I lean back on the wall. “Come, put your head in my lap.”
He looks at me hesitantly for a moment, then does so. Even though we’ve never met, we’ve heard so much about each other’s lives through the publications; it’s like we’ve always known each other. He is family.
I gently stroke his hair, as if comforting a small child, and launch into funny tales of our donkey, Mad Max the biting menace, of guava wars and water fights with my brothers. He laughs, and I can feel him relaxing, the sadness peeling away. It is a strange moment, one I never imagined.
Too soon his WS traveling companion pokes his head in the door to say they are leaving, and the little spell of happiness is broken.
“Thank you,” Davidito says sincerely, looking into my eyes.
I hug him tight, hoping to pass some of my comfort and strength into his lean body.
I’m quiet on the drive to my new home with Nehi. What a strange experience. I’m both sad and elated.
He envied us! I think in wonder.
I am in Moscow only a couple weeks when Nehi tells me that the old Russian bureaucrat woman who is supposed to process my year-long visa in Siberia refuses to help. They are shocked; Family members have been getting visas through this office for a year. Why is this woman cracking down now? No one knows, but she’s adamant.
In a few weeks, it will be illegal for me to be in the country—a dangerous situation for a foreigner. We must figure out a way for me to get a visa or I’ll have to go back to Japan. Nehi approaches me hesitantly. “I just saw this want ad in a Family News bulletin—a Family Home in Kazakhstan is asking for help. They have connections with the government to get you a visa. What do you think?”
I’m not sure what to think. In Russia, I have Nehi and Caleb. Now I’m being asked to consider going to a Home without knowing anyone in a country I’ve never even heard of. For the last two years, I’ve practiced hearing from God and yielding to His will. He is my only constant in a life where we are often called to move countries and leave homes and families overnight. That night I pray, asking for God’s guidance.
My favorite verse that I repeat like a litany whenever things get too painful or scary is “All things work together for good to them that love God, them who are called according to His purpose” (Romans 8:28). I know without a doubt that I love God, so whatever is happening, He must bring good out of it for me.
God has shut one door and is opening another. Who am I to say no to God’s will?
“Yes, I’ll go,” I tell Nehi.
Little do I know how many times I’ll need to hang on to that verse in the coming year.
23
The Breaking
On November 5, 1995, I board a flight from Moscow to Kazakhstan alone. As the ancient Aeroflot plane jerks and shudders during lift-off, I grip the armrests and hold on to a quote from my great-grandmother’s Meditation Moments. If you trust in God, I tell myself, you don’t need to see the whole path, just the next step.
I arrive in the country’s capital, Almaty, at ten o’clock at night. It’s the middle of the desert, but Almaty is still the largest city in Kazakhstan, the center of commerce, and the airport isn’t nearly as empty as I’d imagined. Clutching my two suitcases, I make my way through immigration and customs and am relieved to spot two Family people waving at me with big smiles.
They introduce themselves as Peter and Esther and show me to their car. As we drive along a dark highway, I learn that they are married. He is a former decathlon Olympian from Latvia. Esther’s ancestral Mongol heritage is obvious in her features and dark hair, and while she doesn’t say a lot, what she does is, in good Soviet fashion, to the point. We arrive at a complex of identical yellowing Soviet buildings in the city near the botanical gardens, and the apartment door swings open to warm hugs of welcome. A young man flashes an old, familiar smile. It’s Benji, one of my childhood friends. His family rotated through Macau, and even though they were at the Farm for only a short time, we remember each other.
I stare at him in wonder. The last time I saw him, we were just five years old! The little chub ball has shot up to a six-foot bean pole topped by the same shock of red curls and a face full of freckles. He picks me up and twirls me around as I squeal with joy.
“How did you end up here?!” I exclaim.
“I’ve been in Russia for a year now. I moved to Kazakhstan about six months ago,” he replies.
“I’m so happy to see you!” I breathe in relief. One person I know in this strange new land makes me feel the tiniest bit better.
The dim, yellowish hallway light illuminates the other Home members who crowd around to receive me. I discover there are ten people all living crammed together in this one apartment.
“Welcome to our home!” Philip bellows. He’s one of the Home Shepherds, a short, stocky, Italian-looking man with gray peppering his thinning dark hair.
His wife, Abigail, the other Shepherd, is a female version of him. “We are so happy you came! This is our older daughter, Stephanie, who is fifteen. And our three-year-old, Emily, who you’ll be in charge of, is sleeping. We’ll introduce you in the morning.”
As everyone comes forward to introduce themselves, I assess my new situation: Three FGAs (First-Generation Adults) all over forty, who joined the Family in the early days. Four SGAs (Second-Generation Adults), who’d been born into the Family but are now over sixteen and, in accordance with the latest Mama Letters, considered old enough to be adults themselves. And five new disciples who’d joined the Family in the last few years from the former USSR: Tim and Dana from Poland, Yana from Lithuania, and Peter and Esther, who had picked me up, all in their twenties. Even with Grandpa’s passing, membership in the Family continues to grow, although not at the same rate as the early years.
Now that I’m eighteen, I’ve crossed the threshold into real adulthood, and I don’t have to call the other adults Auntie and Uncle. But I know I will anyway.
Abigail finally guides me down the dim hallway. “This is where you will be staying with Steph and Yana.” I drop my things in the girls’ quarters, a ten-by-ten room for the three of us single girls. I notice a bunk bed but not much else before I shove my suitcase under it, undress, and drop onto the mattress, exhausted.
The next morning, I awake, freezing. Yana is smiling at me from her single bed against the wall. “How did you sleep?” she asks with her thick Lithuanian accent.
“Okay, I guess. It’s cold,” I say with a shiver.
Yana laughs and makes a face at the same time. “The radiator in our room doesn’t work, so we plug in a hot plate.”
I nod dazedly, spotting the small electric burner on the floor. I better not step on it.