The Path to Gravel Bay
This month (June, 2009) marks our tenth anniversary as missionaries at Bible Basics International. It has been an exciting, fast paced 10 years. But how did we become missionaries at the ripe old age of 45 or 46? The complete, unabridged answer to that question has the potential to make a James Michener book seem like a pamphlet in comparison. But here is the short version.
Some of my earliest memories, believe it or not, are musings about the meaning of life. It seems like I always wondered about the great, seemingly unanswerable questions such as how I came to be, was there a reason for my existence, and what happens when we die. By the time I was in junior high school, I was reading almost anything that I thought might shed some light on the subject. I was in the ninth grade when my dad died suddenly and that added to my need to know. I looked into various religions and even went so far as to try reading the Bible. Naturally, I started in Genesis, and just as naturally, I soon lost interest in what I thought at the time was a very dusty book.
I remember once asking my mother how to get to heaven. She said she figured that if we did more good than bad we would go there. That was probably the most terrifying thing anyone ever said to me. How could we ever know if we made the grade? With that philosophy, we either live in the terror that we will come up short or an arrogance that cannot be backed up that we are good enough. I continued my research.
After my mother remarried we moved from Iowa to Colorado and I discovered a whole new set of friends. Before long, I had a friend with whom I could share my thoughts on the big life questions. Dave Burt told me I should look at the Bible again. I told him that I’d already done that and I’d also seen the rotten examples set by people whom I thought were Christians. Dave wisely told me to look at the book itself, not the poor examples and decide for myself based on what I read. Most importantly, he told me to start with the New Testament and to ask God to help me understand it.
I still was not sure if there were even any supernatural beings at all, but I took Dave’s advice and, before I began reading from the Gospel of Matthew, I said something like, “God, I don’t even know if You exist, but if You do, would You help me to understand this book?”
It was summertime, so there was no homework, so I spent all my afternoons and evenings reading the New Testament from beginning to end. And it made sense! Nothing else I’d ever read before fit the reality I saw around me. It was the first plausible explanation I had encountered that explained where we came from, why we are here, and what fate awaits us – and it still is the only one. On top of that, I found answers to the problem of evil and why we do bad things even when we want to do good things.
In short, God did create the universe from nothing. He created mankind in His own image, flawless, but with the free will to make our own choices. Adam and Eve chose to disobey and as a result became slaves to sin. Just as real life slaves give birth to slave children rather than free children, Adam and Eve gave birth to slaves to sin. And so it has continued to this day. No wonder we can’t seem to be as good as we’d like to be. But God, knowing what would happen, had already devised a plan to rescue us from the penalty and the power of our sin. Because God cannot and will not permit evil in Heaven, we are doomed without a Savior. We owe a debt we can’t afford to pay. So Christ paid that debt for us. As Paul wrote in Romans, chapter five, God demonstrated His love for us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. As a result, we now have the choice to accept that payment or not. We get to choose our own eternity.
Even though I didn’t quite believe God existed, He still honored my request and helped me understand what I was reading. And that was the key to a life changing experience. I really do not know the precise day I trusted Christ as my Savior, but I do know that by the time I finished reading the New Testament I was a believer.
So how did I become a missionary? Actually, Mildred and I were hoping to be missionaries in our early years of marriage, but having two kids with cystic fibrosis made that an impossible dream. We sensed, correctly as it turned out, that God was not saying “no,” He was saying “wait.” So we supported missionaries as God enabled us and went on quite a few short term trips. Our daughter Rachel went to be with the Lord when she was only four. But Jesse was much healthier. As he reached adulthood, we began getting serious about full time mission work.
Our assistant Pastor, Mike Maggard, and his wife Kathi, helped us a great deal in discerning if our desire to become full time missionaries was emotional or a divine call. Mike and Kathi both have a wonderful ability to ask the kind of probing questions that help sift through the various emotions of a major decision and get to the root of our motives. We needed to know, and the Maggards helped us to discover, if we were escaping a job I did not like or answering a call from God.
Were accepted by Bible Basics International in 1998 and, after raising support, became full time missionaries in June 1999. I produced radio programs, including A Travės de la Biblia which is the Spanish version of Thru the Bible, and Mildred worked part time in the office. In 2001, there developed a need for an engineer at our radio station on the island of Roatán, Honduras. We agreed to fill the spot until the Lord provided a permanent replacement. We arrived in Roatán two days before the 9/11 attack in 2001 – a very strange situation for us – and returned to the home office at Thanksgiving time in 2003.
In late 2006 our mission president, Dr. Eugene Priddy, asked if we would be willing to return to Roatán for about three months to cover for Peter and Sandi Silseth’s furlough. Since Jesse was married by that time and we loved the people and the ministry in Roatán, we asked the Lord if He wanted us to make the move a permanent one. It seemed that He did and He orchestrated the process wonderfully. After selling our house near Tampa, we made that move in July of 2007. If God allows, we plan to serve here in Roatán as long as our health permits.