April 8, 1999 was a devastating day for Jeanne Tucker. Suddenly, at 12:30 a.m., while serving in Karonga as a Free Methodist missionary couple, Jeanne’s 51-year-old husband Rev. Craig Tucker died from complications of malaria.

It was a total shock to her. Crowded into a small plane, Jeanne bravely had to endure the journey to South Africa with Craig at her feet before arrangements could be made to return to Canada. It would be nine days before Craig’s funeral at Trinity United Church, Gravenhurst, where more than 800 gathered with Jeanne and her five children to mourn his untimely death.

With events happening as they did, Jeanne lived with a very deep sense of loss, as well as the fact that she had no opportunity to bring any kind of closure with the people in Malawi she and Craig had ministered to and loved so dearly.

The thought of returning some day to Malawi had burdened Jeanne for quite some time, but it wasn’t until early this year that the opportunity began to present itself.

Having the sense that she needed a definite purpose for going back other than to visit, she learned that the Free Methodist Church required a qualified female individual to go to their bible school in Malawi and teach a women’s literacy module for two weeks in April 2008. This was it.

Having worked with the Literacy Society of South Muskoka (and York Region’s Society), Jeanne had the experience and teaching skills to take on such a task. Thus began a round of negotiations and preliminaries that cleared the way for her to fulfil that special role.

At Syracuse, New York she attended a workshop put on by Literacy International where she gained insight into language experience methodology that would be of help to her task in Africa.

Jeanne will spend most of April in Malawi preparing for, and teaching, 68 pastors’ wives from some of the 120 Free Methodist churches in that country.

She said, “It is quite a challenge as I have to work through an interpreter. The women in Malawi receive very little formal education as that role is mainly allotted to the male population. So these ladies are at a wide variety of places on that literacy scale.”

Having visited various churches in the area, Jeanne’s travel expenses are now covered. She is currently raising funds to purchase materials that will be of use for her teaching assignments.