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Luke 9:23-24 Good News Translation
23 And he said to them all, “If you want to come with me, you must
forget yourself, take up your cross every day, and follow me. 24 For
if you want to save your own life, you will lose it, but if you lose your life
for my sake, you will save it.
Mom and Dad, Esther
and Fred, had no plans to go to the “mission field.” They said, “There are
enough heathen in the United States that we shouldn’t be needed overseas.”
Dad’s Uncle I. H. Evans had been a missionary in China for many years. By the
middle 1930s, he had returned to the U.S. and was the president of the North
American Division of the General Conference of Seventh-day Adventists. Yet when
the call came to my parents to go to China as missionaries, they accepted it.
Before leaving they had to have medical check-ups, which they failed. They felt
the Lord was indicating that He, too, wanted them to work in the U.S. Very
shortly thereafter, however, they received a call to go to South Africa and
were accepted on the same medical results with no problem.
In 1935, they sailed
to Africa. They served in Africa for 40 years, and Mom died and is buried in
the missionary graveyard at Solusi University in Zimbabwe. She died six weeks
before their planned retirement back to the States. Dad came back unaccompanied,
feeling very much alone. He visited a number of his single lady friends looking
for another companion. Finally, he settled on Helen Merriam Diehm. He said to
her, “Would you be willing to go to Africa with me for two years?”
“I take that as a
marriage proposal!” She responded and agreed to go with him.
They settled at Lower
Gwelo, a school in the center of Rhodesia that is now Lower Gweru Adventist
High School, Zimbabwe. Dad became the treasurer of the school and Helen an
English teacher. Helen was terrified. This was 1975 and the beginning of the
civil war in that country. Reports came in daily of the deaths of people they
knew. But they had agreed to go there for two years, and they stayed for two
years. Other missionaries whom they knew were brutally murdered, but the Lord
honored their commitment. At the end of two years, they returned to a
comfortable retirement together in the U.S.
Thank You, Lord, for the promise that even if we
lose our lives for Your sake, You will save them!
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