Legacy

BY MARK FULTON

Haiti has no formal mail service.  So with no USPS to get our letters and packages to us, many missionaries use Agape Flights, a wonderful Christian flight service.  Each Agape member is scheduled to work at the package office in Port au Prince every 6 weeks or so to distribute and organize the sundry items sent to each missionary.  Last Saturday was one of our times to work and we were scheduled with a missionary couple whom we had never met.  “Where are you from in the US?” I asked the husband of the couple.  “Virginia.  Where are you from?” When I mentioned Indiana, he said he was originally from Versailles, IN.  “….but I have been all over Indiana and spent some time in a little town called Lapel.”  What?  The Lapel where I graduated from high school?  Our conversation continued with renewed vigor.  As the story unfolded, he told me that his grandmother had passed away when his mother was 12 years old and a kind couple in Versailles had helped raise her.   After his mother was an adult, she married and remained in the Versailles, IN area but her “adoptive parents” moved to the Lapel area, where he and his mother visited often for extended stays.  “What were their names?” I asked, knowing that Lapel was only so big.  “Volney and Emma Rich, “ he replied.  At this statement, I about fell over.  “That would be Aunt Emma and Uncle Volney to me! Emma Rich was my grandfather’s sister, my Great Aunt.”  WOW!   We then played the “who you know” game and it turned out that he knows my entire maternal extended family.  My great aunt and uncle both passed away a few decades ago but their legacy continues.  It seems that they had introduced this gentleman to Christ in a Wesleyan church in Fishersburg, IN (near Lapel).  Today, he is a missionary with the Wesleyan church.  I wonder if my great grandparents had not introduced their kids (my grandfather and this gentleman’s “adopted” grandmother) to Christ generations ago if he and I would know Christ today?  I wonder if our mothers had not been open to Christ if either of us would be missionaries in Haiti? It was amazing to me how the generations are interconnected and how the kindness and Christian love exhibited by my family decades ago came back to encourage me (and Kathy) to continue what started long ago. I wonder what will happen generations from now in our family?  We hope the story continues……..

Ps 145:4  One generation commends Your works to another; they tell of Your mighty acts. (NIV)