There was a thick shrub just beyond the gate to the parish manse. Bruce stopped behind it keeping out of sight from the windows of the large house. He wondered if there were dogs on the loose. While he did not really fear them, he could do without their noisome barking, alerting other occupants of the house besides the minister herself. He wanted to spring a surprise on her, yet keep his visit all under wraps. It would not do to have it said afterwards that the minister entertained a strange man in the evening, and in the absence of her husband, too!
In that moment he rewound his tapes back the time she had met her future husband, Donald.
Donald was his friend from their very early days when they were in the youth group in church. They had done exploits in the name of the Lord, not only in their parish, but also beyond, in Masailand. The youth ran these missions to go into remote places, build a school and a church for their less fortunate brothers and sisters. They arrived at the chosen site on a Friday, and immediately started work. By Sunday morning they had a building that would be used as a school during the week, and as a church on Sunday.
As the parish was very wide, and had at least ten congregations scattered over an area of almost fifty square kilometres boys met girls from other congregations and began to pair off in marriage. There was a period of two years in which there was a wedding between youth members every six months! Donald, however seemed to want to live the life of Apostle Paul, never seeming to be interested in any of the girls. Some questions were asked but none very seriously. Soon even his friend Bruce married a girl who had seemed impossible to court to almost everybody else. She was a teacher, but her mother had died while she was still in teacher training college, leaving her effectively in charge of her father's household. Perhaps she had always been a very serious minded person but it seemed that she took herself even more seriously after the demise of her mother. How Bruce had overcome that tough exterior remained a mystery even to his friends.
Months turned into years and still Donald was not making any move. That was when Bruce discussed the problem with Rev Joel, also previously a member of the youth group during the mission years. They held a suspicion that Donald had gay leanings but they could not really be sure. If he seduced men, it was not from among their circle; he must go outside to find his 'victims'.
"But we cannot allow him to continue that way. It is sure to explode in his face one of these days. We will not be remain unscathed ourselves, if it is discovered that one who purports to be a servant of the Lord indulges in animal behavior, sleeping with other men. It is most unnatural and against God's Word." Joel was most emphatic.
Janice came from a presbytery in which Joel had served some years before. She had meanwhile gone to theological college and been ordained a minster of Word and sacrament. He introduced Bruce to her with a view to finding out if she could make a suitable wife for their friend Donald. She did not exhibit any obvious negative traits, but they could not be sure of her favourable ones either. They both agreed that at that point the bigger risk actually rested with their friend.
"The worst that could happen is for the marriage to be rocky. That is something that we can handle with the help of counselors. But a homosexual scandal would ruin not just their lives, but ours and many others as well." Joel agreed with his friend and so they went ahead to introduce Janice to Donald.
The friendship between these two people who might have been regarded as each having delayed to marry progressed well from the viewpoint of Joel and Bruce. Probably they saw themselves in this light, too. Before long a wedding was on the cards. Bruce could not be more pleased with that development, so he lent a helping hand wherever he could; in fact he agreed readily to become Donald's best man.
The family grew as placidly as they had reason to expect. Children were born, proving that if Donald was gay, then he was at least bisexual. But then one August the minister reached out to Bruce, asking him to come and see her in the parish office.
She revealed that she had begun to see some strange behavior in Donald. "I am not sure if it is my sensitivity that made me notice small things, or maybe he was always like that but I was blinded by love."
"What kind of things, Reverend?"
"He would leave the house in the evening, saying he wanted to buy airtime for his phone and be gone for nearly an hour. I didn't think anything about that but when it became frequent I could not fail to notice."
"What did he tell you was the cause of such a delay?"
"As I said, I did not really notice. So I held my peace. Last month, he left home and said he was on a mission to Masailand. That was the third time he had gone off. I have heard stories from you people that you carried out such missions in your youth, so at first I took it to be a continuation of that."
"Do we have any reason to believe that he was not on mission?" In the back of his mind Bruce was aware that Donald had not been active on the mission field since they had been youth. For some years now, neither Bruce, Joel or himself had been on any mission. Why the zeal now, he asked himself.
