Tribute to Teacher

By Doug Roland

During the run-up to my 50th high school class reunion, many of us paused to remember the teachers who influenced our lives. Most of us recalled fondly the academic folks who perhaps even inspired our careers. Others were role models that we may have copied. I know that 3 of my English teachers made possible everything I did professionally. However, none of us works all the time. We do other things. Many people become spectators, watching TV, going to games of all sorts, concerts. But because of a teacher, I had an avocation that, while it has probably ended for me, enriched my life in ways I could never have imagined. What I learned from him made me a participant, literally put me on stage.

So, I share with you a letter I wrote to my high school choir director. He is 85 now but still writing music to add to the 250+ pieces he has written.

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Dear Mr. Davenport:

About 20 years ago or so, I wrote a letter to you to thank you for instilling in me a love of choral music. Having no address, I sent it to First Friends church on east Main St.. I do not know if you received it.

So, at the risk of repeating myself, I am writing again, this time with a confirmed address. A fellow classmate and chorister from RHS's class of 1961 advised me of the recent article in the Pal-Item. I can not help but respond.

During my 5 1/2 years at I.U., I did not sing a great deal nor during the next eight years when I was teaching or going to law school. Then I married a music major (Ohio Wesleyan) and devoted Methodist. We joined the choir (Middletown, Ohio). One night our director handed out some new music and I recognized the composer. I don't recall the name of the piece but I proudly announced that your were my high school choir director and I took great joy in singing it.

Some years later, we moved to Tampa, Florida, and soon auditioned for and sang in the Master Chorale of Tampa Bay for 12 years. During that time, I thought of the groundwork you provided years earlier. The Chorale is the principal chorus of the Florida Orchestra. My wife and I agree that the memories from those years are indelible. We sang most every major choral work in the repertoire. For example, the masses of Verdi, Berloiz, Rutter, Durufle and Faure. Bach's B minor mass was perhaps my favorite. But our two highlights were to sing two concert weekends under Robert Shaw and one trip to England.

Shaw was an advisory director to the Florida Orchestra. I could not believe that I would fulfill a lifelong dream and sing under his baton. When I arrived at the first rehearsal, I looked at the seating chart and saw that I was going to be standing about 10 feet from his right ear. Maybe I could just mouth the words. We sang the Durufle Requiem (3 concerts) and a few years later, Brahms Requiem, with him.

In 1996, the Chorale was invited by Sir David Wilcox to join the London Bach Choir for a concert at Westminster Cathedral (as distinct from the Abbey) featuring the Berlioz Requiem, prefaced by 4-5 wonderful a cappella pieces before about 2,000 people including the Duchess of York.

The next day, we were bussed up to Cambridge where we performed in the famed King's College Chapel. Following choristers over the last 500 years, we added our voices to this hallowed space. Our chorale sang several American pieces, including what we think was the European premier of Lauridsen's O Magnum Mysterium.

So, here I was, a kid from Richmond, Indiana, singing in an ethereal and holy place. I had been well-prepared, and it started in your classroom. These are things no one can ever take away from me.

I've gone on too much about myself, but I want you to know that it would not have been possible without you. My life would have been qualitatively poorer. That goes for me and I suspect legends of others. The learning of those couple of years in your choir multiplied exponentially.

I am delighted that you are still writing. What a wonderful way to contribute to an art form that worms its way into one's soul.

Finally, do not be confused about the postage and address. My wife and I are volunteering for three years in South Africa's only Methodist seminary. It's quite a challenge for a retired lawyer and a nurse to fit in, but we work at it.

May God continue to bless you.

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There is universal and important point here. Each of us has, everyday, an opportunity to influence others either for good or for ill. In a sense we are all teachers as none of us has, despite claims to the contrary, all the answers. Small, seemingly uneventful incidents and/or comments can re-shape the life of another person. So, think first, talk later. Someone is listening.

Eraste's Journey

by Doug Roland

SMMS’s newest staff addition is Dr. Eraste Niyirimana, Acting Head of the Biblical Studies Department. He comes to us from Rwanda, but the journey getting here was long and circuitous.

Born in 1957, five years before independence from Belgium, Eraste grew up in the foothills of southern Rwanda. His was a close family located in a community of subsistence farmers. They grew and lived on a diet of lentils, beans and sweet potatoes. His father, a lay Anglican minister, built two houses with mud walls, one with a grass roof and the other with tires and other material. Both were built on the rock of his faith, passed on to his children.

