After spending a bit over 2 weeks in various locations, and needing to be ready to hit the airport early the next day, we were put on a train in Marrakech to go to Casablanca for the final night. It was a 3-hour ride.
When we were on the train, doors to compartments were opened and we were placed inside. I was the only one of our group that was placed in one that had 3 various-aged ladies and 2 kids.
That's when the miracle began.
Rajah, the mother of the boy, Joseph, 15, and the girl, Miriam, 11, spoke English quite well. Since I spoke just a little French and only a greeting word or two of Arabic, the opportunity to visit would have been very limited. Instead, it would be one neat opportunity to share and learn more. I was excited.
In a very short period of time, after she knew I was from the States, she told me she had been there for some time while her husband was in a college for a Master's Degree in Forestry and that now he was the Agricultural Ministry leader. I asked where they had been. She said, "Moscow, Idaho."
I could do nothing but laugh in amazement. I told her that back in 1963, I had gone to Washington State University in Pullman, Washington. It was only 7 miles from my college to Moscow, slightly across the Idaho border. Rajah was just shocked at that nearness of our lives, that I would actually understand where she was and what it was like to walk through it.
Her son, Joseph, had been born there. She said when they were leaving at the airport many of their friends and associates from school came to see them off. She was so touched by them, by their caring.
Rajah and her kids fed me and fed me and fed me as the sales person came past the door with piles of cookies and sodas and chips. I was one appreciated and blessed lady.
She gave me her address and phone number, but I've never been able to follow through, and I'm really sorry about that. I think we would be good friends.
That three-hour visit was one of the most wonderful events that occurred, not only in Morocco, but in my life. It was so obvious that the Lord had planned it and put it into place, and then He just watched from above and grinned. I still grin back.
[I hope Rajah is grinning, too, and that she also feels gifted by the Lord and blessed.]
