Fig orchards and missions

Today as I strolled along busy Orchard Road in downtown Singapore, I was reminded of another orchard in a land far, far away - East Orosi - the place where my mother grew up.

Today is the fifth anniversary of my mother's death. She passed away about a year after my father and about a year and a half after I entered missionary work.

That other orchard is quite a bit different from the one I was walking through today. This touristy shopping centre is seeing property values go through the roof. And the pace of new building indicates the joy of the developers. The pace of shoppers starts picking up mid-afternoon. Locals race past, tourists gawk and snap pictures. Trees and other greenery soften the lines of the high-rise shops, hotels condominiums towering over the street, and remind the eye of the tropical location, one degree north of the equator.

That other orchard had nothing towering over it, save the massive granite uplift that forms California's Sierra Nevada mountain range. Apparently that orchard did experience some traffic, in the form of squirrels, jack rabbits and a little girl.

My mother used to relate how as a child growing up on her father's fig orchard, she would climb into the bowl of a tree and preach to those jack rabbits. I don't know if she had any conversions, but she certainly had her eye on Christian ministry from early days, even missionary work.

She did attend Bible Institute of Los Angeles (BIOLA) and associated with missionaries and Christian educators, but for her part ministry focused on trying to raise five children, teaching Sunday school and eventually running a homeless shelter. I could tell when I finally entered ordained ministry that she was happy for me.

But here on Orchard Road, I marveled at the incredible distance between the big city plantation and that fig orchard under the shadow of the Sierras.