Seeking Refuge

by Alana Terry

  “So, what did you think of what Mr. Cooper said?” Hyun asked as she sat on the remaining patch of plush carpet beside Hadassah’s sleeping bag.

  Hadassah looked up at her with a smile then cast her glance down at her sleeping bag again. “I liked it, I guess. There wasn’t much to disagree with for a person who’s given her life to Yeshua—I mean Jesus.”

  “I love how you call Him Yeshua.”

  “It’s just...” Hadassah stared off at the wall.

  “What is it?”

  “The whole thing about there being no lie on our lips. I mean, I agree with it, especially about not lying to each other or to people who love Yeshua, but I can’t stop thinking about the midwives in Egypt.” Hadassah looked up at Hyun again. “Do you remember the ones from the first chapter of Exodus who lied to Pharaoh about the baby boys and were commended for it by God?”

  “I know the story.”

  “Am I justifying myself by thinking of them?”

  Hyun sat in stunned silence as she listened to Hadassah tell about her conversation with the taxi driver in Liberia.

  “Was I wrong to pretend I was a naïve English tourist? I mean, I did it so I could save those children. But this is just one of many examples. And I’ve been lying about things I don’t even need to lie about, like tonight when I said I like warm, flat soda. I don’t even like soda, so I don’t know why I mentioned it.”

  “When Mr. Cooper said some of us were taught to lie, I think he meant you and me.”

  “But I don’t think my mom taught me to lie. She tells people things on a need-to-know basis, and she always wears a disguise of some kind when on assignment. I don’t know. Maybe I got it from all the spy movies and books.”

  Hyun chuckled softly. “I like those too. But let me tell you a story. The last year I worked at the CIA, I was strongly encouraged to lie about everything, even inconsequential things, and was told on several occasions that if I didn’t, I would endanger the lives of other operatives in the field. My lies enabled a mole in the Agency, one of my superiors, a traitor who bombed the US embassy in Lebanon and carried out two terrorist attacks in and around Jerusalem. His was the only character I ever misjudged, but looking back, I’m sure my steady stream of lies clouded my vision.”

  “Wow. I needed to hear that.”

  “It’s a hard pattern to break, especially if you’ve been lying about inconsequential things.”

  “I guess I have been justifying myself.”

  “Don’t discredit what you did in Africa, though. That was a righteous work, and there aren’t enough righteous works in the world today. Open this area of your heart to the Lord’s scrutiny. He dealt with our lies at the cross, and He alone will give us a clean conscience.”

  Chapter 16: Christina

  CHRISTINA OPENED HER eyes at 5:45am on Monday morning, just as she did every morning to grab thirty minutes of solitude before everyone woke. Except this morning drowsiness assaulted more than ever. Most of those girls stayed up chatting far too late; thankfully they all slept silently now. Well, all except Lisa, who continued to snore like a chainsaw.

  Four minutes in the shower, three minutes to dress and brush teeth, three minutes to brush and braid hair. This would give her twenty minutes alone in the common room. Christina tiptoed around the sleeping girls with Bible and journal in hand. She’d exercise first, and if no one else stirred, push-ups and sit-ups would be done before 6:05. Exercising alone was a rare privilege.

  She caught Amelia’s glance as she finished the last of her sit-ups. The woman, still dressed in pajamas, began to prepare breakfast for everyone. They smiled briefly at one another before Christina returned to her exercises. Tomorrow she’d start with reading her Bible first.

  After quickly reading through Psalm 8 and Proverbs 3, she set aside her books to help Amelia fix breakfast. It always amazed her to watch what this woman could cook for an impending mob with just a few ingredients.

  The former soldiers—Tameka, Dave and Robert—were the first to trickle toward the kitchen, joined by Hadassah, which surprised her. The youngest of all proved to be a morning person. Maybe Hadassah wouldn’t be R.S.O.’s first drop-out. After all, she did say something to Hyun the other night about Liberia. But Christina couldn’t see any similarities between herself and this young girl, besides both being early risers.

  “Would I be able to make some tea?” Hadassah asked her.

