Christmas season recalls a memorable experience in Rhodesia a few Decembers ago. To gain a few days of quiet rest, my wife and I flew from Johannesburg to Salisbury without telling a soul. After early breakfast at Meikle’s, I was out for a morning constitutional (an activity so rare as to be worthy of the record) when I had the uneasy feeling that somebody was tracking me. As it turned out, he had been doing just that for almost half an hour.
There was my college classmate Orla Blair, who since Wheaton days (’38) has labored in the African interior as a missionary. That morning he had driven a hundred miles to meet an incoming plane and, having half an hour to spare, had decided to go window-shopping.
“Could you be …,” he finally blurted, after having several times convinced himself against the possibility. Indeed I was—and that night, along with a dozen missionary families, we sang Christmas carols in Africa.
This year our enjoyment of Christmas music will he heightened by CHRISTIANITY TODAY’S recording of four carols of English origin. We were delighted by our advance hearing of the long-playing record specially made by the Don Hustad Carollers as a gift subscription bonus. We’re airmailing one to our Rhodesian friends, in fact, and plan this year to make it part of our Christmas at home in Virginia.
