In the Presence of My Enemies (7 page)

“Hey, let’s get out and check the service times at this church,” he said brightly.

Oh brother,
I thought.
Now we’re really wasting time. I thought the whole point was to get to Arkansas at a decent hour!

But I didn’t say anything. We got out and walked over to the steep-roofed building with brown siding. And then . . . he pulled a tiny ring box from his pocket.

“Gracia . . . would you marry me?”

I gasped. So that was what this detour had been all about! I looked up into his face in shock and said, “Are you sure?!”

“Yeah, I’m sure!” Martin said with a grin.

“Are you
sure
you’re sure?”

“I’m sure.”

I was getting up the courage to say yes, but in that moment, a flock of worries crowded into my mind. I wondered if I should wait to talk to my folks about such a big decision. But I knew I had absolutely no doubts about marrying Martin. And I knew my parents approved of this relationship. In fact, Martin was already popular with my dad, who had flown in World War II in Italy. When he had heard I was dating a pilot, he was enthusiastic. The fact that Martin was an MK made it even better.

“I’ve already talked to your dad, and he says it’s fine,” Martin’s voice broke into my thoughts. I quickly snapped back to reality.

“Yes, I’ll marry you!” I cried. We fell into a long hug right there on the front lawn of the Burnham Baptist Church.

He ran back to the car to get his camera. Now everything started making sense—why he wanted me to deal with the ketchup on my shirt, and why he had been late that morning. He’d been running around the campus making sure he had everything ready to make this day perfect.

We talked and laughed the rest of the trip. He told me he had already had a “she’s the one!” phone conversation with his parents back in the Philippines, and they had assured him they would come for a wedding that summer even though it wasn’t time for their next furlough.

When we arrived at my parents’ home around seven o’clock, supper was waiting in the Crock-Pot. What a special celebration we enjoyed together as my family gazed at my ring and congratulated us.

* * *

We were married in Kansas City on May 28, 1983, just a few short months after we had gotten engaged. The ceremony and reception were simple but meaningful as we celebrated our happiness with friends and family.

We spent our honeymoon in Branson, Missouri, long before it was the famous tourist destination it is today. We had so much fun and made so many wonderful memories, I just knew my life was going to be wonderful as long as Martin was by my side.

All too soon, it was time to leave. At the end of that week, we were due in the far southwestern corner of Nebraska, where Martin had landed a summer job as a crop duster with Stegg’s Flying Service. We made quick stops in Arkansas and then in Rose Hill to say good-bye to Martin’s parents, who were soon returning to the Philippines.

In the farm town of Imperial, Nebraska, we settled into a little apartment and quickly began to make friends. We attended Imperial Bible Church, and everyone was so kind to us; newlyweds sort of bring out the hospitality in people, I suppose. We were often invited places for a meal or a dessert, and I got involved in a women’s Bible study. I took a class on refinishing furniture so we could redo some antique chairs my mom and dad had given us. It was a wonderful summer.

Before long, Martin was offered a permanent job by one of the farmers there. We talked about it at length. “You know, it would be so easy to settle down in this community and make a good living, wouldn’t it?” Martin said one evening, staring out at the big Western sky. The money was indeed attractive. “But that’s not what we’re called to do.”

He was right. Even though we really loved it there, we both felt that God had other plans for us. So we decided that we’d better leave Imperial before we got too rooted. We headed back to Calvary Bible College that fall so Martin could teach again in the aviation department until the next New Tribes Mission orientation cycle came around.

4

Rookies

(1984–87)

New Tribes called it “boot camp”—a year of primitive living and demanding study so they could determine if you were cut out for foreign service or if you just thought you were. Martin and I landed in the small Southern town of Durant, Mississippi, one January day in 1984 and moved into a one-room apartment in a converted Civil War hospital. Our apartment had a stove and a refrigerator, but the common bathroom was down the hall. We had to carry our water from the bathroom back into our apartment in order to do the dishes and then carry our slop water up the hill and pour it into a pit when we were finished.

We were required to haul our garbage to another special pit up the hill. Everything in this compound was meant to imitate the way we might be called upon to live overseas. The mission wanted everyone to have both eyes open about the realities of tribal ministry.

Our boot-camp group included three families with kids, two other couples, and two single women. The living conditions were pretty rough, and it was no wonder that we bonded very closely with the others in our group. We also made some really good friends at the First Presbyterian Church in nearby Kosciusko. Those people welcomed us warmly.

Our weekday classes during boot camp covered everything from ecclesiology to sociology. We spent a lot of time studying what a New Testament church really is—not necessarily an American church, but the essentials of the church God wants to be established regardless of context. We did cross-cultural work, taking up an extended case study of the Yurok Indians in northern California, their traditions, their values, and their god,
Wapakumu.
We pretended we were Yuroks, and each person in the group had to attempt to teach a lesson that would make sense, with fitting illustrations. For example, if portraying Jesus as “the Lamb of God” would only mystify the Yuroks, we needed to come up with a way to solve the dilemma. It was an excellent education.

As far as finances were concerned, once again, things were pretty simple. New Tribes Mission is not a cushy operation. All missionaries and would-be missionaries are required to raise their own funds. The head office in Sanford, Florida, serves as a collection point for receipting purposes but makes no guarantees and provides no safety net. Whatever dollars come in are forwarded to the missionaries—no processing fees deducted, but no extra grants added either. If their account plunges in a particular month, the problem is theirs alone.

After several months, Martin’s parents began to send about fifty dollars a month, even though they had their own missionary budget to worry about. Several of our college friends began sending a little as well, and soon our monthly total came to somewhere near one hundred dollars. We mainly lived off our savings from the summer of crop dusting in Imperial. Needless to say, we watched every penny.