  Christina smiled. Sometimes she liked to be proved wrong about people. “Be my guest. But can you make a pot? I think I’d prefer tea over coffee this morning.”

  “No problem. Thanks for making breakfast.”

  “Oh, that’s Amelia’s specialty. I just dice and sauté, dice and sauté.”

  Hadassah giggled as she filled the tea kettle and set it to boil on the stove.

  “I’LL BE SENDING YOU out in teams of two,” Mr. Cooper told them over breakfast. The sun shone bright through the sliding doors leading from the common room to the back deck. “No switching partners over the next five days. If you have a problem with your partner, feel free to speak with my wife.”

  Mrs. Cooper’s smile indicated she wouldn’t change anything for anyone. No one stirred.

  “Go ahead and finish up your food,” Mr. Cooper continued, “but as I call your names, come get a list of the people you will be serving today. Christina and Hadassah, please come get your list...”

  On the way to the prayer room, Christina read over the list, trying to think of reasons not to complain about her partner. “All our tasks seem to be cleaning,” she told Hadassah. “It also looks like everyone lives in the same neighborhood of low income housing, so once we get there we can walk from place to place.”

  “I love walking, but I’m not the best cleaner. Are you?”

  Christina suppressed another desire to complain. “I had to be. The Marine Corps has strict rules on it.”

  Hadassah laughed. “You can give me orders and I’ll try to keep up. What rank were you in the Marines, by the way?”

  “High enough to pull rank when need be, but I don’t talk about it here, because here we’re all the same rank.”

  Every house she and Hadassah cleaned had at least three children, and one house had as many as ten. Some of the mothers were massively grateful and looked frazzled right down to their fingertips; others were mildly grateful and highly particular.

  Christina cleaned the kitchens, common rooms, laundry rooms, and any extra rooms, and left the bathrooms and kids’ rooms for Hadassah. This young girl tried to keep up with any orders and suggestions, but always needed help to finish.

  “I guess I should have spent as much time learning to clean a house as I did learning to crawl through an air duct,” Hadassah confessed when they stopped for lunch. “I hope my cleaning was up to standard.”

  Christina tried not to scowl; Mr. Cooper had asked her to mentor these young girls. “It wouldn’t be up to standard if we were roommates. But you can blame the government, because I was much messier than you at your age.”

  After lunch, when they returned to cleaning, the maggots in the trashcans of one house pulled at Christina’s gag reflex.

  Hadassah happened to show up in the kitchen just before Christina’s lunch revisited. “Do you want me to take over?”

  She tried hard not to gag again. “If you really want to.”

  “I don’t mind. I grew up in the City, so I’m used to gross stuff. Anyway, I’ve been slower than you all day long. It’s the least I can do.”

  Christina stood back and breathed with her chin up in the air to try to avoid the smell of the trashcan and to coax her lunch back down. When she glanced down at Hadassah, she noticed tears streaming down the girl’s face and splashing onto the maggots in the trashcan.

  “You okay, Hadassah?”

  “I’m okay.” She wiped her tears off on her shoulders and upper arms. “I was just remembering an assignment.”

  She looked at the young girl, who was kneeling on the kitchen floor, cry
ing and scraping maggots out of a trash can. She smiled empathetically. “Sounds like you’ve already been an agent. Is that what you did over in Africa?”

  “You heard about Africa?”

  “I heard you and Hyun talking two nights ago. You weren’t the one who helped free all those babies in Liberia, were you?”

  “Sort of, I guess. My mom helped me.”

  “Was she over there with you?”

  “No, she gave me a satellite cell phone before I left so I could call her.”

  “In other words, you rescued those babies by yourself.”

  “I can’t take so much credit. I took surveillance photos and videos which give the government’s army permission and reason to raid the warehouse. If you saw it on the news, that was thanks to my mom. Also, one of Mr. Cooper’s friends was there in deep cover, but I didn’t know that until later.”

  “So you were the catalyst. You took those photos and videos. How old were you?” Christina asked.

  “It was on my seventeenth birthday.”

  “No way! Wow. I couldn’t have done something like that when I was seventeen.”

