~David~
Four hours later, Camille was officially part of the group.
They’d gone to a neighborhood familiar to David after many holiday seasons spent up here, visiting his students and their families. In one long mile row of homes, there were at least fifty teenagers, over half of them girls, who were part of his youth church in Swakopmund.
He had expected Camille to be overwhelmed by how many there were, at how energetic this culture was after being in conservative Japan, and how crazy busy the afternoon would get.
But she’d taken to it all with comfortable ease. Amazing, actually, how she’d handled the great majority of the introductions on her own, jumping right into the business of getting everyone’s names down, starting her own conversations apart from David’s leading, and finding commonalities with each young lady there.
The girls, who had been big fans of his these past three years barely gave him a second glance as they took to Camille and began chatting with her.
Well, then. Perhaps this would work out better than he could have imagined.
It had been an afternoon of soccer for the boys. Because it was always some kind of sport. Back in Swakopmund, he’d constructed a makeshift basketball court right by his cottage, and they’d play that seven days a week. It didn’t always seem spiritual, these things he’d find himself doing in building relationships and living life alongside people, but days like this led to opportunities to lead students to Christ and to teach them how to walk with Him. Unspiritual things, still important for the work they were doing.
Camille seemed to get it entirely as she was... well, what was she doing?
David squinted even as he wiped the sweat off his face with his shirt, calling out to the boys that he’d be back in a minute, telling them to carry on. He made his way over to where all the girls were sitting, staring at their feet and laughing as Camille told them a story.
“So, I listened to her and went out and spent a whole month’s salary from my part-time job on these dumb shoes called Tramps because I just knew that having a pair would make me popular with her and her friends, would make the boys like me... and all they did was give me blisters so huge that I couldn’t even walk without a limp for days. So, I had to wear flip flops to class. In the winter. I became an expert on the art of the pedicure.”
He stared at her, at all of them, as they laughed and talked and she went on without noticing him. One set of toes after another, all painted, as they passed bottles of nail polish along. All eyes on Camille, riveted by what she was saying.
“Camille,” Laina, a sixteen year old active in David’s Bible study group back in Swakopmund, said as she smiled at the newcomer, “were you popular after that?”
“No,” Camille grinned. “But that’s okay. Because changing who you are to please someone else,” she said conversationally, “is totally not what God wants for your life. I learned that the hard way, through aching feet. When I was myself, just being me, I made some of the best friends I’ve ever had. I was who God wanted me to be, and that was enough.”
She looked up finally and saw him standing there. “Hey, David, why are you so sweaty?” she asked, and he had a vague recollection of another time she’d asked him this.
Did she remember asking that question, too?
“Because I’m a sweaty guy,” he said.
“Well, you do always seem to be that,” she grinned.
She did. He could see his sweaty, fifteen year old self there in her eyes. And yet, she was still smiling.
“Where’d you get the fingernail polish?” he asked after a long silent pause which had all of the girls looking at him oddly.
“I keep it in my purse,” Camille answered. “Always be prepared, David.” Then, back to the girls, “Did you know that David and I grew up together?”
“Back in Texas?” another girl, Elizabeth, asked.
“Yeah,” Camille answered. “His sisters were my best friends. And he would never leave us alone. Spent all of his time following us around like a sad little puppy dog.”
All the girls laughed out loud at this.
Cammie looked up and mouthed “sorry” to him, still smiling. He shrugged dismissively, fighting a grin himself.
“What was he like?” two girls asked at the same time then giggled at one another.
“Sweaty, like he is right now, actually. Annoying. A little weird, honestly.”
The girls were loving this.
“Brother David,” Katrina, one of the girls sitting nearest Camille, said, laughing up at him, “you’ve told us this before, but it’s still funny to hear someone else say it was true.”
“And you were honest about it, David,” Camille laughed, glancing up at him.
“Well, yeah,” he said. “No need to lie about being some cool guy when I’m still not all that cool.”
“But you probably didn’t tell them the most important thing,” she said.
He couldn’t imagine what she could be thinking.
“What’s that?”
“Brother David,” she said, smiling at the name, “was a weird little kid. But can I tell you, in all the time I’ve known him, that his greatest ambition in life was just to be more and more like Jesus?”
David watched as all the girls’ attention changed, focused to something more serious.
“And I’m sure he tells you that’s the way it should be for you, too,” she said, still painting toenails as she talked. “But I’m here to tell you that he lives what he says. And that God has honored even a weird kid’s request to be more and more like Jesus. Gives me great hope that He can do just as much in my life, in all of our lives, after seeing what He’s done in David’s life.”
He had no words for this. Not that Camille expected them, as the girls around her began chatting about so many things all at once, all vying for her attention. And even though she was too busy to notice, he still held up a hand to wave goodbye, going back to the soccer game, thinking on her words, amazed by what she was already doing.