I can’t say that Martin and I loved boot camp. After all, we both had college degrees and felt like we knew a few things. Here, we were simply a couple of rookies; it was kind of a blow to our pride. But it was a necessary experience.

We learned to get along with people who weren’t like us, we learned to live in close quarters, and we learned to obey leadership, even when we didn’t agree with their decisions. We figured out ways to be hospitable on a shoestring budget, because even if we didn’t have a lot of money or food, we were still put on the rotation schedule to host visitors when they came through. It was great training for what happens all the time on the mission field.

Our training included “jungle camp,” a period of time when we were dispatched to go live in the woods. We had to build a house from only what we could carry to the site. When our time for jungle camp arrived, Martin constructed a quite respectable A-frame in the middle of the woods—the first home we ever owned! Then several days later, he returned for me. We packed up everything we would need for six weeks and rafted across the lake to our spot.

We carried all our food, because we knew we weren’t allowed to go out for anything. If we had forgotten something important, we would just have had to live without it. After a hard morning of lugging the gear and supplies up the hill, Martin set up the half barrel he had cut to make a stove so I could cook over a wood fire. It even had an oven that worked very well.

Although jungle camp was pretty rough, it truly was a special time for Martin and me, as well as those training with us. I have special memories of the guys kneading bread and baking it over hot coals. We celebrated our first anniversary there and enjoyed the top tier of our wedding cake. (When you’re young and in love, you remember to bring along those important items!)

We made our own fun. Many a night we played Dutch Blitz and Trivial Pursuit long into the night.

Near the end of that six weeks, Martin had to leave for pilot evaluation at the mission’s flight base in Arizona. That didn’t win me any reprieve from jungle camp; I was expected to fend for myself. I was thrilled when my parents made a special trip to visit me in my little jungle home. I even managed to fix them a halfway decent meal.

I was doing okay all alone—until suddenly the announcement came one morning: “Today you’re all moving back home. Pack up.” This was part of the training strategy, to throw us curveballs and see how we adjusted.

“But I have no husband to help me pack up,” I protested.

“Yes, you’re right. But that may happen to you on the mission field someday,” our leader replied.

I had no choice but to get our stuff together and carry it all down the hill to the lake, where a teenager helped me raft it across. I loaded it onto the tractor-trailer for the return to the compound, grumbling under my breath the entire time about what a dirty deal this was.

When I finally finished hauling our belongings back up the two flights of stairs to our little apartment, I was dripping wet with sweat. I decided to head for the backyard swimming pool.
I deserve a pity party!
I told myself.

At the pool I met a woman whose family was passing through on furlough. I began complaining to her about how upset I was at having to move home from jungle camp without my husband to help.

She listened quietly, then said, “Would you like to hear what just happened to me?” She went on to explain that her husband had just had a heart attack in the jungle overseas. He had been flown out of their village and then immediately evacuated to the States for medical care. This woman had been left alone to pack up her entire house all by herself and move out—with several young children.

I was duly rebuked.
So this is what boot camp is for,
I thought,
to find out if we can handle adversity and take what life sends our way.
I learned so much during those days. I learned that sometimes we need to go through a lot of unpleasantness in order to get the job done. That life isn’t always wonderful. That happiness is not dependent on our circumstances but on our attitudes. Little did I know how important those lessons would be sixteen years later in the Philippine rain forest.

* * *

When we left boot camp after a year, I was devastated. We had bonded with these eighteen people, and it tore my heart out to say good-bye. I cried and carried on until I realized,
Girl, your whole life is going to be a series of good-byes. You’ve got to get your act together if you’re going to survive in the future.
I determined never again to let good-byes devastate me as they had this time.

We had been certified to move to the next level of missionary training, which took us to the flight base in Arizona. There Martin’s work involved more intensive preparation for the technical side of mission work.

When discussions began about where we would actually serve, Martin went to the leadership and said, “Please send us anywhere except the Philippines.” Not that he disliked the country—but he had grown up there and was worried about acceptance as an adult. Would the old-timers in the mission, who remembered him as a little kid, be willing to crawl into an airplane and entrust their lives to him now? Maybe it would be better to go somewhere else.

I personally didn’t care where we went. Martin was so fun to live with and I was so in love with him that I knew I’d be happy anywhere as long as we were together.

The leaders understood Martin’s concerns and began to talk about the needs in Paraguay. This went on for a while, and we were feeling pretty positive about this option. But then one day, we were called in for another meeting.

“You know, they really do need a replacement pilot in the Philippines,” we were told. “Martin, you know the culture and you partly know the language. It’s kind of ridiculous to send you somewhere else. Would you be willing to go back?”

Without hesitation, Martin nodded yes. He was just that kind of person. Wherever he was asked to serve, he would accept the call willingly.

Because of his prior language exposure, they waived our requirement of language prep school. The need on the field was urgent, they said, so we were given a quick target date for arrival: early 1986. We still didn’t have any financial support to speak of, and our crop-duster savings were basically gone. Obviously, we would have to get busy on the fund-raising front.

This was tough for Martin. “Gracia, I just don’t like the idea of begging for money from strangers,” he told me. “We’re not that kind of people.”

“I know,” I agreed. “What if we just talk to people who know us, the ones who have already shown interest in us? Would that be enough to take care of our needs?”

We didn’t know but decided it was worth a try. We began by calling Jack Middleton, the pastor of Wichita Bible Church, where Martin had attended.

“We’re headed for the mission field,” Martin announced cheerfully that autumn day. “We are going to go early next year.”

“Sure you are!” Jack said with a hearty laugh. “Don’t you know how long it takes a missionary to raise support these days? Three years! And you’re going to do it in less than three months?”