Sister Jay

Thirty-seven years ago, when I was twenty years old, Harry Wenger, who was a Holdeman bishop from Hesston, and a friend of my father's, brought our family a guest, whom he introduced as Sister Jay. She was a tiny young woman, vivacious and lovely, who looked as though she had stepped right out of our gray-covered fourth grade Old World geography book. She wore a white sari, with a wide flowing cape-like collar, edged in blue, with blue crosses in each corner. She dressed like this because it was as close as she could come to dressing like the angels she had seen. Sister Jay was from India.

While she was in our area, she ate at our family's table, and later spoke to a small group of people at our church in an impromptu meeting. During that time she gave her testimony. After that she didn't look so much any more like a geography book figure come to life. She seemed like an angel prophetess. It was 1972.

Sister Jay first met Jesus in a vision when she was six years old. She was traveling with her parents. While waiting for a bus on a very hot day, those who were waiting sought shade inside a nearby church. As children do, she was playing with other children when a suffering man on a cross appeared before her. He had wonderfully kind eyes, and told her that he was Jesus, and that he loves her and died for her. She had never heard of this person before, but she was very moved, and a crowd soon gathered around her to find out what was wrong. She told everyone what she was seeing, and others in the crowd were moved also, and believed in Jesus. They were the first of many who came to Jesus through this child's witness.

Throughout the next few years, the little witness often awoke at night when an angel appeared to her, asking her to follow him. She went with the angel wherever he took her--usually to a nearby village. She talked to people the angel directed her to, and said what the angel told her to say. Kind people fed her, many times after she asked Jesus for food or water. After some time, her father would discover her whereabouts and retrieve her. Her parents punished her severely, hoping to restore their daughter to a normal childhood. But it was not to be. Finally, after three or four years, the parents came to Christian faith also.

Those of us who met Sister Jay in America never heard her speak through an interpreter. She always spoke English. When she spoke in our church she told us that she had never learned English. She simply began speaking it the first time she stood before an English-speaking crowd. The ability to speak English is a gift God gave her.

Sister Jay's real name is Jayaprada, a name we soon learned and always called her by. I haven't heard her called Sister Jay since that first time we met her. Those who know her well often call her Jaya.

Jaya was here for our family Christmas this year, along with her oldest son, John Raja. John is a neurosurgeon in his fourth year of residency. He has three more years to go. The family lives in Florida.

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In the years between that first meeting and now, Jayaprada visited my parents several times. The second time, my brave mother cooked rice and curry for her, a dish she had learned to make from my father's Uncle Dan's wife, who served as a host for MCC missionaries when they landed at Elkhart headquarters for debriefing after returning from the field. Another time Jayaprada cooked rice and curry for us.

After Jayaprada married, she returned with her young Indian husband, Emanuel. It was several months before John Raja's birth. This past weekend my mother produced a picture of Emanuel and Jayaprada from that visit. It was taken in the living room of the house where we live now. Jayapradah looked at the picture and exclaimed, "That was my honeymoon sari!"

Emanuel died in India, when his two sons were only two and three years old. He had a brain tumor. Israel had joined the family by then. For seven years Jayaprada was a widow.

Jayaprada then married an American engineer named John. John and Jayaprada paid my parents a visit together. They lived in Florida.

Within the past decade (perhaps six years or so ago?) Jayaprada was back with John Raja when my sister Lois happened to be here visiting from Virginia. Lois told Jayaprada how memorable her first visit was, and how her testimony helped shape Lois' life. This reconnection blossomed into a solid friendship, and they've stayed connected through many phone calls and visits.

On the first of December, when Lois turned 50, Jayaprada surprised Lois with a visit, the first time in Kansas since Lois and Marvin and their family moved here. The Miller clan gathered to renew acquaintances on the Sunday of that visit. On Tuesday before Christmas she was back, this time with John Raja. They leave for home in Florida today.

The Millers were at Marvins again yesterday, and we all learned to know John Raja. He's animated and intelligent and funny and personable, and as generally wonderful as his mother has always believed him to be. At 28 years old, he has never dated. He's trusting his parents to find a spouse for him when the time is right. He is unapologetically Christian--an American who understands Telugu. Hans says he scored 1600 on his SAT. I don't think I know anyone else who's done that.

Before we had our family gift exchange, John shared with us what he had told the Masts the evening before at their family's gift exchange. It was a meditation "In Defense of the Innkeeper." During his medical training, John delivered about 20 babies. He spoke from that perspective, telling about why the innkeeper was wise to send Mary and Joseph to the stable to have their baby. The innkeeper must have been a down-to-earth person who knew that birthing involves three things: 1) Extra-space requirements 2) Noise 3) Messiness. Every one of those factors would have made delivery in a crowded inn disastrous.

John wrapped up his meditation by talking about how when Jesus takes up residence in our heart, He requires space there, crowding out other things that we may want also--things like financial security or prestige. Jesus' call on our life is loud, trumping all other summons. Life is messy sometimes, requiring the carrying out of soiled straw, and the spreading of bright clean straw after Jesus renews our hearts.

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My brother Marcus visited with Jayaprada privately for more than an hour on Christmas afternoon, while the rest of us prayed privately for them both. We have new hope that he is close to the kingdom.

Last week he brought Lowell's family a DVD he had rented after viewing it first at the home of a neighbor. It was Mel Gibson's The Passion. Marcus wanted them to watch it, saying he couldn't see how anyone could see it without being moved. He added that he understood some things he never saw before.

But Marcus still couldn't sing Christmas carols when the rest of us sang together last night. He just sat quietly and wiped tears occasionally. When he can sing again, I'll know that his spirit is free.

Please pray for him.

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Jayaprada told Joel he has a very sweet wife, and told me I have a very good husband. We both said, "I know."

She watched Grant, Heidi, Kristi, and Dietrich play on the Wii that Hans gave Dietrich for Christmas, marveling at how they probably wouldn't otherwise be likely to exercise like that, even for ten dollars an hour. She teased and laughed and presented gifts to each family and individual in the big circle at gift-giving time, and gave special honor to "Pastor Miller and his wife." She looked at Mom's picture of her with her young husband, and wept, remembering the difficult times after his death.

She saw the picture of her young family on Marvin's refrigerator, taken just before her first husband died, and said that she remembers how they bought the boys their first little suits and went to have the picture taken. I found the picture on a Christmas card in Elmer Nisly's scrapbook when they let us look through it and collect items for Center's 50th Anniversary celebration. I photocopied the picture and sent it home with Heidi from school before we gave the scrapbook back.

One biographer calls Jayaprada the Maiden Mystic of India, noting that she interacts with angels as naturally as others interact with other people. The biographer obviously knew the same Jayaprada we know. She is that, and still regularly sees and knows things that she learns apart from normal ways of seeing and knowing. God reveals them to her. When she speaks of these things, she's quick to tell her hearers that it is always God who does good things and gives good gifts. So Jaya is a mystic, but she's also the family friend who shared Christmas 2009 with the Masts and the Millers. It was a wonderful Christmas.