Page 59 - Unseen Hands by Nona Freeman

God's Choice
God's service all of her life."
His wife burst into sobs. She and Erkenesh wept
together the next few days, begging him to change his mind. Sadly, with determined patience, he explained over and over, "I havepromised, and I cannotbreak myvow."
Though six-year-old Erkenesh had cried with her mother, she had no idea of the devastating changes her father's promise would make in her life. Her parents had kept her close. Never having played with other children, she knew little of other people in the village.
She did not know the newlywed missionary couple. Wrapped up in each other, they completely ignored her on the terrifying two-day bus trip, which was her first time to ride in a vehicle. Upon arrival at their destina tion and disregarding Erkenesh's exhaustion and fear, her new mistress haughtily ordered her to the kitchen to make tea. The sheltered apple-of-her-father's-eye child knew nothing of even the simplest labor and had to learn quickly or suffer painful consequences.
Shoved harshly into a cruel, impatient, adult world and assigned tasks far beyond her strength and knowl edge, she silently sobbed herself to sleepin the dank kitch en every night in utter homesick misery. Hope-strangling apprehension came with the dawn of every day.
The missionaries settled in a village in Arussi Prov ince. Customs and language differed widely from those of Erkenesh's home. She missed the fields and open vistas graced with clumps of trees here and there. Their new home, deep in the forest and without fences, allowed free course to wild animals, pythons, and jumping snakes. Lepers passed the house continually on their way to and from the S.I.M.leper hospitaltwokilometers away. Ter-
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