One less friend to love

This Saturday, we will have a memorial service for a dear friend and gracious lady. Trained as a radiology technician, I knew her best as a modern day Job whose body buffeted her soul but could not win. A cancer survivor several times over, she and I visited in passing as she came to church sometimes with family and sometimes alone. Rita was occasionally in the hospital, but those stays were always serious.

I was by her bedside in the Spring of 2004 as she recuperated from a stroke. With her diabetes, TIA's and cancer, this stoke was a big hurdle for her to overcome to make a mission trip to Africa. She explained to me that she always wanted to be a missionary and go to Africa. She had been once in the 1980's and wanted deeply to go back.

So, I asked her, "Rita, are you going to be able to go in a couple of months?" She moved her partially paralyzed body around in the bed. "I will be ready."

And she was! With a little help from the team, she had the time of her life and her presence was more powerful than any could really appreciate. She stood as the quiet conqueror who found Jesus sufficient for everything.

And then Rita came home to face more cancer, and finally complications that took her life.

Rita loved people of which I was one who was blessed.

Saturday we will sing her praises, but she wants us to talk about Jesus. And then she wants some of her ashes scattered over Africa. That we can do, for a lady who was a missionary everywhere she was--even in Africa.