The Hopkinsville Connection Continued

 

Isn’t it wonderful in life when somebody who at first you hardly noticed turns out to be like a best friend who feels like you’ve never not known them. Herman Turner is one of those to me. He’s a rare man in that when he loves you, he says so. He’s a straightshooter, too. That’s my southern lingo for somebody who says what he thinks, doesn’t beat around the bush, and let’s the chips fall where they may. Makes life a simple take it or leave it proposition.

 

 

So here’s Herman, kinda flyin under the radar once our team comes together down in Guatemala land. Quiet, hardworking, yet you know he’s observing – not missing anything. A day or two into our trip, Herman moves a mattress onto the floor of our sleeping room. Story emerges later that it was so hot on the top bunk he was originally assigned, that he’d ended up sleeping in a chair out in the kitchen area. Never complained about it though – somebody else found out and came up with the floor idea. I was flopped on my bed with an Orson Scott Card fantasy novel, so hardly noticed Herman moving in. Just glad he got up before me in the morning, or I’d probably have stepped right on his face in the dark.

 

But Herman survived both the heat and sleeping on the floor, and now I can count myself blessed to have shared his heart of gold. Wow, I don’t know what kind of person Herman was years ago, but I can tell you now that Jesus is stamped all over him, from the inside out.

 

A machinist turned mechanical engineer, I got the feeling that if there was anything that needed to be built, constructed, welded, repaired, improvised or figured out, Herman was the man to call.

 

One day, after we’d come back from a long, hot clinic, where I’d gotten just plain goofy horsing around with all the kids, and making friends with their parents, and my brain was mostly fried from the sun, Herman made a point of approaching me. There was his weathered, manly face looking right at me without the hint of a smile, and he said, “I was watching you today.” Yikes I thought, what’s coming next? Is he going tell me to straighten up and act like an adult (what most adults end up saying to me)? But, no. Herman said, “I was watching you today, and I saw what you were doing with those people, and I really appreciate what you did for them.” Wow. What can you say to that? I just thanked him with a great big bear hug, and we’ve been buds ever since.

 

And of course I watched him, too, from then on. He was here, there, and back twice. Bagging rice and corn and beans. Handing the food out to whoever needed it or asked. If there was a job to be done, Herman was right there. Playing with kids. Telling people about Jesus by reading from a little slip of paper he had one of the interpreters write out for him. Sweet, sweet, sweet.

 

Running interference at the other end of the clinic operation was Darrell Dankin. Move over Robin Williams, Darrell looked as close to Popeye as any real human ever could. Acted a lot like him, too. Shiver me timbers! Darrell gave off the impression he’d just as soon knock you down, as step around you. And man, he had a job that must have had him walking 10 miles a day without ever leaving the clinic site. He escorted each and every patient from the initial de-worming station to their next clinic stop. And he didn’t just point, he escorted them – like a steam locomotive!

 

Darrell is from Hopkinsville, but he wasn’t initially part of our team. He lives in Honduras now, as a missionary of some sort; and he’d come over just to help us out. The other Hopkinsville folks hadn’t ever met him before. Small world isn’t it.

 

So there’s Popeye Darrell, doin his thang. And even though he lives in Central America, he can’t speak dos words in espanol. So it was a hoot watching him direct traffic. But it didn’t take me long to figure out that his gruffness was an act – his humor style; which of course just made me want to bug him every chance I got all week long. He growled and grumbled and barked, but I knew he was all soft and chocolatey inside

I wanted to call him the Easter Bunny, but even for me, there are limits of how far I’ll provoke a nice man…

 

Six souls from Hopkinsville, Kentucky. Six of the most special people I’ve ever met. Think it’s the city water up there maybe? Nah. I think it’s the living water.

 

Last Sunday night I drove up to H-ville. So did a bunch of other team members who live in the Nashville area. We got together at a little ole Baptist church building out in the boonies, where Herman and Nickie and Pat and Doug and Karen were doing a presentation of the Guatemalan trip for the church people.

 

It was special. They’d rigged up this hi-tec multimedia show. Then they rared back and told their story, and man was it good. Once they got to talkin, they might as well have thrown away the scripts they’d written out. It was freeflow, with Doug sayin something, and Nickie interrupting to crack one. Then she and Karen would get goin’ on another story, until Pat jumped to tell something that had touched his heart. Finally Herman would just stand up right in the middle of all of them, and start talkin about some experience he’d had, and the whole group would settle down again – for about 30 seconds maybe! I don’t know how it impacted others there, but I think I was about 80% out of body and back in Guatemala. They did a good job for sure.

 

And the minute I walked into that building, and saw the bright faces of the 10 or so team members sitting there, I just knew the timing was perfect. It had been just long enough since I’d goodbyed them at the airport, that they were on the verge of becoming emails and photos and memories. And now here they were – it made everything real all over again …