Deacon Reflection: Unimagined Doors

By The Rev. Talmage Bandy

Eighteen years ago, at the age of 66, I was ordained a deacon at Emmanuel, Southern Pines. During “the process,” I would often talk with my Virginia bishop, the Rt. Rev. David Jones, who had led me toward this journey. Sometimes I would rant and say to Bishop David, “Why am I putting myself through this at my age when I am retired and moved here to play golf and travel?” He would laugh and then say seriously: “Tally, doors will open that you cannot even imagine.” Little did I know he was uttering prophetic words.

My call had been to tend the sick. For many years, I served as a lay hospital chaplain in Alexandria, Virginia, after completing clinical pastoral education there. The speaker at my graduation was the great prophet, Verna Dozier, who wrote a book that impressed me, The Authority of the Laity. When I told her that I had no intention of ever being ordained, she lit up like a Christmas tree, hugged me and said, “Good!” Hmm. Somewhere along the way the church ordained me (I never told Ms. Dozier).

I served faithfully and joyfully at Emmanuel until 2008. That year I aged out and had to retire, but at 72, I felt I had more to do. Enter Barbara Cawthorne Crafton and Bishop David again.

For three years, I brought Barbara to Emmanuel’s Parish Weekends. She became a friend and mentor, and I made a trip to hear her lead a Lenten preaching series in Richmond. Bishop David joined us for lunch one day. Also with me was artist Jessie Mackay, who had travelled to Africa many times as a tourist. I had just returned from a sabbatical in South Africa and knew I would go back. There is something about Africa. 

Jessie told Bishop David that after riding a horse across Malawi and seeing the unsanitized parts of Africa, she wanted to go back and make a difference. He sent us across the street to the Diocese of Virginia’s global mission director, Buck Blanchard. I could say that the rest is history. In less than a week, we both were offered volunteer teaching jobs in Dodoma, Tanzania.  Jessie taught art at the Bishop Stanway Primary School to children who had never seen a crayon or a paint box, and I was assigned to teach pastoral care and pastoral theology at Msalato Theological College. We were there for three months and totally lost our hearts to our students and to the country.

That first year Jessie had an opportunity to spend a weekend in a village where she saw how hard life is, especially for women and children, and she knew that was where her heart was.  Since then, we have returned every year (I could not go in 2015), and our mission has morphed into empowering village women. With a loan of $500 to 45 women to buy and raise pigs, life has changed for them. There are now almost 3,000 women raising pigs and goats. With money earned, they send their children to school, put roofs on their houses and floors in their churches. They know they are valued. 

We have embarked on a new venture that seems a miracle to me. We are providing solar light kits to people in villages with no electricity. The stories tear at my heart. As a solar kit was being installed in a pastor’s house, he cried and said he had read his Bible and written his sermons by kerosene or charcoal light for more than 40 years. Women with solar kits have a way to bring in income by charging small fees to charge cell phones and hair clippers. A solar kit was installed in a Mosque. A Muslim woman said: “We did not know that Christians can love us to this point. Your God is a loving God.”

You may ask where we have gotten money to do all of this. In 2009, we became a 501(c)3 nonprofit charitable organization (KARIMU). I’ve become a grant writer, and donations come to us: anything from $20 to buy a pig to $3,000 for wherever we see the need, and the need is never ending.

When Bishop David laid his hands upon my head so long ago, we had no idea I would be led to Africa.  But he was right. Doors opened I could never have imagined.