Dr Mike Cahill said . . .

A saint has truly passed to glory. I'd like to share a few stories that illustrate Roberta's servant heart. And I would definitely be interested in getting a copy of these compilations.

ONE

After our first dry season in our village assignment in Ghana (June 1987), Ginia and I were physically and emotionally wiped out, ready for a vacation. With our year and a half year old Deborah, we started out from Tamale early in the morning in our pickup truck, heading for the capital of Accra. Just a couple miles out of Tamale, a tractor swerved in front of us as we were barreling down the highway, and with no time to react, we hit it head on. We came to rest against a tree by the side of the road, with me spitting out teeth fragments, and Ginia semi-conscious and bleeding from a head wound. (As for Deborah, we had been feeding her in the front and had less than 10 seconds before the collision, strapped her in her seat in the back. She was unhurt.) A passing truck took us to the Tamale hospital, where we got sewed up and ensconced in a hospital room.

The hospital did not provide food or water or sheets or pillows on the beds. Not too much later, Roberta showed up with some food and brand new bed sheets, still in the package! Blue for me, pink for Ginia! She washed the blood off Ginia's head and helped her get up when needed (Ginia was so severely bruised that she could barely move, and I wasn't in much better shape). Then she rolled out her sleeping mat and announced she would sleep on our hospital room floor that night, so if we needed anything, she'd be there. When we protested that she wouldn't get any sleep under those circumstances, she gruffly replied "Oh, I can sleep tomorrow!" So she stayed with us throughout that first painful night after our accident -- and took care of us.

TWO

In 1990, Ginia and I had been taking care of some other GILLBT folks with hepatitis, and we got it too. But we were scheduled to fly out to the USA for furlough, and when flight time came, we were still pretty weak, not really in shape to handle our mentally-retarded, 2-year-old second daughter Laura, on a long plane trip. Roberta was in Accra at the time, and announced she would fly with us the first leg of the flight to Switzerland, and take care of Laura on the way so we could get some rest. "I've got to visit some friends in Switzerland anyway," she added. So she did. And that extra rest we got helped fortify us to go the second leg of the trip to the USA.

THREE

The hardest academic exercise I did in Ghana was to put together the first-ever Koma primer, in about 1992. I struggled! Without Roberta, it would have dragged on forever. As a literacy consultant, she had a much better grasp of how the primer was to be laid out. I knew Koma, but she knew what questions to ask to draw out the relevant knowledge I had. And so the Koma people got a start on reading their language for the first time.

(Dr. Mike and Ginia Cahill worked on a translation in Ghana but before it was completed needed to return to the states due to heath issues of one of their children. The Koma New Testament was completed by a Ghanaian translator and was recently dedicated. Mike is now the SIL International Linguistics Coordinator based in Dallas.)