  “Would you mind holding the bag open while I scrape out the rest of this mess?”

  Christina complied. “You’re Pastor Michelman’s daughter, aren’t you?”

  Hadassah looked as if she’d cry again. “Did you know my dad?”

  “I’ve heard your dad speak four or five times at our church, and I loved his teachings, especially the ones on 1 John.” Christina looked at the ceiling and grew quiet. She said more than she had intended. “I can’t believe I’m almost twice your age. Don’t get me wrong, girl, I’m honored to have you here with us.”

  “Thanks for saying so. After listening to Mr. Cooper give the guidelines last night, I see how much I messed up while on assignments. At least according to God’s standard.”

  “Girl, we’ve all messed up according to God’s standard. If only I could say I messed up doing half of the good you did over in Africa. I’m just glad for God’s grace and mercy. And for the cross.”

  “Me too. I’m almost done here.”

  “Thanks for braving the maggots. I owe you big time.” Christina kept her eyes away from the bag and trashcan while she spoke.

  A rumble and a rattle of the dishes told her another earthquake had come, as small as the others recently, but just as unnerving. Hadassah’s eyes grew wide and she stood stock still until the shaking ended.

  “I didn’t know they were here, too,” Hadassah whispered.

  “They’re everywhere, girl. Birth pangs.”

  Hadassah cringed. “That means the big ones will come soon.”

  “Unfortunately. Along with the wars and pestilence.”

  “Do you think His judgments really need to be so severe?”

  “Do you think the world would wake up otherwise? I hope it will, but people have been wandering around like drunkards for far too long. They won’t wake from their stupor without serious shaking. I want to be here to tell them what they can awake to.”

  Hadassah smiled. “Yeshua. I think I want to do the same.”

  “Good, ’cause that’s why we’re here.”

  Christina’s appetite returned by dinnertime. And she liked this young girl a whole lot more than she did at the beginning of the day. When they arrived back at the house, she couldn’t help but eavesdrop on Hadassah’s farewell to her mom, that Jewish woman who could intimidate with a mere glance.

  Eva Michelman pulled her daughter into an embrace. “I’ll be in touch with you through Mr. Cooper.”

  Hadassah leaned her head on her mom’s shoulder. “Please tell me as soon as you learn something.”

  “I’ll e-mail you.” Her mom held her tighter. “As long as I know you’re safe, I can do what I need to do.”

  “I’ll write too, Mom. I’m going to miss you so much.” When tears began to roll down this girl’s face, Christina looked away.

  “I know, Haddy. I’m going to miss you too. I bought you a few gifts today, but don’t open them until you get to the Lighthouse.”

  THE FOLLOWING DAY, Christina and Hadassah worked as office assistants for the leaders of NoCaHoP.

  Christina stood at a desk and straightened up the stack of papers she finished collating. “Your mom seems like a really interesting lady.”

  Hadassah’s countenance fell. She thumbed through a stack of teaching notes she needed to organize. “Yeah, you can say that again.”

  Christina smiled. “She loves you a lot too.”

  “She’s never given me a reason to deny it.”

  “Grr! Another paper cut.” Christina shoved her finger against her clenched teeth then wiped it on her jeans.

  “I know. I just got my fifth.”

  “Shall we go find some bandages?”

  “Sure.”

  On the way back to the van, with bandages on every finger, they discussed how they preferred cleaning since it kept them physically active.

  “I hope Mr. Cooper doesn’t treat our request as griping.” Hadassah fidgeted with her bandages.

  “Me too. Maybe we can just show him our hands.”

  Chapter 17: The Missing

  HADASSAH STARED OUT the window as the van took them in a different direction. That night, instead of going back to the house right away, Mr. Cooper arranged for her and a select group of other recruits to meet at New Life Church, one of the churches affiliated with NoCaHoP.

  With the popularity of the prayer house and Ronny Gibbons’ teaching, Hadassah expected this building to be much larger, at least large enough to accommodate 500 people, if not several thousand. The occupancy sign reading “110” surprised her. The place began to look full with just eleven people.

