it seemed to her that anything she loved would inevitably be ripped away from her. She couldn't understand why? Why was it that God allowed horrible things like this to happen to people all around the world? Why didn't a nation as great as America do more to help these people? She didn't understand why they didn't even mention in class what was happening in that part of the world? This was when Faith's life took on a new meaning for her. From that day on Faith became an activist, the youngest one definitely in her community. Her passion was for any cause that had to do with saving people, and children around the world, especially in Africa.
Her parents continued to go on trips every summer to different countries and to Africa with a non-profit organization. They always brought Faith on the trips. But even before they found out about the destruction of her mother's village they never went back to Darfur. One of the reasons they had left so suddenly was because it was becoming unsafe to stay there, and they didn't want to put their daughter Faith in danger. They continued to spend their summers helping to make villages livable and starting schools up for the children in safe rural areas. When Faith asked why they had not returned to visit Darfur they would explain to her that their first priority was to her and her safety, so they could not return to Darfur. Every summer Faith would travel somewhere different around the world. She saw firsthand how other children in the world desperately needed help. Once when Faith was nine, her family spent the summer in Ethiopia during a famine. When she was ten, they went to Liberia. When she was eleven they went to Sudan, and at twelve they returned to where her parents had first met, South Africa. But they never returned to Darfur, even after things had stabilized there. Faith's parents thought the memories of all the people they had lost there, were just too painful.
Once Faith graduated from high school and went to college she majored in International Studies with a minor in African studies. She became fluent in several different African dialects. She could tell you at any time the current events going on in every country around the world and especially on the African continent. Although Faith had been to Africa many, many times this trip was still special to her because this would be Faith's first trip to Africa with Darryl.
It was also Darryl's first time in Africa, and his first time on a plane. He wasn't especially fond of flying, but for Faith he would follow her anywhere. He was mostly just excited about spending a whole week alone with Faith. It didn't matter to him where they spent that week at. Spending an extended period of time together more than a night was something they had not been able to do in a long time. He also couldn't wait to see Faith in action. He often wondered about what Faith's life at work was like.
Before Darryl knew it the plane was taking off. Darryl immediately started to tense up and his eyes grew wide. Faith laughed out loud. She loved teasing Darryl. "What's wrong babe?"
"Oh, nothing I'm just taking in the sights."
"You know there is no reason to be scared of flying. It is as safe as driving in a car."
"Faith, if God wanted me to fly he would have given me wings."
Faith held on to Darryl's hand. She knew this would be one of the very rare times that she would be the calm one, and Darryl would be the nervous wreck inside. Still, she had a good feeling about this trip and about going on it with Darryl.