BUT ITS'S NOT MY GIFT
Dale L. Leinbach
July 1, 1987
Why would God give me a gift but not let me use it? The question kept nipping at me, and in response I opened the throttle wider on my Kawasaki dirt bike. My wife and I were headed home following a church service in one of the small villages near our mission station in Sierra Leone, West Africa. I had never felt such frustration, and I expressed it by rapidly dodging rocks and gullies on the dirt road until my wife begged, "Please, slow down." Growing up in a pastor's home, I had learned early the importance of giving myself to the ministry. Like my father, I felt the call to preach. But now I was handcuffed in exercising that gift. One frustration was the general confusion in an African village service: mothers move in and out to check on children playing outside, men walk to the window to spit, an occasional dog wanders in for a look around, the ever-present crowd of noisy children wait outside for a closer look at the white man. Sometimes in the hubbub I'd lose my concentration and forget what I was trying to say. A bigger frustration was the language. After two years of learning one local dialect, I was transferred to a new position, which meant learning a different dialect. I had to preach in the trade language, and the parish pastor would translate into the local dialect. But the pastor didn't always understand what I was saying. That Sunday as I had begun, my wife, Edie, who was born and raised in Sierra Leone and understood this dialect, shook her head. That meant the pastor had mistranslated something, so I said it again. Again she shook her head. On the fourth or fifth try, he translated it correctly, and I continued. On the way home she explained what had happened. I had said, "I apologize that because of other commitments ...
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