When I met Becky in the cafeteria line at Biola, I knew immediately she was special. The more I got to know her, the more I realized I had never met a more selfless, compassionate, giving person.
She was quick to laugh, quick to smile, quick to forgive, and quick to serve. She had an ability to make people feel important, and when she smiled, her face glowed.
In 2004 I was on sabbatical so we decided to do something we had long wanted to do -- visit the land of her youth, Ethiopia (which her dad called Utopia). We never planned to make more than one visit. That trip ended up being the first of 17 trips for me and 14 for Becky (eventually her cancer prevented her from returning).
Her gifts of organization amazed everyone, including her husband. It was on our trip in 2005 that I was asked to teach 6 weeks of beginning Greek at the theological college there in Addis Ababa. Of course I said yes. Then Becky came up with an idea. "Why don't we videotape your lectures so we can make them available to a broader audience?" At once I agreed. It was Becky who organized all that. She hired the videographers in Addis, then had the videos professionally edited in Dallas, and finally had them published in New York. For years they were sold to help fund our mission trips, but several years ago I decided to put all of them online for free. Eventually the videos were dubbed into Mandarin for the church in mainland China. Still today I get many emails from people who've found these videos useful in conjunction with the use of my beginning grammar. I never read an email without thinking back to Becky's vision to tape these lectures.
Happiness in marriage is elusive. You can't directly attain it. It appears to be the byproduct of living a caring, loving, and sacrificial life. Certain events can make you feel happy (like the birth of a child), but happiness in such instances is temporary. The one thing that lasts is living for something bigger than yourselves and your marriage. I am so glad for the way God used our marriage despite all of our flaws as a married couple. Human love is a reflection (a pale one, to be sure) of the eternal, selfless love of God himself, revealed on the cross. Marriages provide many opportunities to do just that.
Here, by the way, is a picture of our class in Addis showing the videographers at work.
And here are the 25 students who finished the 6-week course.
We presented each one with their own copy of the United Bible Societies' Greek New Testament. They had worked hard for it! Again, this was (unbelievably) 20 years ago. And all because of Becky's foresight and imagination.
Oops -- almost forgot. Here are the videos. 😊