Taso, the oldest of the three candidates, opened her shaking hands between each crack of a knuckle. She had scored the highest on the employee examination, and I selected her as my assistant.

Dressed in a long, flowered skirt and blue-checked blouse Taso raised a hand to straighten one of her short braids. Only girls who couldn't afford a hair dresser wore the homemade stubs.

I looked at her neat clothes and smiled. "Can you begin work this afternoon?"

"Yes, ma'am." Taso lifted her round black face.

"Before we go home we will stop at the market." I picked up my bag. "What do you eat?"

"For breakfast I eat corn meal mush. For lunch corn meal mush with bean and dried fish soup. If there are leftovers I eat them for supper."

We walked to the market and bought ground corn, dried fish, black-eyed peas, oil, tea bags, bread, rice, onions and spaghetti. Then we hiked two hours through the bush on a trail to my mud house in the village.

Reaching my home, I unlocked the door and turned to Taso. "After work each evening you are free to return to the city if you like."

Taso looked at the two, single bed frames with mattresses and mosquito nets which took up most of the space in the miniature room. An open square resembling a window frame faced us. It had neither glass nor screen.

"I will stay here each evening but go home on the weekends to check on my family."

I pointed. "That is your bed."

Taso set her sack on the mattress and unknotted the lumpy bag. There were two folded blouses, soap, towel, comb and body lotion. She had wrapped her belongings in her long wrap-a-round skirt, so she pressed out the wrinkles in it.

She had worn her best clothes for the interview. Since we were the same size, I gave her three skirts and four blouses, glad for the opportunity to reduce my large wardrobe.

"That room is for storage." I pointed. "There's a clothesline in there if you want to hang your clothes."

We stepped into the third room of the house. "This is a salon, but I store cooking utensils and food in here. I use either this charcoal or the kerosene stove. Can you cook with them?"

"Yes, ma'am."

"How did you cook at home?"

"I chopped firewood which we used for cooking on the fire."

I handed her a flask. "Each morning boil water and fill this thermos."

We were both tired. It was too late to cook, so we ate dry bread and water before sliding into bed under the nets.

At sunrise the next morning Taso hiked three hundred yards to the well. She returned again and again carrying heavy buckets to fill the large clay jar outside the house.

She carried a pail of water into the little stall built of flat stones. After bathing she dressed and poured another bucket of water into the booth for me to wash.

Taso arranged the pieces of charcoal, lit the stove, boiled water and prepared her mush. After breakfast, I opened the Bible and read. Then I handed her a large drawing pad, several pencils, two pens, a ruler and eraser.

For many years without computer support, every lesson was hand printed. A local person from the language group wrote out health lectures in the dialect. I dictated sentence by sentence while Taso wrote each word. She erased many times, but in the end the lectures were perfect.

At noon I suggested, "Let's have peas and rice."

While the beans cooked, Taso looked inside a plastic sack. "I should add the dried fish. Do you have a mortar and pestle?"

I shook my head. I glanced into the neighbor's yard where Taso pounded the fish. She returned to the house with a bowl of powered protein and stirred it into the cooked beans and rice. She dished out two heaping plates.

I swallowed a bite. "This is delicious. You are an excellent cook. I would like to meet your family and see your home."

Taso grunted and nodded. "This weekend."

After siesta the patients arrived for treatment. Taso interpreted. It took hours to translate sentence after sentence, teach lectures, show posters and train women how to cook weaning foods for their babies.
Friday evening after work we hired a taxi to the main junction, and then walked down a long garbage-filled ally. Old, dilapidated buildings lined the end of the road. Taso's mother, two unwed sisters and their children rested on hand-wovenmats on the packed earth floor. No furniture. Half of the thatch roof had collapsed inside the small chamber made of rusted pieces of aluminum siding.

As I left her with her family I took her hand. "You are welcome to spend the weekends in my home."
She puckered her brows as if to say, I came to visit my family. Instead, she said. "I want to eat my mother's slimy food. I've missed her stretchy murere soup."

"I understand you miss your mother's cooking. I sometimes miss foods from my country."
Throughout the week each evening after the sun set, I struck the match for the bush lantern. Squinting my eyes from the kerosene fumes, I pulled out my notebook and pen to write in my journal. After I finished, I lit four candles to read a novel.

Taso always sat in the wooden chair opposite me and stared at the wall.
I was quiet the first week assuming she wanted silence. For she often closed her eyes for several minutes and moved her lips as if in prayer. The rest of the time she looked intently at the black, mud wall for hours each evening.
One evening I stopped writing. "Taso, would you like one of my books to read?"
"No thank you, ma'am."
"You are free to do whatever you like."
"I know." Taso kept staring at the wall.
"Would you like something to do? I have word games."
"I am doing something."
"What are you doing?"
"Resting," She sighed.
"Did I give you too much work to do?"
Taso laughed. "No. Serving you is easier than my business was. And you pay me more each week than I ever earned."
"Where is your business?"
"I abandoned it to work for you." She smiled.
"Why?"
"I woke at three each morning and started the fire. I mixed flour, egg, oil and milk. Then I shaped the mixture into fifty doughnuts, which I deep-fried." Taso moved her weight on the wooden chair. "After bathing and dressing, I put all the beignets in a glass box and set it on my head. Then I walked to the open market. From morning until dark I trekked all over the city hawking my fried cakes."

"Hiking in the hot sun all day is tiring."
"I forced myself to keep going." Taso shook her head. "I had to sell ten doughnuts to pay for the ingredients. I had to sell another ten to buy food for my family."
"Now I understand why you rest each evening."

"I'm resting in God's presence, meditating, recouping my strength, thinking of God's promises and waiting on the Lord."

Taso knew how to enter God's rest. Hebrews 4:9-11 "There remains a rest for the people of God; for anyone who enters God's rest also rests from his own work, just as God did from his."

When I'm tempted to constantly keep busy, I remember this excerpt. Stopping, I close my eyes and count my blessings, take in a breath of relaxation and wait on the Lord.