Ive Been Thinking It Was Good No It Was Bad, Jacksonville com, May 11, 2009

I've Been Thinking. . . It Was Good, No It Was Bad!

Jacksonville.com
May 11, 2009

http://www.jacksonville.com/interact/blog/thinking/2009-05-11/ive_been_thinking_it_was_good_no_it_was_bad

All families have struggles, pain, issues that they deal with. All of us look for ways to overcome the pain, to find some hope or promise in spite of it and many of us want to discover a way that we can use what happened to us, to help others.

When you come from a large family (my mother was one of six; her mother was one of nine and I always forget how many siblings my granddaddy Nesmith had, but it's a lot), there are always many stories. Some are the stories that my siblings and our first cousins (there are 19 of us) have heard from our mothers all of our lives and some are stories we were a part of. Only two of us were a part of the story that I share, but we have all felt the pain incurred.

My cousins, Keith and Howie lived in Africa where their parents were missionaries. We thought that they surely lived exotic (though we wouldn't have known or understood such a word at that time) lives. We knew that they went away to school with other children whose parents were missionaries. It sounded like fun to me and even as we grew up and they came back to live in the United States, I always found these cousins to be extremely interesting. What a life they must have had.

Wrong.

Keith and Howie and their parents (my mother's sister, Ann and her husband, Dr. Howard Beardslee) have told us that life for children was neither exotic, nor intriguing. In fact, it was devastating.

Aunt Ann and Uncle Howard believed that they were doing a good thing, serving God in Africa. They learned to love the African people and their understanding of the love and compassion of Christ increased during those days. The mission required them to send their sons to the Mission Boarding School. Years later they read an account of some missionary kids who were abused at the school their boys had attended. They were curious to learn if Keith and Howie had those same experiences. They did. They, and all the other students, had followed the rules of the Mission Board that they must never tell anyone about the abuse at the Mamou Alliance Academy, so Aunt Ann and Uncle Howard never knew the true story of what the boarding school was really like.

This knowledge has caused my aunt and uncle, in addition to their children and in fact our whole family, much pain. The Mission Board had a Committee of Investigation but most of the perpetrators denied the allegations. Were the victims due some sort of retribution? Was there a way to share their story?

There was. Scott Solary, the grandson of another of my mother's sisters, and his wife, Luci Westfall are the founders of Good Hard Working People, a company that produces film, video and online media content with an emphasis on portraying the lives of good, hard working people. When they heard the story, they determined that they wanted to share it and the result is a documentary entitled, "All God's Children". It chronicles the years of abuse and the pain that for many of these missionary kids still exists.

The project took just over four years to complete and was premiered last October in Sarasota. Scott and Luci are in Northeast Florida this week where the documentary will be shown, first at the McDowell Baptist Church,16 Bay View Drive in St. Augustine on Tuesday, May 12 at 7:00 PM and then on Thursday, May 14 at the Lakewood Presbyterian Church, 2001 University Blvd. W, in Jacksonville also at 7:00 PM.

Our family is not alone in that our lives have been touched by this kind of tragedy. We do hope that sharing the story will be helpful in the lives of others. While some may view this as controversial (and some churches and mission boards might choose to deny or refuse to deal with this issue) the possibility exists that it can prevent the mistreatment (physical, spiritual, mental or emotional) of children so it seems prudent to share the message.