Eraste enjoyed the freedom of the year round outdoor life that rural living provides. In addition to soccer and traditional children’s games, he would strip the layers off the trunk of banana trees and use them to slide down the grassy hillsides. He was happy being in a big family and had no aspirations or dreams of what he might do one day. Just having food to eat was enough. This would change went he was sent to an Anglican Missionary school. A lifelong love affair with education had begun.

After completing primary school, followed by teacher training school, he taught grades 4 – 8 for four years. During this time he attended a camp sponsored by Scriptural Union, a global organization with the mission of bringing the Bible to remote areas. It was at the camp that he met, and later married Rose, his wife of 31 years.

He didn’t see himself as a career teacher. He was nagged by a feeling that there was more for him to do. He knew instinctively that taking the next step meant more training. With the encouragement and aid of his bishop, he entered university at Butare, then later to the main campus in Kigali where he studied law and received his license. The bishop’s plan was for him to be a legal advisor to the church. The war of 1990 changed everything.

The church granted him permission to begin work for the government of Rwanda and move to Kigali. He worked in a department that provided legal advice to the three branches of government in this relatively new democracy. It was heady stuff for a young man fresh out of school. After a year, he was moved to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, again for the purpose of handling legal issues, but as the war droned on without resolution, the government became highly politicized. Unbiased, neutral suggestions were no longer welcomed. The culture of cooperation vanished. Reluctantly, he left his position to join the staff of Compassion International, an NGO based in the U.S. focused on the needs of children worldwide.

Meanwhile, the bishop was having second thoughts about Eraste’s legal career. He advised that he wanted Eraste to go into full-time ministry, but before the bishop’s plan materialized, the genocide started.

Compassion International heeded its staff’s request to flee Rwanda and operate from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). Dangerous under any circumstance, the situation was made more difficult by the fact that Eraste and Rose were from competing factions – Hutu’s and Tutsi’s. Any move would be perilous.Their security was at risk whether in Rwanda or in a refugee camp in the DRC. Nevertheless, “the Lord kept us safe in the DRC”.

As the genocide ebbed somewhat, the NGO was eager for Eraste and Rose to return to Rwanda. It was a risk he refused to take. This decision left him and his family stranded, no job, no home to return to, no prospects. In this very dark time in his life, he did not despair. Rather he did what his father would have done – he cried out to God. He persevered in his faith. God returned the call with an invitation to enter full-time ministry.

The “call” rarely materializes quickly. For Eraste and his family, there were no prospects, no aid, no help, just a still, small voice. Again he did not despair for he placed his faith where he had before – in the power of education to lift him up. This time though, his goal was the ministry, an acceptance of the invitation.

He applied to a seminary in Nairobi, Kenya, and was accepted. He had no apparent way to get there or ability to pay the deposit. Eraste and Rose “ . . . took our request to God, asking for his provision from January, 1995 to August, 1995.” Shortly after, they received a gift of money from a friend. It was enough to pay for tickets for Rose and the two younger children to fly to Nairobi. Two months later, another friend, who was hosting Rose and the children, helped Eraste and the remaining children to make the trip and reunite the family.

Once in Nairobi, Eraste made contact with a friend who was planning a trip back home to Rwanda. Through that visit, his “home” bishop, probably with a wry grin on his face, sent a little money to Eraste. It was enough to pay the deposit and gain admission. The seminary provided accommodations and once he was placed, he also was granted a scholarship. Three years later, he obtained his M.Div. degree.

Rose had enrolled in the same seminary after Eraste. While he was waiting in Nairobi tending to the children, a friend from South Africa came to Kenya for a meeting and sought out Eraste who brought him up to date. This led to a meeting with a man looking to fill a position at a seminary in Nigeria. Eraste followed up and in 2000, the family moved again.

The position involved supervision of graduate students. After being a refugee and student for several years, it was a badly-needed job. He performed as required but he knew he was capable of more, and he knew to what had to do - more training. He began applying to schools to study for his Ph.D. He was admitted at Sheffield in the UK but had no money. Yet, this determined man would not be denied taking the next step. With the perseverance, character and hope Paul describes in Romans, he applied to the University of KwaZulu Natal where he was admitted and obtained a scholarship. His Ph.D. in Biblical Studies was awarded in 2010.

No description of Eraste would be complete without a further note. His wife Rose, fondly known as Mama Rose, is now a staff member at ESSA, another seminary in Pietermaritzburg. She hopes to complete her Ph.D. in New Testament by the end of this year. Of their seven children, three have finished their undergraduate training (one is a teacher), one is in post-graduate studies, and four are in varsity.

Eraste was asked if there anything that he would want to change, if he could. He answered that we wished there had been no war as he wanted to serve in his homeland.