I was saved when I was only five years old, 65 years ago! I don’t remember getting saved
because I was so young, but I remember being saved. From that time on I knew I was a sinner,
that Jesus died for my sin, and that I had accepted Him as my Savior. “Believe on the Lord Jesus
Christ,” Acts 16:31 says, “and you will be saved.” I believed so I knew I was saved. I never doubted that, even when I was a teenager and speakers challenged me from the pulpit to make sure I was saved.
I don’t think my life after salvation was noticeably different than before I was saved, because I had always been an unusually compliant child. But even if my salvation didn’t change who I was a lot at that age, it made a big difference in who I would become.
I loved being a preacher’s kid. When I was a teenager, my dad, who had pastored churches for years, helped start several churches in Colorado. Because of his unique ministry, my parents and I lived in six different places during my junior high and high school years and I went to six different schools. Though these years were challenging in some respects, they gave me the opportunity to begin serving the Lord in many ways. I got to work in children’s church, teach Sunday School and VBS, and play the piano for services. As I look back now, I realize that all the ministry experience I got as a teen, even the many moves from one place to another, prepared me for being a missionary later in life.
From a young age, I always wanted to be in ministry, which, to me, meant being a pastor’s wife. I took the next logical step toward ministry by attending Faith Baptist Bible College. Though I was familiar with Bible doctrine from listening to my dad preach, at Faith I learned to systemize my personal theology so I could use it and defend it.
I loved living on campus with over 500 students, most of whom wanted to serve the Lord. In my junior year at Faith, I felt God calling me to write for Christian publication. About a month later, I started dating Art. Two weeks after that, he informed me that the Lord was calling him to Taiwan as a missionary. He asked if that was an option for me? I told him about my call to write, but said I thought God could possibly call me to missions as well. During the next year and a half, the Lord led us together and, in that way, I believe God was calling me to Taiwan as well.
We were married in 1977 and were accepted by Baptist Mid-Missions in 1978. After two years of deputation in the Northwest and the birth of our oldest daughter, we flew to Taiwan to begin our overseas ministry. We landed there not knowing one word of Chinese. Life in Taiwan was a huge change for us. In the beginning we lived in Taichung, a city of 750,000 people.
Traffic was extremely heavy and we could see traffic violations everywhere we looked. We wove through traffic on bikes first, then small motorcycles. Somehow, we didn’t really feel a lot of culture shock in those days. We knew life would be different in that setting and we viewed many of the changes as a big adventure.
Learning Taiwanese was the biggest challenge, but we learned other things as well: To smile at people who stared at the American family; how to look at life from a very different cultural perspective than we had before; what to do when I got totally lost in our city and couldn’t read any of the street signs.
We had many Chinese friends, but only a few were ever willing to become Christians. Still, we were happy living in Taiwan, but after 16 years we felt the Lord leading us away. We’d always expected to stay in Taiwan until retirement, but God made it clear He had other plans.
Arriving in the USA for Christmas in 1996 was a challenging time. We had closed the two churches we’d help to start, and it felt like we were leaving nothing behind. We were moving two teenage daughters away from their home and school with no idea where we’d go next. We looked at several Chinese ministries in the US and Canada, but neither were a good fit for ministry for us. Then Baptist Mid-Missions asked us if we would consider a ministry in New Zealand. A ministry couple had started a church in there, but they felt God calling them away. We visited the field and the church ended up calling Art as pastor. We prayed about it, felt God leading us there and accepted the call.
We felt ready to go, but we had to wait for permanent resident visas. That took 13 months from the time we’d returned to the States. During that time, we changed sending churches and lived in 5 different borrowed homes. That year was crazy in many ways, but there were
blessings besides. For one thing, our daughters embraced the change. I can’t imagine how hard it would have been to drag them to New Zealand if they didn’t want to go. We stayed in that church for 25 years. The girls were only with us for a couple of years, but the location change
allowed them to serve in our NZ church in significant ways.
We had some serious ups and downs in our church, but we saw people saved and lives changed along the way. During our later years there, many Asians came to our church. Our experience in Taiwan helped us bridge the gap between Kiwi and Asian culture. Our last five years were especially fruitful and God allowed us to leave at the peak of our ministry.
What made the difference in results? We can only say that God works in different ways at different times and places. We just try to serve Him faithfully and leave the results with Him.
We’ve also found that God often works in ways we can’t see. In fact, one man from our ministry in Taiwan occasionally wrote us emails after we left. He had never become a Christian, but 25 years after we left Taiwan he said, “I should have listened to you back then.” Soon after that, he made a profession of faith.
As we neared retirement age, we looked everywhere for several years to find a pastor and wife to replace us. We couldn’t find any available Kiwi (New Zealander) pastors or even a missionary pastor. Then, just before our last short furlough, God brought us a great Kiwi pastor from a place we hadn’t expected. Pastor Paul and Therese Gray are now leading the church well and it continues to thrive more than a year later.
Living in three countries has taught us so much and made our world so big. God can use these experiences even as we serve Him in Altoona. We want to keep growing in Christ in our new season of life and prove, over and over again, that God is good all the time.
