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 Now,
with a healthy 2 year-old girl at her side, 20 year-old Marie can read and
write, and knows a good deal of French, math and science. But more that that,
she is ready and willing to use her skills in service for God. Through 2006 she
was one of the voices for the women’s teaching program on the radio. She was
able to recount to other women her first hand experience of depriving her first-born
of the vital colostrum during his first days of life (a tradition handed down
from older Kwong women) and the bitter lesson that resulted, and how now she
breast feeds and properly cares for her daughter, Martine. In 2007 she became
our first female radio announcer – she DJs on Monday nights when the women’s
program is airing. Finally, she is Diane’s right hand lady in teaching the
young girls each Thursday at their “girls club”. In this photo she teaches a
group of 9 girls to read. Her testimony of waiting for a good husband (even a
couple years) and not rushing marriage is one that they listen to, and we pray
will help transform their thinking. We pray for Marie, as we do for each of our
co-workers, that God would keep her by His grace.
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Marie,
a a young girl with potential, was only 13 years old at best when Diane arrived
in 2000. She excelled in school so her father sent her to Derissia, a town 20
miles south of Chageen for 7th and 8th grade. It was then
that we learned a young fellow was asking her father permission to marry her
(This photo, was taken at that time-2002). Evidently she had refused him
previously in order to get an education first, so he was waiting patiently for
her. Her mother, however, was now pushing for the marriage – if not, she
feared Marie might indiscreetly end up pregnant with some drunken loser’s
child. Thus they married in 2003, had their first child in 2004 while Marie was
in 9th grade. A year later the baby boy died. Marie and her husband,
then back in Chageen, were able to complete 10th grade at a local
school. Her husband continues to encourage her further education, he cares for
her and is faithful to her, something foreign to most young men. We pray for
him, that he will remain such a man.