EVEN THOUGH I RAN AS FAST AS I COULD, I couldn’t keep my fifth-grade Sunday school teacher from drowning.

Mrs. Bryngleson’s glasses slipped off her ear and dropped into the water as she waded out to save students who had been caught in the river’s current at the town park. Our Sunday school class picnic lunch and games faded away as other students tried to help those in the water and as Mrs. B swam out and disappeared. I could swim, too, but feared the river current and I knew we needed real help.

An older couple fishing around a curve of the bank didn’t believe my pleas that people were drowning. The old woman convinced her husband it was just a prank, and the two of them didn’t stir from their folding chairs. In a panic I turned and raced to the park’s swimming pool, nearly a block away.

Fortunately, the pool staff responded. The lifeguards didn’t even take time to grab their shoes, and I recall begging them to hurry faster, even though the uneven ground and stones cut their feet.

When we reached the spot where Opal B. had disappeared, we found a couple of exhausted students lying by the water and we could see others clinging to branches farther down. By now, a number of people had joined the rescue party, and everyone made their way along the river’s edge to pluck children from the water. Some rescuers drove across the bridge to get those on the opposite bank.

While the rescue continued, I ran again to the pool, and this time I asked to use the telephone. I sat, trembling, and called every classmate’s parents and told them where to come to get their children. I called my parents last, and then I ran back to the river.

That’s when I saw the lifeguards working on Mrs. B., and I knew she had drowned. I cried.

I had tried. I had run as hard as I could. I had tried to get the old fisherman and his wife to help. I had scolded the lifeguards for not hurrying faster. But it had all been too late.

I didn’t know why it had to happen. And although I was grateful that my friends were all rescued, I couldn’t believe that Mrs. B. was gone. I had thought she would be all right.

And then for some reason, I pictured our Sunday school warm-up session at church. Mrs. B. was a joyful person, and she always requested her favorite song: “Be not dismayed, whate’er betide.” I cried as I remembered the smile on her face as we sang it.

I knew that Mrs. B. loved us, and I knew with all my heart that she loved Jesus. And in the days that followed, I had a sense that she would be satisfied that all of her students were safe. And I could picture her smiling in Heaven. Even now, every time I sing “Be not dismayed, whate’er betide,” I think of her, and I remember the next words–“GOD WILL TAKE CARE OF YOU”–and I feel peace. My fifth-grade Sunday school teacher left that legacy for me and the rest of her class.

Perhaps YOU have a story of a Sunday school teacher or someone else from your past who had an impact on YOUR early life of faith. I’d love to read it!

(P.S. I don’t have a photo of Opal, but the one in this blog is me, that year.)