  “I guess Pastor Gibbons likes it small,” Priscilla remarked as they wandered the room.

  Hadassah stared at the murals meandering around the walls, windows and parts of the ceiling. Pictures of creation interwove with Noah’s ark and the story of Abraham. Next she saw some pictures of the Exodus story and the journey through the desert to the Promised Land. She scanned along, observing the whole history of ancient Israel painted on the walls of the sanctuary, when her eyes caught a depiction of Paul and Silas in prison in Macedonia. An image of Dad’s face replaced Paul’s. She blinked back the sudden flux of tears until she saw the artist’s original painting again, but the parallels between Dad’s sufferings and Paul’s wouldn’t let go of her.

  Mrs. Cooper moved chairs to form a circle in the middle of the floor. Hadassah found a seat next to Christina, and ignored the flutter in her heart when Matthew took the seat to her left.

  Mr. Cooper sat beside his wife and looked at each face as if to pass on encouragement. “Tonight I’m going to ask you to do one of the hardest things I’ll ask all year, but I’ve gathered you here so you can lay it all on the table together. I want everyone to share who in your family is missing and where he or she was last seen. I hope sharing like this will raise some clues to the surface. I know many of you will be surprised by who knows who. Maleek, will you start us off?”

  Maleek’s gaze was fixed on the floor. “Yes, sir. My half-brother, Carlos, was with a team in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. He had just turned eleven when he was kidnapped. We had an argument the night before he left, and I hate to think of how I spoke to him.”

  Zacharias nodded his head at Maleek, then slumped his broad shoulders and stared at his own large feet. “My sister, Ileyah, went missing in Cairo, Egypt. The last time I saw her, I did not share her faith in Jesus.”

  Priscilla stared at the floor and waited before speaking, as if she wanted to hide all her emotions first. “My sister, Filipa, was with a team of missionaries when she went missing from Bacolod City in the Philippines.”

  “My uncle, Pastor Jorgé, and his wife were missionaries in Puerto Vallarta,” Pedro said.

  “My dad, Pastor Lim Cho, was in Iraq,” Matthew said. “He was fresh off the plane in Baghdad and on his way to do a healing service at a new h
ouse of prayer twenty minutes south of Baghdad City. Their vehicle was surrounded by insurgents somewhere en route.” Gone was Matthew’s usual playfulness. Gone was his joking manner. He held his mouth tight and looked at no one in particular. Witnessing his despondency made Hadassah forget her own. Wait—he said Iraq.

  The sanctuary fell silent. A thick sort of silence, as sanctuaries sometimes have late at night, but rarely with so many people there. Hadassah scraped at the bandages on her fingers and finally looked away from Matthew. Every eye was on her.

  “Oh.” Her face colored with embarrassment. She glanced again at Matthew’s eyes. “My dad, Pastor Asher Michelman, was also in Iraq.” She looked tentatively over at Christina.

  Her friend smiled sadly at her. “My dad, too. Pastor Isaac Gallagher.”

  Hadassah’s glance at her friend turned to an incredulous gaze. This woman who she had been working alongside for the past two days was the daughter of Pastor Isaac Gallagher? Pastor Gallagher would often stay at her family’s apartment for the weekend and teach at the church in Brooklyn. When she was ten, he had stayed with her family for a week. She recalled detail after detail about that week. He was one of the teachers at the conference when she came forward during an altar call and gave her life to the Lord. But he wasn’t the preacher that night. Who was that other preacher?

  Hadassah looked at Matthew again and it all came back to her. Matthew’s dad, Pastor Lim Cho, was that other preacher.

  A clear memory from that week flashed through her mind. It was dawn, and Pastor Cho knelt beside the pull-out couch in the living room, reading his Bible by flashlight and weeping. She wore her favorite footed pajamas and stood on the landing in the half-light peering around the corner, afraid to bother him yet so curious about this behavior. Over breakfast when Hadassah mentioned this, Pastor Cho explained how God had been showing His love to him. When Pastor Cho preached at the conference that evening, Hadassah gave her heart and life to the Lord. She wanted to experience God’s love too.