Jun. 21, 2007 - Wild Goose Chase #5...
It has become a joke with us on this trip starting with trying to locate Jackson's grandmother. Every time we made another attempt to find someone and turned up empty, the next time we set out, we would say, "wild goose chase # ____". So now that we are in Malawi, we are on another wild goose chase. This time we are looking for a man named Gray. When he was a child, he lived with the Davidson family as one of them. He was this sweet African kid that played with the Davidson boys and went to school nearby, but lived out in the village. He would sometimes sleep on the schoolhouse steps, so he would not have to make the long trip home everyday. The Davidson's took him in and he lived with them for 3 years. Patsy went back to visit him about 12 years ago and they have always kept in touch with each other. Like most African homes...there is no street address to find someone.
So this morning we set out to find Gray. We started with going to the Blantyre Baptist Church. Roy and Patsy started that church and it has since built a larger building and grown to 2 services on Sunday's and has a school for K - 7th grade. We meet with the pastor there and asked around about Gray... no one knew how to find him. Next we visited the Baptsist media center that the Davidson's built, along with the guest houses they built that are not being used at the moment. Also on the property was the old church building. It was nice to see children filling the grounds as there is now a primary school there as well. Fortunately someone there knew Gray and said he could take us to the area where Gray lives. We drove out to this little town that was flooded with little shops selling vegetables & other goods...and lots of people. We turned onto this narrow dirt path that turned a twisted a few times while going straight up hill. There were people everywhere which makes it harder to drive the path. Guy's window was rolled down and of the hundred's of people along the road, he turned and looked at one man and said hello as we drove by. About a minute later, our escort heard someone on the road saying to stop...Gray was coming. The man Guy had spoken to was Gray and he didn't even know it. It was a God thing.
We turned around and saw Gray running up the hill toward us. Later Gray told us he thought Guy looked familiar and he told his friends, "hey, that looks like my brother". Then he saw Patsy's white hair and told his friends, "and there's my mum". That's when he took of running...so funny.
We continued to drive up the hill to Gray's house, met his wife and found out the boy that escorted us to find Gray was actually his nephew. We spent a while visiting with Gray and his wife at their home, then walked up the hill further to the little community church that Gray built. The first building is now being used as a preschool during the week. The little church is growing and they are building another church...a bigger building. The walls are up, but they ran out of money, so their is no roof. Gray is so faithful and trusts the Lord for all they need to finish the church. He does this all on his own with no help from the area churches or missionaries. He loves the Lord and wanted the community to have a church of their own...how precious.
We spent the rest of the afternoon going by the old houses the Davidson's lived in during their time there. The sweetness of memories...the stories of good times. We wanted to have dinner with Gray and Delby, so we went back to the hotel, had tea and showed them lots of pictures that Guy has on the computer. A great dinner and a wonderful visit with a long lost family member...it was beautiful.
Wild goose chase #5 was a success!
