D------------------y

I realized I never finished the story of the little baby on her sister's back.

She won an award for her sewing abilities and found herself working in Shuri, Okinawa. A co-worker invited her to a church nearby, where she found the Lord. Quiet in personality, Kiyo did not make it apparent that Christ has taken over her entire life. She was baptized, left for Bible School, and was the first person to return to the island to work at one of our evangelism points.

She had one set of nice clothes which she wore every Sunday for church.

She came over to our house every once in awhile to babysit so Mommy could get out for prayer meetings--I still remember her as one of our favorite babysitters.

We will skip the many years that intervened here. We had no way of knowing that, when Mommy went to be with the Lord about 20 years later, she would say,

"Roy, with the kind of work God has given you here in Okinawa, you're going to need a helpmeet. What about Kiyo?" (And I can't help but imagine that it was followed with the thoughts: she knows our work inside out, has prayed and shed tears for our young people, even knows our girls!)

When Daddy approached Janice and me on Christmas several months after Mommy had passed away and asked about Kiyo becoming the new "Mrs. Oshiro", God had already prepared our hearts--that is, He had prepared mine. I could think of nobody better, and it brought sheer joy to my heart.

I still remember after Mommy died, Daddy was like a deflated balloon, like a person who looked into a mirror and couldn't see a reflection. Something was so wrong. I didn't tell anybody, but he signed his mail with "D, a, d. d. y"; and before that, when he was okay, he used to just sign it with "D------y". His sermons, to me, sounded so mechanical and lifeless.

But after that Christmas, when plans started to get underway about getting together with Kiyo and getting back to the work in Okinawa and going forward again--I noticed --again, I didn't tell anybody, but his letters started being signed "D-------y" again! I didn't tell anybody why I was happy.

When I had my first real bad spat with Mother (Kiyo)--was that in 2018? I forget what year that was--and we were "making up", I told her about those signatures.

"You know you gave Daddy that second life, don't you?" I remember telling her.

I wonder if she's gotten it confirmed up in Heaven? Well--it wouldn't really matter now, would it?